gwen araujo

A number of community organizations will be hosting an event from 6-8 p.m. today at the Watsonville City Plaza celebrating the 2008 Transgender Day of Remembrance of Santa Cruz County.

The commemorative event will feature a candlelight vigil, spoken-word artists, live music by local bands, and speakers including community organizers, political leaders, clergy and health service providers. The gathering will offer transgendered people and their allies a chance to step forward and stand together in vigil, remembering those who have died as a result of hate crimes.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose Nov. 28, 1998 murder moved her mourners to launch the “Remembering Our Dead” Web project and hold a candlelight vigil in San Francisco in 1999.

The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that a transgendered person is more than 16 times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than the average person. In the United States, approximately one person is murdered each month because of his or her gender presentation. This year in California, two people have died as a result of gender-based violence: Lawrence King, a 15-year-old Oxnard resident, and Ruby Molina, a 22-year-old Sacramento resident. In 2002, 17-year-old Gwen Amber Rose Araujo was brutally murdered in Newark, a case that inspired the film “A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story.”
http://www.register-pajaronian.com/V2_news_articles.php?heading=0&page=73&story_id=6241