Approximately 100 people gathered at College Green Park in Iowa City on Tuesday for a rally to mark this year’s International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV).
“Visibility is power. Visibility is defiance,” Mandi Remington, founder and director of Corridor Community Action Network (CCAN) and a member of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, told the crowd. “In a state where trans Iowans are under attack, where healthcare, education, and very existences are being targeted, showing up together like this is an act of resistance. We’re here today to be loud, to be unapologetic, and to make it clear that trans Iowans are not alone, and we all belong here.”
Remington and CCAN took the lead in organizing seven days of events that culminated in the four-hour-long rally in College Green Park. The events ranged from art-making to a clothes and accessories swap to a community discussion about medical issues to fundraisers, including a show at Trumpet Blossom and a burlesque and drag performance at Studio 13.
The decision to expand activities in Johnson County surrounding TDOV came in response to actions by the Trump administration and the Reynolds administration. President Trump began attacking the rights of transgender Americans as soon as he returned to the Oval Office. Although federal courts have blocked, at least temporarily, some of Trump’s actions (like his order banning trans Americans from serving in the military), other orders are designed to end public recognition of all trans people, even altering national historic sites to try to erase their history.
Iowa, of course, made history in February by becoming the first state to erase part of its civil rights act, in order to strip transgender Iowans of civil rights protections by removing the act’s prohibition on gender identity discrimination.
With the backing of Gov. Kim Reynolds, leaders in the Iowa House and Senate pushed the bill through with only Republican support in one week. The bill not only removed the protections for gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, it also changed Iowa Code to essentially prevent the state or local governments from recognizing transgender people according by their gender. It was the first bill Gov. Reynolds signed into law this year.
The rally in College Green Park featured musical performances, a singing circle, banner-making and poetry, in addition to speakers, with national and state politics giving extra weight to the day. This was probably best reflected by a powerful speech by Dr. Emma Denney, a composer, performer, trans woman and the new Community Resource Navigator for the LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library.
“I’ve been thinking lately about how we organize and how we talk about the fight for our rights, and it’s that we constantly minimize trans people in talking about it,” she said.
Denney pointed out that only one of the songs that had been heard so far at the rally was written by a trans person, and some of the inspirational poetry read can be heard at most any community gathering.
“I understand the history of organizing, but let’s be serious about what our fight is even about,” she continued. “The state took away our civil rights this year, right? I can’t get a passport in this country right now, but you know, we’ll read the same poetry we’ve always read, and we’ll sing the same songs we always sing, and hopefully it’ll do something different this time.”
Denney moved to Iowa City to pursue graduate studies at the University of Iowa, where she earned a Ph.D. in music theory and composition. She’s also very active in fighting for transgender rights in Iowa, and was one of a group of seven activists singled out for arrest by UI police after a protest against an anti-trans speaker who describes himself as a theocratic fascist, at the IMU in October 2023.
Denney has repeatedly gone to the State Capitol in Des Moines to join others in opposing the series of anti-trans bills Republicans have passed since 2022, and has spoken at Iowa City Council meetings, urging councilmembers to take concrete actions to protect trans people.
“What are you going to do?” Denney asked at the March 11 city council meeting in which the council adopted a resolution recognizing TDOV.
“When these kids are renting apartments in the future and their landlords say, ‘No, sorry, you’re trans. Try elsewhere.’ What are you going to do? When they get fired from their jobs for being who they are, when I get fired from my job for being who I am, what are you going to do?” (City council rules prevent members from responding to questions posed by speakers during the public comment period.)
“We can choose to organize differently,” Denney said during her speech at the rally. “We can choose to take the action that we’re taking in community today and push it further. If you can come together to sing, you can come together when the police come for your friends and your family; you can come together when ICE comes to people’s doors and fight them back. You can come together when businesses start to deny us, when landlords start to deny us. When employers start to deny us, you can come together and make them terrified to do it. And we can do even more than that. What have you each done today to make sure that your neighbors ate? What have you done to make sure that the people you know have somewhere to sleep tonight?
“These are the fundamental things that we can do to improve our community, and we have the power to do them,” Denney continued. “We aren’t going to sit around waiting for politicians or Democrats or whoever the fuck to fix things. We’re just going to do it because it’s the right goddamn thing to do.”
Denney concluded by highlighting her least favorite question, one “that pretty much every cis person in my live has said to me” since the election.
“It’s, ‘Are you thinking about moving?’ ‘Are you gonna go to Canada, New Zealand?’ Can people ask something other than, ‘are you going to leave your home?’ What are you going to do to make sure we stay here? … [I believe] it is our job to take care of people that are in the state. No matter who we are, we don’t abandon people.”
The extended TDOV activities in Johnson County this year raised funds for the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund and the Iowa for Transgender Folks Coalition. In addition to the fundraising shows at Trumpet Blossom and Studio 13, there was an art and book sale, as well as a special screening of I Saw the TV Glow at FilmScene. In total, almost $4,000 was raised for the two groups.
