Charity of the Month is my effort to give back and try to make a difference in the world Each month I will be highlighting and donating to a charity. June’s Charity of the Month is The Marsha P. Johnson Institute.
As Pride month comes to an end I have chosen to support an LGBTQ+ charity, and I have chosen to donate to The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. The goal of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute is to protect and defend the human rights of Black transgender people. They do this by organizing, advocating, creating an intentional community to heal, developing transformative leadership, and promoting collective power.
Trans people around the world are discriminated against, have their rights blocked or taken away, and are murdered. Between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019 331 trans people were murdered, with the majority occurring in Brazil. In 2019 the Human Rights Campaign and The New York Times called the murdering of trans people, particularly Black trans women, an “epidemic”. At the start of June 2020 the Trump administration removed an Obama-era regulation prohibiting discrimination in health care against patients who are transgender. June also saw the murders of Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a 27-year-old from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Riah Milton a 25-year-old from Liberty Township, Ohio. Both women were Black trans women and are thought to be the 13th and 14th transgender murder victims in the U.S. this year.
Marsha P. Johnson was a gay liberation activist, self-identified drag queen, performer, and survivor. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969, and was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, as well as a co-founder of the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), alongside close friend Sylvia Rivera. Marsha was initially known as “Black Marsha” before settling on Marsha P. Johnson, with the “P” standing for “Pay It No Mind,” which is what Marsha would say in response to questions about her gender.
The Marsha P. Johnson Institute was created to elevate, support, and nourish the voices of Black trans people with a community and space intended for the sole purpose of bettering the Black trans community across the diaspora. The institute was founded as a response to the murders of Black trans women and women of color. With 10 core values (Black Trans-led, Wholeness, Commitment, Self-Determination, Excellence, Abolition, Integrity, Community Knowledge, Passion, Collaboration) the institute looks into how the murders of Black trans people is connected to their exclusion from social justice issues, namely racial, gender, and reproductive justice, as well as gun violence.
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