More than 100 University of Michigan students and community members gathered in the Diag on Monday afternoon for a rally in support of transgender rights and liberation on the Trans Day of Visibility, celebrated annually on March 31. The rally, titled We’re Still Here: Trans Day of Liberation 2025!, aimed to empower trans people to speak up and fight back against injustice.
During the rally, LSA junior Pragya Choudhary, one of the event organizers, explained the significance of the event’s name and reaffirmed the transgender community’s resilience in the face of efforts to erase their existence.
“There is a reason I wanted to call this rally ‘We’re Still Here,” Choudhary said. “This is Trans Day of Visibility, but we are visible. We’re so visible that they keep trying to demonize us at every given turn…We will not stay silent. We are still here, and despite their every effort to silence us, to kill us, we will not die. We will not be silenced. We are here. We will stay here.”
The event featured speakers from across the University, including faculty, students, a representative from the Graduate Employees’ Organization and the president of University Staff United, along with a performance from the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club.
The Men’s Glee Club sang a somber rendition of “Courage to Be Who We Are” by Ruth Huber. The song was written in honor of Gwen Amber Rose Araujo, a transgender woman who was killed in 2002.
Social Work student Leo Parikshak, the first transgender man to join the Men’s Glee Club in 2020, explained the power of song as resistance to the audience.
“When we sing this song, we sing to honor the trans siblings we have lost and to share the message that transgender people have always been here and we are not going anywhere,” Parikshak said.
Choudhary said the idea for the event came after speaking at the Diversity Equity and Inclusion rally last December. After, he reached out to Craig Smith, a senior associate librarian at the University Library, and asked for his help in planning a rally for the Trans Day of Visibility.
Smith agreed and together they started to tackle the logistics of coordinating a rally as anti-protest sentiments spread at universities throughout the nation. The sentiments, however, only encouraged Choudhary to speak out more.
“When you see injustice, you have to speak up because you don’t know if someone else will,” Choudhary said. “You cannot wait to see if someone else will. You have to do it, and people will join.”
Once word began to spread of the rally, many organizations across campus including United Asian American Organizations, the Faculty Senate and Young Democratic Socialists of America reached out with support.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Smith noted the event aims to support more important issues in addition to transgender rights, especially in light of the termination of DEI programs on campus.
“I feel like not only is this a discrete event where we can come out and talk about this issue in particular, but it connects to other things that are happening all around campus, including another Diag rally this week around DEI issues more broadly,” Smith said. “It’s about coalition building.”
In his closing remarks, Choudhary, cloaked in a blue and pink transgender flag, addressed the audience about the current state of trans rights.
“It’s kind of a dark time right now, guys, but seeing all of you here, it gives me so much hope,” Choudhary said.
Daily News Contributor Madeleine Schouman can be reached at maschou@umich.edu.
The post UMich students and community members rally on Diag for Trans Day of Visibility appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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