When the pandemic hit New Orleans, Mariah Moore knew that vulnerable members of her community couldn’t wait for stimulus checks.
The 32-year-old organizer and other trans activists launched an emergency Covid crisis fund, raising more than $20,000 for transgender and gender-nonconforming Louisianans at risk – sex workers, the newly unemployed, undocumented residents, unhoused people and others on the margins.
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The success of the mutual aid project inspired her to think bigger: Moore is now in the process of launching House of Tulip, the state’s first residential refuge for trans and non-binary residents.
“I realized that if we could raise and redistribute $20,000 in a month, then we could build something that will last a lifetime,” she said.
Moore and her co-founder are in the process of purchasing a 12-bedroom property that will provide shelter and programming for trans people, with the long-term goal of offering pathways to home ownership for residents.
In the first of our series on trans leaders at the forefront of American protest movements and community organizing, the Guardian talked to Moore about her work and the fight against violence and discrimination facing Black trans women.
How did you become involved in community organizing in New Orleans?
In 2018, I was a participant in the first Black Trans Circles, which was a healing and restorative space for Black trans women and femmes to work through the trauma, grief and pain we were holding. It was about developing a network of sisterhood and rapid response. Therapy is really lacking in our community, but sometimes we can find that within each other. It’s a safe space for trans women to come together and address the trauma we never really felt safe addressing because there weren’t spaces created by Black trans folks for Black trans folks. There is healing through our ancestral history, through sharing our stories.
This is about building lives and rebuilding lives
Were there programs like this or trans housing services that were available to you when you were younger?
There was nothing like it. I experienced so much discrimination and hatred, but I had a wonderful, chosen family that supported me in their own way. They let me sleep on their couch, taught me how to take care of and fend for myself. I thank them every day, because without them, there’s no telling where I would be. I also think about how much further I would be in life if I had even more support, if I had people supporting me with expertise, knowledge, connection, resources to allow me to thrive. Because like everybody around me in my supportive family, the vast majority of us were sex workers, and we were just sharing our earnings and sharing our spaces with other girls and folks that were in the same struggle. That’s what the resilience in the trans community is like. We’ve always done this.
Do you see the House of Tulip as a way to replicate that resilience and chosen family?
Yes, I think a lot of that is injected into House of Tulip, just by naming that this is not just a program, this is a family. This is a community. Especially with [Donald Trump’s housing department] rule to allow homeless shelters to turn away trans folks, we want to make sure that we as trans folks are keeping each other safe. This is about building lives and rebuilding lives. A lot of us suffer from depression and anxiety, and in some cases, PTSD, because of what we’ve been through, because of the experiences of being violently harmed. But this is a safe space, because it’s governed and kept by people who look like you, who’ve experienced what you’ve experienced.
Why do you think there are so many trans folks who are on the frontlines of critical activist movements?
There are certain situations that bring the leadership out of each and every one of us. For me, it was the murder of Chyna Gibson, one of my sisters who was dear to my heart. That brought my voice forward. We’re natural leaders because of everything we have to go through. It’s our resistance and our brilliance that guides us. When we look back at Stonewall and prior, we’ve always led the charge. We’ve always been protectors, that is just who we are as people. We’re naturally birthed that way. For trans folks, there are so many of us who are trying to save our communities, because we see what is happening.
In addition to supporting the kinds of projects you’re building, what is it going to take for society to fight back against the epidemic of violence against Black trans women?
We need to be shown in ways that reflect us being loved and humanized and cared for
Representation matters. We need to be shown in more than just our deaths. We need to be shown in ways that reflect us being loved and humanized and cared for. We need our success stories. We need to be published. We need to be shown in a way that isn’t shameful. On television, we’re always murdered or shown as sex workers or the victims of gruesome crimes. We’re never shown in successful positions. We’re never shown being loved by our partners or our families.
What should cis people who call themselves allies be doing to protect Black trans women?
We all need to be working together to end this violence. We need educational conversations across communities. If you’re a white person who understands equity and equality, then you need to be talking to other white people who hold racist views, who maneuver in ways that uplift white supremacy and state-sanctioned violence. Black men talking to Black men is also so important. There are cis heterosexual black men who understand the violence trans women face and are allies to the LGBTQ community. And they need to speak to Black men who are less aware or don’t understand the importance of inclusion and intersectionality, who don’t understand that “Black lives matter” also means “Black trans lives matter”. They need to help end the stigma and shame around being in community with trans folks. I can’t be the educator in all rooms. Listen to us and speak up for us when we’re not in the room.
Along with the Trump administration’s attacks, how do you think commentary from cultural figures like JK Rowling have impacted trans people?
It angers me very much and it makes me extremely emotional because as a kid, I actually read every single one of JK Rowling’s books and as a person who had an extremely abusive childhood in more ways than one, those books are an outlet to escape. With JK Rowling, it’s like the work that you created could have helped save my life, but now you’re erasing my existence through your extremely transphobic comments. I am a woman and I’m tired of arguing about my existence. I just don’t know why people keep continuing to try to further marginalize, but also try to further erase us. It’s frustrating, but it also contributes to and perpetuates the violence that’s happening against us.
What have this year’s protests and uprisings meant to you? Do you think they have helped bring attention to the violence that trans people face?
I’ve felt anger, but also hope. I’ve seen multiple communities start to come together. In New Orleans we are centering the lives of the men and women, both cis and trans, that we’ve lost to police brutality and the lives we’ve lost to anti-trans violence. This moment has shone a light on how extremely problematic and harmful this system is specifically to Black people, and that’s why there is this movement to dismantle the police and the prison industrial complex.
Can you talk about the particular ways police violence impacts members of the Black trans community?
‘Our love is radical’: why trans activists lead the way in protest movements
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In New Orleans, it’s “walking while trans”. For a long time, women minding their own business would be stereotyped as sex workers and then charged with a crime because of just simply their existence. They still carry that today, trying to navigate their lives with felony charges. So we are historically criminalized. Our own identities are weaponized against us. People push a narrative about trans people – that we’re predators, sex workers, drug addicts, criminals. When we do have police encounters, we don’t even feel safe coming forward. We can’t call them when we need help, because rather than being the victim, we’re seen as the criminal. We’re dehumanized. We’re assaulted by police rather than being helped. Rather than calling someone to protect you, you’re calling someone to harm you. I’d rather take my chances with someone who was already going to harm me anyway. Police have had all these sensitivity trainings, and it doesn’t make a difference.
What do you hope comes next?
We have to push for the defunding of police and the reinvestment of those funds back into community programs. Even as these actions continue, we still see an uptick in cases of police brutality, cases of racism, transphobia and homophobia. So I think a key to dismantling these oppressive systems is going to be through these continued protests and uprisings. A lot of people didn’t want to really take on this issue until they were forced to, until it was in their face, until they couldn’t deny that these things were happening.
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This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity
In our Trans freedom fighters project, the Guardian is spotlighting the work of trans and non-binary movement leaders on the frontlines of 2020 organizing and activism. Read more stories here
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