“Trump won the election by saying it was time to take back America for people feeling pushed out by LGBTQ people, immigrants and people of color,” AVP’s executive director says.
President Trump’s first year saw a massive increase in anti-LGBT hate crime homicides, according to a just-released report by the Anti-Violence Project. The group, which tracks data nationally, says there was an 86 percent increase in hate-motivated homicides in 2017, jumping to 52 across the country. It is the “highest single incident number ever recorded” by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a program of the New York City-based AVP.
The increase “makes 2017 the deadliest year yet for the LGBTQ community,” HuffPost notes. “The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a coalition of 40 community-based anti-violence groups, noted the escalation toward the end of the presidential election cycle, and it shows no signs of slowing, according to Beverly Tillery, executive director of the project.”
The report states that last year “there were 27 hate-violence related homicides of transgender and gender non-conforming people, compared to 19 reports in 2016. 22 of these homicides were of transgender women of color,” as the image above shows. “The Pulse Nightclub massacre, which killed 49 people in 2016, is not included when calculating single-incident homicides,” HuffPost explains.
“Trump won the election by saying it was time to take back America for people feeling pushed out by LGBTQ people, immigrants and people of color,†Tillery told HuffPost.
“It was a tactical move to attack those communities,†she added. “It worked, and there are more instances of violence because the climate in the country has changed. It has given an opening for people to feel like they can commit acts of hate-based violence without much repercussion.â€
Seven out of ten (71%) “of the victims were people of color: 31 (60%) of the victims were Black, 4 (8%) were Latinx, 2 (4%) were Asian, and 1 (2%) was Native.”
Two-thirds (67%) were 35 or younger.
Guns were used in six out of ten (59%) of the homicides.
“Over half of the homicides occurred in just five states,” the report notes. “New York and Texas had the most anti-LGBTQ homicides, with 7 victims in Texas and 6 victims in New York. Georgia had 5 victims of anti-LGBTQ homicides, and Louisiana and Florida both had 4 victims of anti-LGBTQ homicides.”
The report also offers details of each of the homicides and responses and memories of their lives.
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