“It’s important that we remember these people that may have been forgotten in their lives - that we don’t let them go,” she said. Smith said the now-annual event is necessary to make sure those who lost their lives did not die in vain. Jefta Images / Barcroft Media via Getty Images Indonesian transgender activists hold a vigil to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance on Novemin Jakarta, Indonesia. That November, she organized the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, which took place in San Francisco and Boston. The demonstration, Smith said, made her realize a day of remembrance was needed to memorialize the lives lost. While the group held candles, Smith gave a speech in memory of those who had died. She called it the “Remembering Our Dead Project.” In the Spring of 1999, Smith led a group of 100 activists to the Castro Theater in San Francisco, where “The Brandon Teena Story” - a documentary about the murder of trans man Brandon Teena - was showing. The activist started to keep a list of transgender people who had been killed. “It really surprised me that it had already, in a short period of time, been forgotten, and here we were with another murder at the same site,” she said. It’s a growing list that Smith, a trans woman, is sad to acknowledge. Most of the victims have been trans women of color. have been "fatally shot or killed by other violent means," according to the Human Rights Campaign, the highest number the LGBTQ advocacy group has recorded. So far in 2017, 25 trans people in the U.S. The documented number of lives lost to anti-trans violence is rising. Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith Courtesy of Gwendolyn Ann Smith “I really didn’t expect it to go very far at all and was extremely surprised to see, and still am every time, how large the project has gotten, how large the event has grown,” Smith told NBC News. The week-long celebration of trans lives educates people about issues the community faces. At the time, she had no idea November 20 would become a day observed by millions across the world, or that it would give rise to Transgender Awareness Week (November 13-17). Gwendolyn Ann Smith founded Transgender Day of Remembrance in 1999 to honor lives lost to anti-trans violence.
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