'This community wants to be heard'

Ahmea Pacheco-Branch is not interested in making herself small.

As community engagement coordinator for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health division of HIV Health, Pacheco-Branch is an advocate for the transgender community. When she says that transgender people are "special," she doesn't mean they deserve special treatment. She means equality is their right.

"I put my pants on every day just like you," she said on a recent Zoom call with several activists who've participated in the Human Rights Campaign. Despite the proliferation of hateful discourse and hundreds of pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, many of them anti-trans, across the nation, people like Pacheco-Branch continue to fight at the local level for the same treatment as everyone else.

👋 Nicole Fallert here and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!). This week, we talk with Paste BN reporter David Oliver about his conversation with Pacheco-Branch and other activists ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20.

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How to describe the transgender community? Resilient.

In Philadelphia, Pacheco-Branch is fighting for better health care treatment than she received when she was diagnosed with HIV. She tested positive in June 2018 and couldn't access medication until that September.

"I had already accepted the status, but I had not accepted that people in a health care field could be so careless with a body," she said. But she isn't interested in anyone's pity party – she just wants to be a pillar of support for her community.

Speaking with Pacheco-Branch about her activism this month left Oliver speechless, he said. "I had to take a beat and let her words sit before asking my next question. Longer a beat than I've ever taken with a source before."

As Transgender Awareness Week closes today, the message of inclusion and awareness about this group shouldn't also end, Oliver said. Instead, it should mark a beginning for people who want to learn and stand for transgender lives.

"This community wants to be heard, and not just when there's violence or controversy," Oliver said. Newsrooms like Paste BN are vital now more than ever to accurately tell the story of the transgender community amid ongoing – often politically motivated – misinformation, he added.

"(Readers also) need to know trans joy to understand trans people – a small subset of the population with outsized political focus right now," he said.

If there's one word that could describe these individuals, Oliver says it's "resilience." While transgender adults make up less than 2% of the U.S. population, there is a disproportionate focus on their identity and a gap in public understanding. This raises the risk for violence, he said. Taking on the mantle of informing others about trans life can be exhausting and isolating for these people, so journalists like Oliver play an essential role in bringing accurate, informed storytelling to the discourse.

This element of collective work cements the investment in herself and trans peers for Pacheco-Branch: "I will die on the hill for people with HIV. I will die on the hill for my trans girls. Why? Because I know what has been in store and has been in place for me. I have always been the underdog. I have always been the girl that you will count out. I have always been the scapegoat. I have flipped that on people."

Read more stories about the trans community from the Paste BN Network

• Michigan prison officers protest a new strip-search policy for transgender inmates.
• A Texas school board says a transgender student can sing in a school musical.
• Only a handful of Pennsylvania school districts have policies protecting trans students.
• Here's why more LGBTQ+ candidates are entering key races.
• In school board elections across America, voters offered a stunning rebuke to culture war politics.

Thank you

I am reflecting on how I can be a better ally to transgender folks in my own community thanks to David's incredible reporting. I hope you read his work and notice the detail and insight in his thoughtful interviews. Thank you for supporting our journalism with your subscription. Our work wouldn't be possible without you. 

Best wishes, 

Nicole Fallert