Reaction
The murder took place days before the annual LGBT pride parade. Transgender activist Sylvia Rivera worked towards seeing that Milan's death was investigated and organized Milan's political funeral along with other demonstrations claiming a disconnection of transgender rights from the larger LGBT communities. According to queer activist and author Matt Bernstein Sycamore "Milan came to symbolize the unfinished business of a LGBT movement that had all too often, 'left transgender people in the back of the bus.'" Because of Milan's murder Rivera reformed a transgender activist group, Street Trans Activist Revolutionaries (STAR). Rivera cited the crime amongst the reasons to add a broad definition of gender to New York City's human rights law.
Long-time trans activist Melissa Schlarz explained that since the mid 1970s, she had read about transwomen being murdered in Times Square - "what makes the Milan case significant is that until Amanda Milan no one responded." Schlarz said that usually the newspapers were "dropping hints of transpanic" ambiguously. Schlarz concluded that "Milan has become not a martyr, but a rallying cry. The activism around her death showed the world transgender people belong in the queer community - the message from activists is that there is no difference between Matthew Shephard and Amanda Milan. The response to her death tells the non-queer community: enough, today the violence stops."
According to Benjamin Heim Shepard in Amanda Milan and The Rebirth of Street Trans Activist Revolutionaries the case and the resulting media attention helped "galvanize the transgender community and instigated change".
Read more about this topic: Murder Of Amanda Milan
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusual and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)