*Image by Studio 15’s Jia Wertz *
“I stand here as someone who has written herself onto this stage to unapologetically proclaim that I am a trans woman-writer-activist-revolutionary of color. And I stand here today because of the work of my forebears, from Sojourner to Sylvia, from Ella to Audre, from Harriet to Marsha,” said Janet Mock, transgender rights activist and author of the New York Times bestseller Redefining Realness, addressing the over 500,000 people advocating for women’s rights at the Women’s March on Washington.
“I stand here today most of all because I am my sister’s keeper. My sisters and siblings are being beaten and brutalized, neglected and invisibilizied, extinguished and exiled. My sisters and siblings have been pushed out of hostel homes and intolerant schools. My sisters and siblings have been forced into detention facilities and prisons and deeper into poverty. And I hold these harsh truths close. They enrage me and fuel me. But I cannot survive on righteous anger alone. Today, by being here, it is my commitment to getting us free that keeps me marching,” she explained, elaborating that her liberation is directly linked to the liberation of the undocumented trans Latina yearning for refuge, the disabled student seeking unequivocal access and the sex worker fighting to make her living safely.
She suggested that the approach to this freedom must be inclusive and intersectional going beyond a single person.
“Collective liberation and solidarity is difficult work, it is work that will find us struggling together and struggling with one another. Just because we are oppressed does not mean that we do not ourselves fall victim to enacting the same unconscious policing, shaming, and erasing. We must return to one another with greater accountability and commitment to the work today,” Mock added.
She asked the crowd to commit to this work by crating a statement that stakes a claim on personal lives, identities and ideals.
“But a movement – a movement is so much more than a march. A movement is that difficult space between our reality and our vision. Our liberation depends on all of us, all of us returning to our homes and using this experience and all the experiences that have shaped us to act, to organize, to resist,” she concluded.
