Tag Archives: trans

From its new Capitol Hill home, Three Dollar Bill Cinema readies for the 18th year of TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival with screenings beyond the neighborhood

Posted on by

A scene from Anhell69

As it prepares for the 18th year of the TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival, Capitol Hill film nonprofit Three Dollar Bill Cinema has also made a change of address.

The organization has a new Capitol Hill home, moving its offices into the newly formed E Pine complex of Gay City. LGBTQ health and community facility Gay City moved into its new Capitol Hill space last summer on E Pine and took on a new mission as “Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center.”

Next week, Three Dollar will host the 18th TRANSlations to kick off Seattle’s month of peak film festival activity including the return of the SIFF: Seattle International Film Festival starting May 11th.

TRANSlations gets the festival ball rolling starting Thursday, May 4th with screenings and events both online and in-person. For Capitol Hill film lovers, the 2023 festival will be an excuse for a field trip out of the neighborhood. Continue reading →

March for Trans Lives crosses Capitol Hill

Posted on by

(Image: Chloe Collyer)

(Image: Chloe Collyer)

A Trans Day of Visibility march filled Broadway Friday night as participants traveled from Volunteer Park to Cal Anderson Park in an event organized by a March for Trans Lives group that describes itself as a new “community based organization who believes in non violent acts of protest.”

The event featured speeches and drag performances at Volunteer Park before marching down Broadway around 6 PM. The 2023 TDOV arrived amid efforts to provide more protections across the country. In Olympia, lawmakers have been trying to shape legislation to provide more protections for runaways who may come to Washington to seek gender-affirming care. Another bill from 43rd District Sen. Jamie Pedersen would make it easier and safer for the state’s residents to change their name, a boost for privacy “for people who are trans or queer, those escaping domestic violence, and refugees,”

Friday’s organizers asked attendees to not engage with police and to refrain from unlawful activity. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Triumphant September return readies Trans Pride Seattle for future Junes

Posted on by

Volunteer Park and its new amphitheater proved a worthy host for the return of the annual Trans Pride celebration in Seattle. September also held up its end of the bargain.

Friday night on a gorgeous late summer Seattle night, hundreds gathered in the park for a return of the important LGBTQ celebration that organizers decided to move back to September to provide an easier logistical and financial restart after years of pandemic postponements.

CHS reported here on the effort to bring back Trans Pride Seattle and its move to Volunteer Park, a Capitol HIll setting with a long history providing a space and center for queer events and rallies including its part in Seattle’s first Pride celebrations in 1974. Continue reading →

Trans Pride Seattle returns with a September night for togetherness and freedom in Volunteer Park

Posted on by

A scene from Trans Pride Seattle 2019

By Elizabeth Turnbull

By 2019, Trans Pride Seattle had grown into a surprisingly massive event with huge crowds rallying on Capitol Hill for a celebration of civil rights, love, and good times. 2020 brought the pandemic and a move to online-only events to mark traditions like Pride. 2021 came and went without an in-person Trans Pride celebration.

Now this year, it is time to rally together again but Trans Pride 2022 will be an event in transition, indeed. Seattle’s Gender Justice League has recovered in time to pull together a September version of the annual event that will bring a different take on the celebration. Moved to Volunteer Park, Trans Pride in 2022 will focus on being together, for this year at least, moving on from its past marching through the streets of the Hill. The police are a pain to work with, organizers say. Instead, Friday night, the crowds will come together to hear speakers and entertainers to enjoy a summer evening in Volunteer Park.

The event is designed to create a safe and celebratory space to bolster a sense of togetherness and freedom.

“Trans Pride in itself is just a beacon for the general trans community,“ Ganesha Gold Buffalo, a SafeHouse advocate with the Gender Justice League told CHS. ”And it allows us to gather in a space where we’re in a time of being disconnected from the community on a lot of different levels.” Continue reading →

Why everybody should be part of the 2022 TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival

Posted on by

A scene from Pronouns in Bio screening at this year’s festival

StormMiguel Florez

The TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival which starts this week centered around in-person screenings at Capitol Hill’s Northwest Film Forum, organizers have set out to create a festival for everyone and an event to help connect the trans community across the neighborhood, the city, and around the world. Taking place May 5th through 8th, the 2022 Seattle Trans Film Festival offers events and films that showcase transgender films by and for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people.

TRANSlations lead programmer and filmmaker StormMiguel Florez said the whole point is to explore trans film, of course, but also for people outside the community to come along.

“We don’t have a lot of spaces where we get to celebrate ourselves this way and see ourselves this way and it is a festival that is welcoming to everyone, but it is our space to see and be seen and connect. Just to have that kind of reflection that we so rarely get,” Florez said. Continue reading →

As trial begins in cop killing of George Floyd, Black Trans Lives Matter march crosses Capitol Hill

Posted on by


With reporting and photos by Renee Raketty

2021 has brought quieter weeks of protest and marches on Capitol Hill but activists were on the street this weekend to remind that Black Trans Lives Matter.

“I don’t care if you’re transgender, female or male. You’re disrespected, period,” one organizer told the Sunday group of marchers. “They see what they see because it is more important to them than who is in front of them — contributing to the patriarchy — than respecting what the human in front of them knows what they are.”

A crowd of about 75 people gathered around the Bobby Morris Playfield to light candles and hear speeches from BIPOC organizers for the Sunday afternoon march and vigil. Some attendees also wrote messages or the names of transgender people whose lives were cut short by transphobic violence. Still others brought flowers to lay at the site in their memory. Continue reading →

Huge crowd rallies for Trans Pride Seattle as fight for rights for all starts Capitol Hill Pride weekend

Posted on by

With reporting by Emily Piette and Alex Garland

In what appeared to be the largest turnout ever for the event, thousands marched on Capitol Hill and rallied at Cal Anderson Park Friday night to celebrate Trans Pride in Seattle and remember those who came before to fight for human rights for all.

“Every motherfucking thing they took from us, we want it all,” echoed from the stage as poets J Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa of the Black Trans Prayer Book implored the gathered crowd to reclaim the “whitewashed” legacy of Marsha P. Johnson, and Johnson’s role in the 1969 Stonewall uprising on the 50th anniversary of the watershed event in LGBTQ history and culture.

Continue reading →

Gender Justice League launches emergency fund for name, gender marker changes

Posted on by
A marcher at 2016 Trans* Pride (Image: CHS)

A marcher at 2016 Trans* Pride (Image: CHS)

With a Donald Trump presidency looming, the Gender Justice League is raising money for an emergency fund to help transgender people change their legal documents to correspond with their identities.

Danni Askini, executive director of the group, launched an online fundraising campaign for clinics to help people change their identification documents and to provide direct funds to trans people who can’t afford to make the legal changes.

“We need to prepare for the potential State-sanctioned discrimination that is to come,”Askini writes. “Having legal identification documents that correctly correspond to our identities is the first step in helping us navigate a Trump regime as smoothly as possible.” Continue reading →

Trans* Pride 2016 dances through the rain on Capitol Hill

Posted on by

TransPride2016- - 3

An incredible downpour didn’t stop Trans* Pride — but it definitely made more than a few people including Gender Justice League organizer Danni Askini consider calling it a night to head somewhere warm and dry. Instead, they danced:

Again in 2016, a few thousand members of the LGBTQ communities and their allies joined the Trans* Pride March, ending at Cal Anderson Park. This year, the event came under the shadow of violence both far — and right here on Capitol Hill. As volunteers scrambled to set up the Trans* Pride rally grounds in Cal Anderson, Askini answered questions and stood by beating victim Michael Volz who described a horrible assault Wednesday night by an anti-trans attacker. “Part of our efforts to do things like Trans Pride Seattle is to create community and solidarity so that people do not feel isolated,” Askini said at the media conference.

During the rally, District 3 representative Kshama Sawant recalled the start of Trans* Pride in Seattle. “I remember only 2013 I was a candidate for City Council running as a socialist. Everybody thought that was crazy,” Sawant said. “People also thought it was crazy that was there was the first year we had our first Trans* Pride march and rally. And there was not a single politician here.”

“This year we forced the Seattle City Council — the entire Council — to declare today officially as Trans* Pride Day.”

Friday night, marchers came to support each other, to be visible, and because some say Sunday’s official Seattle Pride parade is overcrowded, commercial, and exploitative. Continue reading →

Police investigate E Pike beating following Orlando benefit show as anti-trans hate crime

Posted on by

Police are investigating the reported beating of a person leaving a Capitol Hill benefit for Orlando Wednesday night as as a hate crime.

Friends and supporters have donated more than $10,000 to help support Michael Volz during recovery from injuries in Wednesday night’s reported anti-trans beating at 11th and Pike:

Dear community, It is with a heavy heart, deep sadness, and great rage, that I let you know our dear friend Michael M Volz was assaulted last night on capitol hill. Michael, myself, and a group of friends attended the fundraiser to benefit the pulse massacre last night at Neumos. Michael left a little bit before everyone to walk to their car and get ready for work in the morning. As Michael was walking to their car, they past the rose, and were approached by a white man in an orange sweatshirt with scruffy brown hair. The man said to Michael, Happy Pride, and began to assault Michael. As he, was punching and choking Michael, he said, “show me your tits you tranny cunt” Michael some how made it back to their house. Michael contacted myself and their friend Sharon. Sharon drove Michael to the hospital and I met them at the Emergency Room. Currently, michael is home. They have some stitches, abrasions, and a lot of bruising. We will need food and people willing to spend time with Michael over the weekend. Currently, we have care situated until early tomorrow afternoon. If you are available to bring food or company please contact us!

Michael wanted me to attach pictures because this is what transphobia looks like. pictures in comments.

Queer Tears
Queer Rage
Queer Feelings
Queer Resilience

According to Seattle Police, officers responded to a vehicle carrying the victim to investigate the incident around 2:15 AM Thursday morning. Police records show the beating was reported to have happened around 11:30 PM Wednesday night near 11th and E Pike following the Let Your Love Shine: A Queer Benefit For Orlando at Neumos.

UPDATE 4:45 PM: At a Friday afternoon media conference in Cal Anderson before the start of the 2016 Trans* Pride rally and march, Volz, who was still showing wounds from the attack, was accompanied by around 100 supporters and said the attack is part of “a climate of hate” against trans people.

“This is not an isolated incident, this is something that happens to our community frequently and we’re not going to take it anymore,” Volz said.

Volz said they were encouraged by all the people who have offered support.

“It is what great sadness and anger, quite frankly, that I have to stand here,” said SPD Deputy Chief Carmen Best.

Volz was joined by trans activist Danni Askini,founder of the Gender Justice League, who called on people to reject anti-trans bills in the state.

“All of us are in shock and fearful,” Askini said.

“Part of our efforts to do things like Trans Pride Seattle is to create community and solidarity so that people do not feel isolated,” Askini said.

Best said police have not identified a suspect and there is no known video from nearby businesses showing the incident.

Despite the number of Safe Places near the location of the attack, Best said it was not a reflection that the LGBTQ safety program was not working.

 

UPDATE 12:40 PM: Police announced Friday afternoon that the FBI is assisting the investigation of the crime and provided new details of the attack: Continue reading →