The UNMC and Nebraska Medicine LGBTQ+ Employee Alliance will host a Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) ceremony on Nov. 20 from 3 to 3:50 p.m. in the Durham Outpatient Center West Atrium.
Aileen Warren, assistant vice chancellor for human resources, will give opening remarks about UNMC and Nebraska Medicine’s ongoing inclusivity efforts. The featured guest speaker is multimedia artist Eli Rigatuso, an Omaha-area equal rights activist and member of the LGBTQ+ community. Rigatuso will discuss the origins of TDoR and societal disparities of people with multi-marginalized identities.
The ceremony also will feature a traditional reading of names in remembrance of people whose lives were lost in acts of transphobic violence within the past year. Readers will be LGBTQ+ community members Cei Loofe and Adrian Genevieve.
A moment of silence will be observed, followed by quiet music for individual acts of reflection and remembrance. Emily McElroy, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs and director of the McGoogan Library of Medicine, will give closing remarks.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance started as an act of visibility in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998.