As the lights of battery-powered candles clicked to life throughout the room in Wilkes University's student center, Helen Davis read the names of 35 transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive people throughout the U.S. who died by violence in the past year.
Among them were 14-year-old Pauly Likens of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, whose dismembered remains were found in trash bags near a lake.
There was Meghan Riley Lewis, 53, of Maryland, whom police say was shot to death by a food delivery driver after she objected to him misgendering her.
And there was Kassim Omar, 29. Once a refugee from Somalia, Omar settled in Columbus, Ohio, where she died in September of injuries sustained in a 2022 shooting.
"We failed them. We cannot keep failing. We must do better," said Davis, addressing dozens gathered in the dimly lit room for the fifth annual NEPA Transgender Day of Remembrance and Candlelight Vigil.
"And until we can stop trans violence, none of us are going to be free or safe or OK because they are part of us. They are us," added Davis, who is an English professor at Wilkes.
"I say that as a cisgender ally who is also the mom of a trans person, and as a faculty member who connects to so many amazing trans students who become really important to me and my many, many, many community friends who I love," Davis said.
The national Transgender Day of Remembrance started in 1999 when transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith held a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a trans woman who was killed in 1998, according to advocacy organization GLAAD.
Nikki Berlew started the Wilkes-Barre vigil five years ago, originally gathering outside on Public Square. For the past few years, she’s held the vigil at Wilkes University, inside the student center.
"It's super important to be able to bring everybody together and to give people a space where they can speak freely and where they can make connections, build community, and, you know, just get some resources that are needed," said Berlew, who described herself as "a queer woman, a wife, a mother, a former coach and a proud teacher and a very proud activist."
Berlew always invites anyone in attendance to share their story once the names are read. She thinks this type of event is going to be even more crucial in the years ahead.
"Because we need to, we need to protect the marginalized communities, and we need to protect the people who are at risk. I have trans students, and they're scared," Berlew said.
Without mentioning president-elect Donald Trump by name, several speakers expressed the fear they feel about what Trump's election will mean for LGBTQ+ people across the country.
Those fears are not random.
Anti-trans ads were a highly visible component of Trump's campaign, and supporters of his campaign — including the conservative Heritage Foundation, architects of Project 2025 — have called on Trump to enact far-reaching anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
Whether or not those policies advance, members of the trans community say they already are feeling increased hostility. At the same time, calls and texts to a leading LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization ramped up dramatically within hours of Trump's Nov. 6 victory.
It represents the acceleration of trends already underway.
"The Human Rights Campaign has been keeping track of trans, non-binary and gender expansive people who were killed by violence every year since 2013," Berlew said. "In 2020 that number jumped significantly, from 27 lives lost in 2019 to 37. I know it doesn't sound like that many, but that's still a huge number. It's still a huge increase, and it's still one life too many."
It's also just an estimate, Berlew and Davis said, as many transgender people's deaths are unreported or unrecorded due to the victims being misgendered in official reports.
There were at least 295 transgender people who were killed worldwide in the past year in violent deaths, Davis said, as well as more than 20 transgender Americans and more than 46 transgender people worldwide who died by suicide in the past year.
One of them was Nex Benedict, a transgender teen who died after an assault at their Oklahoma high school in early February.
Alec Walker-Serrano was one of those who turned out to mourn Benedict during a local vigil earlier this year.
Speaking during Wednesday's gathering, Walker-Serrano acknowledged that it is important to grieve, but equally important to push back against oppression.
"I know we will honor our fallen siblings today and every day, because that's who we are as a community. I know today we will cry and tomorrow we will fight, because that's who we are as a community," said Walker-Serrano, a trans man who serves as chair of the NEPA stands up queer liberation committee and a member of the PA Coalition for Trans Youth.
Walker-Serrano and others also urged the group to remember that trans women and trans people of color are statistically more likely to die by violence. According to the trans remembrance project, of those trans and non-binary people who were killed this year, 50% were Black trans women, 86% were Black and indigenous people of color, he said.
"We have to ask ourselves, why is this the case? Because systems of oppression are intertwined. White supremacy and colonialism create the conditions in which BIPOC trans and non-binary folks are underrepresented, under appreciated, and disproportionately affected by systemic and interpersonal violence," Walker-Serrano said.
"As a white-passing Latino trans man, I must speak up," he said.
"I must speak the truth of what we will witness tonight, as the slide show of names and faces flash across the screen, most of those faces belong to Black and indigenous people of color who faced multiple layers of oppression while they were alive," Walker-Serrano said.
"Acknowledging them in their entirety, acknowledging the complexity of their stories, is the least we can do."
