The woman behind Capitol bathroom protest says trans people can’t trust Democrats to protect them
For transgender Americans looking for help or protection from the Biden administration in its dying days, Raquel Willis has a stark assessment.
“Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, are telling us that we’re essentially on our own,” the 33-year-old activist tells The Independent.
That is nothing new for the woman behind last week’s headline-grabbing Congressional bathroom sit-in, protesting Republicans’ attempt to ban trans people from using the correct bathrooms for their gender on any federal property.
Alongside former US Army whistleblower and trans rights advocate Chelsea Manning, Willis was among 15 people arrested by Capitol police for occupying the women’s bathroom and the hallway outside House speaker Mike Johnson’s office.
But that protest wasn’t only aimed at Republicans. It was also meant to push Democrats to abandon what Willis describes as “a pattern of ignoring and sidelining the trans community” in the face of escalating conservative attacks.
Just hours after Willis’s interview with The Independent, House and Senate negotiators revealed a bipartisan compromise spending bill that would ban military health insurance from covering transition care for children. On Wednesday, 50 House Democrats who previously denounced that provision voted in favor, and key Senate Democrats said they would reluctantly back it too.
Now, with Republicans taking control of all three branches of government and both houses of Congress in January, Willis is gearing up for a fight – and she does not believe trans people can afford to take their cues from Democrats.
“We have to be prepared to take care of ourselves, and speak for ourselves, and fight for ourselves, because there are not enough political leaders who are sticking up for us,” she says.
“Folks need to find political homes that actually speak to their values… I don’t think that the Democratic Party is serving that right now for most marginalized folks.”
For many Americans, their introduction to Willis came one sunny day in Brooklyn in June 2020, three weeks after the murder of George Floyd sparked racial justice protests across the US.
“I believe in Black trans power,” Willis said into her microphone. Nearly 15,000 people chanted it back at her – an electric moment, given that the city’s usual LGBT+ Pride parade had been cancelled due to Covid-19.
It was, she said afterwards, “the complete opposite” of what happened when she spoke at the first Women’s March in Washington DC three years earlier. As she called on feminists not to treat trans women as an “afterthought”, her mic was allegedly cut off.
Originally from Augusta, Georgia, Willis got her start in Black social justice activism and anti-violence advocacy, later working at the Transgender Law Center and serving as executive editor of Out magazine.
In spring 2023 she co-founded a new protest collective called the Gender Liberation Movement, which organised last week’s action. (Manning, Willis says, has been involved since earlier this year.)
