by Dozens gathered at Minnesota’s capitol building in St. Paul on March 27 to celebrate the upcoming International Transgender Day of Visibility of March 31.
The rally was organized by OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, and featured speakers from Minnesota’s Trans Caucus inside the rotunda.
Wind gusted up to 30 miles per hour on the front steps of the capitol, but ralliers danced and cheered with high energy to drag performances outside before the speeches began.
The main message from participants and speakers was love, kindness and strength within their community overpowering hate, oppression and violence within today’s political climate.
“There is a conservative effort happening made by the powers at be to keep us afraid, depressed and isolated,” OutFront Minnesota’s communications coordinator Ash Tifa said in her speech.
Rev. Nora Elliot of Union Congregational Church highlighted a Kansas law passed in February which invalidated around 1,700 diver’s licenses of people who have changed their gender designation in the past, according to NBC News.
“With this new Jim Crow creeping and festering across our country today, I was given a bigger microphone,” Elliot said.
Tifa continued, “And yet, despite all they try to throw at us, it is a beautiful day to be a trans Minnesotan.”
Spencer Retelle, hosting and performing at the rally as The Other Jeannie Retelle, has been doing drag since 2016. He said he has seen his community under attack throughout his last 10 years as a trans and non-binary person, and this year he saw a similar attack: Operation Metro Surge.
“I think what makes it different this year is that our space of Minnesota was under siege by the government in its own way,” Retelle said. “To see it against immigrants’ rights on our land in Minnesota, we all felt so much more real and so much more like anything could happen at any time.”
Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-Falcoln Heights, spoke about the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a queer woman survived by her wife, by an ICE agent in January in Minneapolis.
“It’s not an accident that queer people are on the front lines,” Finke said.
Retelle turned to his trans community for support throughout the ICE occupation.
“I’m glad that I put my nose to the grindstone and kept seeking queer joy in resiliency because I think it’s what ended up saving me, but also saving other people in my community,” he said. “We had things to look forward to other than the banal.”
Kat Rohn, OutFront’s executive director, closed out the rally’s speeches by saying the holiday is difficult this year because visibility can be life-threatening for trans people.
“What matters more than anything else right now is that we live through this,” Rohn said. “That we continue to remain defiantly joyful in the face of folks trying to press us down.”
Other notable speakers included Attorney General Keith Ellison, who emphasized his open office doors to the trans community and to suggestions on how to support those within it.
