Harsyra

Over the weekend Detroit police discovered a shallow grave which apparently contained two missing women, Ashley Conaway, 22, and Abreeya Brown, 18, who were kidnapped last month. According to police records, the women were kidnapped at gun point in Illinois and forced into a trunk. Brown’s stepfather even told police he exchanged gunfire with the kidnappers in an attempt to save his stepdaughter, but he was unable to stop the men.

Conaway’s former boyfriend, Brandon Cain, and his associate Brian Lee were detained last month for attempted murder charges stemming from the shootout with Brown’s stepfather, but the pair have yet to be charged with the disappearance of the women.

Scenes like this continue to play out across the country with little notice. For every Oscar Grant or Sean Bell or Trayvon Martin, there are many more Rekia Boyds, Aiyana Jones, Ashley Conaways, and Abreeya Browns that go unnoticed. Why?

While we continue to rally for justice for Trayvon Martin, lets not forget the thousands of people who are viciously murdered every year. Justice shouldn’t only be reserved for those whose families and friends are able to get social media to take notice, but for everyone who is a victim of crime.

The fact is that transgender people—in particular, transgender people of color—have simply not experienced the same strides forward as their lesbian, gay and bisexual brothers and sisters. A landmark new report, ‘Injustice at Every Turn,’ presents undeniable proof. This report, released on Friday, is based on a comprehensive survey of over 6,000 transgender people and the findings are too shocking to ignore, especially when it comes to African-American transgender people.

Our transgender brothers and sisters are far more likely to lack proper medical care, to be unemployed, to live in extreme poverty, and to be HIV-positive—and that’s when compared to their white transgender counterparts, not just the general population. The survey’s respondents were four times more likely than the general population to live in extreme poverty. One in five reported having been refused a home or apartment, another one in five report having been refused health care. More than one in five, 22 percent, reported having been harassed by law enforcement, and nearly half reported fear of seeking assistance from police. African American respondents reported all of this in even higher numbers.

What would it look like if the LGBT movement had a racial justice agenda? Well, for starters, we’d see our struggle for equality tied to other movements for justice, not just by analogy. So, for example, there’s been a noticeable silence about Trayvon Martin on most of the mainstream gay blogs, probably because most (white) gay folks don’t see the case as “our issue.” But as Zach Stafford recently pointed out here on HuffPost, gay folk should care about Trayvon Martin because all of us who are “outsiders” — whether because of sexual orientation, gender non-conformity, or race — can be targets of violence.

When we say that the gay right movement is the new civil rights movement, we’re playing into the divisive racial politics of NOM. We have to do better than “gay is the new black.” We have to see that the fight for sexual equality hasn’t replaced the fight for racial equality, because that’s not over. When the LGBT movement moves beyond shallow slogans like “gay is the new black” to embrace a racial justice agenda that sees our struggle as tied to others, then we’ll have truly won a victory against opponents like NOM that can only see “gays and blacks” as an easy place to drive a wedge.