August is Transgender History Month—a reminder that history isn’t just in books, plaques, or archives. It is alive, unfolding around us, shaped by what we do today. Trans history is being written now—in our homes, our neighborhoods, our streets.
I think about this not just as someone committed to justice, but as someone who loves a trans child. As puberty approaches, so does uncertainty: Will he be able to access the care he needs? Will policies shift in ways that strip away what today feels secure? Even here in California—where protections exist, where services like Lyon-Martin Community Health Services have stood for decades as lifelines—the ground shifts. Policies are rolled back. Care is denied. Erasure creeps in, line by line, on websites and in hospital policies. The promise of safety is never absolute.
I share this not for sympathy but for clarity. Every parent, guardian, or chosen family of a trans child lives with this tension—the ache of wanting to protect them completely, and the knowledge that hostile systems threaten to make that impossible. It sharpens my understanding of what is at stake when we say: trans rights are human rights.
This is what it means to live in a country where anti-trans authoritarianism grows by the day. And it is why our grant partners rise with such fierce brilliance, and why their work is essential:
- The TransLatin@ Coalition, preparing their Walk4Humanity this August in Los Angeles—a march and block party raising funds for housing, legal support, and mental health services.
- The Transgender District, where SPI alum Jupiter Peraza helped establish the very first Transgender History Month, a vision that spread from San Francisco to the entire state of California.
- Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center, building community power and honoring Miss Major’s lifelong legacy of resistance.
- Transgender Health & Wellness Center, providing affirming healthcare and wellness programs across Southern California.
- Transgender Law Center’s Border Butterflies Project, supporting trans asylum seekers and migrants at the U.S.–Mexico border.
- Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, offering affirming healthcare for trans, lesbian, bisexual, and queer communities since 1979, still carrying forward the radical insistence that our bodies are worthy of care.
- El/La Para TransLatinas, works towards a world where TransLatinas are protected, celebrated, and loved, where trans/intersex/gender diverse Latinx people are welcome, safe, represented and valued in all spheres of life.
Jupiter’s words stay with me: “I am trans. I am powerful. I am brilliant. And you will never destroy me.” She is speaking to all of us—parents and caregivers, organizers and allies, funders and feminists. She is reminding us that trans futures are not optional. They are here. They demand our defense, our investment, our love.
To be an ally in this moment means moving beyond neutrality. Yes, it means funding trans-led organizations with flexibility and urgency. But it also means the small, daily acts: checking in on your trans loved ones; showing up at marches, vigils, and celebrations; offering rides to medical appointments; sharing bail funds and rent money; countering lies and disinformation in your own circles. It means carrying the knowledge that trans survival has always depended on community care and mutual aid as much as it has on institutional change.
This month, let us celebrate the brilliance of our leaders and the vibrancy of our communities. Let us strut, organize, and imagine futures where trans children grow with safety and joy, where healthcare is abundant, and where every trans life is cherished.
Trans history is alive. So is our duty to protect it—and to keep writing it together.