The quiet passing of a trans activist is seldom marked among the headlines. Where their work is most necessary, they are too much resented; and where their work is not resented, they are too often overlooked. But to the activists we owe our lives.
Without activists, we’d have none of the rights, legal protections, or social acceptance we now enjoy. When we say to each other “it gets better” we’re trusting that activists — donors, volunteers, organizers, marchers, and others — will make it better. Recognize it or not, we take from them bits of their lives (a free hour here and a day off there) to organize and agitate and fight on our behalf. So, as their mortal course finds its natural end, whether or not the fullness of their work is done, we must remember them. We must honor who they were and what they gave us.
On May 24, an activist, Sharon Brackett, died in Baltimore. She was 59, and because of her activism both Maryland and the wider world are a better place for LGBTQ people.
In 2011, a year after she launched TransParent Day, she co-founded Gender Rights Maryland. For years she worked to have gender identity included among the human rights ordinances of Howard County, Baltimore County, and ultimately all Maryland’s counties with passage of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014. For her efforts, Baltimore’s GLCCB (now the Pride Center of Maryland) honored her as its Activist of the Year during that year’s celebration of Baltimore Pride. But she didn’t stop there. From 2016 to 2018, Sharon was a member of the board of directors of OutServe-SLDN, a national organization supporting the military’s LGBTQ community. During her tenure she was involved in defending transgender service members from the attacks of the Trump administration as it sought to deprive them of their opportunities to openly serve the country.
She stood for election to the Baltimore City Democratic Central Committee in 2018, and her win at the ballot box against a crowded field of candidates became the first by an openly trans person in the history of the State of Maryland. She subsequently chaired the LGBTQ+ Diversity Leadership Council of the Maryland Democratic Party, another first for a trans Marylander.
Amid all that, she spent eight years on the national board of the Point Foundation, an organization that awards college scholarships to openly LGBTQ students. Everyday, as well, she was the proud parent of two children, a committed partner, an entrepreneur, and an engineer.
Sharon could have opted to do nothing. She could have spent her life waiting for things to “get better” for trans people and for the wider LGBTQ community. She chose, instead, to make them better. She reminded us that doing nothing was to concede defeat. She told us to lift our chins when things looked most bleak. And she gave all the pieces of herself to do what was necessary. Even when the world with its bigotry was singularly cruel to her, she refused to see it for anything less than its potential to be a place more rational, more equitable, and more accepting.
Sharon Brackett was a friend, a mentor, and a hero to the many people who knew her. We will grieve her loss deeply. And though she is gone, she has etched her mark in the laws and history of Maryland, in the national discourse about the lives of trans people, and in the future of all LGBTQ folk — some of whom will continue her tradition of activism.
Through her legacy we will remember her, and by her legacy she will be forever with us.
Brian Gaither (@briangaither) is a gay activist and writer living in Maryland.
The post Opinion | Sharon Brackett, an activist remembered appeared first on Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News.
