Less than a day after vowing to go ahead with a rally in Washington D.C. advocating for transgender rights, a group of organizations that had been planning the event has canceled the “Trans Day of Vengeance” over a “credible threat to life and safety.”
The Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN), a collection of transgender activist groups, had previously noted that it had received threats, which it was reporting to the police. The collective suggested it had become the target of blame for the school shooting on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee.
TRAN had previously said that the Trans Day of Vengeance march would go ahead despite the shooting—which police have said was perpetrated by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who was transgender—in which three nine-year-olds and three members of staff at the Covenant School were killed.
It had rejected “any connection” between their event and the mass shooting, arguing that the event was “about unity, not inciting violence.”
In a statement on Wednesday, TRAN and other organizers said they “are horrified by the acts of violence committed, and said the “vengeance” in the name of their rally “means fighting back with vehemence. We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”
A selection of screenshots of messages provided to Newsweek, that had been sent to TRAN since the school shooting, show that the group had been called a “terrorist” outfit, or said that transgender and gay people “should be slaughtered” and that those organizing the group should “off yourself.”
