In the past year, 367 transgender men and women around the globe lost their lives. They were tortured, beaten, strangled, burned alive or died by suicide.
Thursday night at Metropolitan Community Church Illiana in Portage, they were remembered during a ceremony honoring Transgender Day of Remembrance, where participants wove brightly colored strips of batik fabric into a loom, bringing together the threads of lives that were ripped apart.
The Rev. Michael Cooper, pastor at the church, said he has been holding the service for at least 14 years. Each year, the service includes a symbolic representation of the lives lost, which accompanies the recitation of their names and brief information about each victim.
Rev. Michael Cooper, of Metropolitan Community Church in Portage, holds strands of pink and blue fabric representing members of the transgender community who were lost over the past year, as a tapestry is woven to recognize Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday, November 20, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
“The lives of our trans brothers and sisters were ripped from our community, so we are picking up those threads for healing and as a call for justice,” he said shortly before the service began.
The art created by the strips of fabric, he said, will be completed as a tapestry for the church’s worship space.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance, speakers at the program said, began after Rita Hester, a trans woman living in Boston, was murdered on Nov. 28, 1998, in her home. The Nov. 20 date of recognition started as a vigil by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith to remember the people in the trans community who lost their lives to violence.
Charlotte Nowacki of Gary, who attended the service with her wife Trulie, said as a trans woman, commemorating the Transgender Day of Remembrance is an obligation to honor the people in the trans community whose lives were cut short.
She and others participating in the program noted the increased challenges for the trans community since the election of President Donald Trump and politicians on the state level, who have used the trans community as a political scapegoat while stripping away health care and other rights.
“A lot concerns me, really, with the current administration. I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” she said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, but I try to stay positive about it.”
That, she said, includes limiting her time on social media and reading the news, and spending time with friends and her fellow parishioners at MCC.
Congregant Charlotte Nowacki reads off the names of members of the transgender community who were lost over the past year during an annual ceremony for Transgender Day of Remembrance at Metropolitan Community Church in Portage on Thursday, November 20, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Nowacki recited a prayer as the service began for its 20 or so participants, noting the daily struggles for those whose identities do not match up to how others demand they look or act.
“In times when those struggles meet the extreme of violent acts, in those times when those struggles crush the fragile soul of a vibrant life, our act of resistance, O God, our act of mending their loss is to gather in their memory, to speak their names, to let that painful last thread of their story be revealed,” she said.
Participating in the service never gets easier, and the list of names doesn’t get shorter, either, said Wendy Bruce of Portage, who has been involved with the event for seven years.
Metropolitan Community Church members weave pieces of blue and pink fabric, each representing one member of the transgender community who was lost in the past year, into a tapestry during an annual ceremony for Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Portage church on Thursday, November 20, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Bruce recently was in Indianapolis, lobbying Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales to preserve the ability to change gender markers on driver’s licenses and state ID cards. The process now involves downloading a form from the Secretary of State’s website, having it signed by a medical provider, and bringing it to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
The state office, Bruce said, wants to ban the ability to make that change completely, which will only increase trans flight to other states.
“We’re being persecuted off the face of the earth. I’m trying to understand why. I don’t know,” she said. “I would say to the haters, are your NIPSCO bills going to be lower? Are your taxes any cheaper?”
In all, 35 transgender people in the United States lost their lives in the past year, Bruce said, including a woman who was recently killed in Indianapolis.
“We’re honoring the people who were attacked simply for who they are,” she said.
Rev. Michael Cooper of Metropolitan Community Church, on left, joins congregants to weave a tapestry in memory of members of the transgender community lost over the past year during an event to recognize Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Portage church on Thursday, November 20, 2025. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
This year has been one of increasing pressure for the LGBTQ community, particularly for trans brothers and sisters, said church member Steve Dyke, who provided the welcome as the service began.
Trans rights, Dyke said, are being “ripped from the tapestry of the American dream,” pursuits that are being undermined by extremism and closed borders for those seeking asylum from transphobia and anti-trans violence in their countries of birth.
“This is our night to remember those whose last vision of this world was one of fear, hate and violence,” Dyke said. “Tonight we seek to create the thread that darns the brokenness left in our community this past year and that begins the new tapestry of our justice work and caring work for the coming year.”
alavalley@chicagotribune.com
