Supporters packed Oak Park’s village board chambers on March 18 as trustees passed a resolution that will honor Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31.
The trustees heard from several community members about what the resolution meant to them, including a statement from Mike Johnson, the parent of a transgender child who had moved back to Oak Park so that their daughter could live in a more welcoming community.
“My daughter is absolutely thriving now that she’s back up in Oak Park,” Johnson said during the meeting. “We had a place that we knew we could return to, but a lot of people don’t know about Oak Park.”
Transgender Day of Visibility has been celebrated internationally on March 31 since 2010. It is meant to “celebrate the lives and contributions of trans people, while also drawing attention to the disproportionate levels of poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces,” according to GLAAD.
There will be a Transgender Day of Visibility celebration in Oak Park this year at Scoville Park from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, March 30.
This year, the occasion will be the backdrop for many protests and rallies in the United States, including one scheduled at the Federal Plaza in Chicago on March 30 and another at the National Mall in Washington D.C. on March 31, as President Donald Trump’s administration has taken a firm stance against support for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his new term ordering that the federal government only recognize two sexes and eliminate any materials that “promote gender ideology.” As a result of this and other executive orders transgender people haven’t been able to get passports that correspond with their gender identity, transgender veterans have been denied coverage for gender affirming care and mentions of transgender people have been scrubbed from federal websites.
In this climate, Oak Parker Aaron McManus, one of the organizers of the Scoville Park event, asked the board on March 18 to consider adopting another resolution that would declare Oak Park a “transgender sanctuary city.”
“It’s a signal to people in the community that may be on fence about is it okay to be accepting of trans people,” McManus said. “We want to move in people who will really celebrate that.”
Several cities around the country have taken that step in recent years, including Kansas City, MO and Worcester, MA. McManus, who is nonbinary, said that such a resolution could potentially raise the village’s profile in a way that would bring people into Oak Park looking to relocate from places that pass anti-transgender legislation.
“Everybody deserves to choose what kind of future they want,” they said. “It’s important to emphasize and reframe the idea that it’s the fundamental human rights of self-expression and self-determination that are what are framed as trans rights.”
Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman told Wednesday Journal she would support a proposal declaring Oak Park a transgender sanctuary city.
“I think there’s additional sense of urgency with the rhetoric coming out of the federal government,” Scaman said. “I think you have to respond to how painful that is. For some trans youth, it’s life or death.”