Each November, we honor both Intersex Day of Remembrance (November 8) and Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 20), which call us to remember those whose lives have been lost to gendered violence, medical abuse, and state neglect.

For intersex people, remembrance means exposing the often-invisible harms of medical gatekeeping, forced surgeries, and erasure. Intersex Day of Remembrance began as a memorial for activist Herculine Barbin, whose 19th-century diaries became a rare surviving testimony of intersex experience. Today, it reminds us that intersex people continue to face pathologization, sterilization, and institutional violence under systems that enforce binary sex and gender norms.

Transgender Day of Remembrance recognizes the disproportionate violence faced by Black and Brown trans women, migrants, and sex workers. Each year, hundreds of trans and gender-diverse people are murdered worldwide, and many more experience daily harassment, police violence, housing insecurity, and denial of healthcare. These deaths are not isolated or accidental, they are the direct result of systemic oppression, racism, misogyny, and transphobia.

This day also affirms the resilience and brilliance of trans communities, who continue to organize, create, and build networks of care despite the violence surrounding them. Gender justice cannot exist without trans and intersex liberation, and honoring their lives means working toward a world where all people can exist safely, authentically, and with autonomy over their own bodies.

Take Action
Support intersex and trans-led organizations:

• Intersex Justice Project

• InterAct Advocates

• TransInclusive Project

• Decrim305

• Justice Advocacy Network

• Queer Trans Project

Learn more through these videos:

• The Intersex Justice Project: Ending Intersex Surgery – Teen Vogue

• Trans People Explain What Trans Day of Remembrance Means to Them – Them

November marks Native American Heritage Month, a time that, too often, is diluted into celebration without confrontation. For Indigenous communities, this month is not just about heritage; it’s about survival, sovereignty, and the ongoing struggle to dismantle the colonial systems that continue to harm Native peoples and the lands they belong to.

On what the United States calls “Thanksgiving,” Indigenous organizers have gathered for more than fifty years at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for the National Day of Mourning. It is not a rejection of gratitude, but a rejection of historical lies. This day mourns the genocide, land theft, and erasure that shaped settler colonialism and continues to shape U.S. policy today. It also honors the resilience and resistance of Indigenous peoples who have never stopped asserting their sovereignty, protecting sacred land, and envisioning liberated futures.

Native feminists and Two-Spirit organizers remind us that solidarity during Native American Heritage Month requires more than land acknowledgments or symbolic inclusion. It demands the active dismantling of oppressive settler structures, those that police land, bodies, and the natural world, and the return of land to Indigenous stewardship. Decolonization is not a metaphor; it’s a material process of land back, cultural revival, and collective healing that redefines our relationships with each other and with the earth.

The same capitalist and imperialist systems that dispossess Indigenous people also fuel ecological collapse, mass incarceration, and gendered violence. Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have long been at the frontlines of resistance, from protecting water at Standing Rock to organizing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, to defending sacred land from extractive industries. Their leadership teaches that liberation is ecological, spiritual, and communal all at once.

For those who are settlers, solidarity means following Indigenous leadership, redistributing wealth and resources, and refusing to participate in colonial myth-making. It means learning whose land you occupy, divesting from corporations that exploit Indigenous land, and supporting Native-led movements that are building a world beyond extraction and domination.

This November, we honor Indigenous heritage and resistance. Let this month move us toward truth-telling, reparations, and return. Dismantle the structures that uphold colonization. Return the land. Honor the sovereignty and brilliance of Indigenous communities not with words, but with action.

Support and Donate:

• The Seminole Tribe of Florida – One of the few Native nations that never signed a peace treaty with the U.S. Support cultural preservation, sovereignty, and education initiatives. seminoletribe.com

• Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida – Protectors of the Everglades and advocates for water rights and environmental stewardship. Learn about their ongoing resistance to pollution and land exploitation. miccosukee.com

• Moccasin Lake Environmental Education Center (Clearwater, FL) – Works with Indigenous educators to teach local histories and promote ecological protection through community-based programming. moccasinlake.org

• Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum (Big Cypress Reservation) – A Seminole-run museum preserving stories, artifacts, and histories of Native people in Florida. Consider visiting or donating. ahtahthiki.com

• Love the Everglades Movement – A grassroots Indigenous-led environmental organization focused on protecting the sacred Everglades ecosystem from corporate and governmental exploitation. lovetheeverglades.org

• Indigenous Women Rising – A Native-led reproductive justice collective providing abortion, midwifery, and health fund support rooted in bodily sovereignty. iwrising.org

• Native Youth Sexual Health Network – Works across Turtle Island to build youth-led movements for reproductive justice, Two-Spirit visibility, and sexual health through a decolonial lens. nativeyouthsexualhealth.com

• The Red Nation – A coalition of Native and non-Native organizers committed to Indigenous liberation and anti-capitalist struggle, connecting climate justice, feminism, and decolonization. therednation.org

Learn and Reflect:

The Miccosukee Tribe: The Everglades Are Part of Who We Are – A powerful short film centering Miccosukee voices on the ongoing struggle to protect the Everglades and the sacred duty of land defense.

“Inside Miccosukee Culture & History | Your South Florida” — Another episode tailored to Miccosukee voices, bringing forward tribal leadership reflections on tradition, land stewardship, and future generations. YouTube

“Protecting the Everglades with the Miccosukee Tribe | Your South Florida” — Focuses more explicitly on ecological sovereignty: how the Miccosukee are managing, defending, and stewarding land in the face of extraction and climate change. YouTube

“Whose Land Are You On? What to Know About the Land Back Movement” — While not specific to Florida, this video gives a clear overview of the “Land Back” movement, a concept that is highly relevant to Indigenous sovereignty and the return of land to Indigenous peoples. YouTube

“The Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Conservation Efforts” — A look at the Seminole Tribe of Florida and their efforts in land and water protection, showing how Indigenous sovereignty also plays out in conservation and rights over natural resources.

Native-Land.ca – Identify the ancestral territories beneath your feet in Florida (such as Calusa, Timucua, Apalachee, and Tocobaga lands).

Written by Debbie Deland, vp@flnow.org

Nine out of 10 women murdered by men in 2023 were killed by someone they knew, and nearly two thirds of these victims died by gunfire.

These disturbing facts come from the annual report When Men Murder Women, Each year, the study presents the reality of lethal violence against women and the role guns play in turning domestic violence into domestic homicide.

For 28 years, the study has aided in the implementation of policies and laws to protect women and children, spurred statewide public awareness campaigns, and supported the policy agendas of state domestic violence prevention organizations.

Among the current study’s findings:

• Nationwide, 2,412 females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents in 2023.

• Of the female victims who knew their male offenders, 57 percent were wives or other intimate acquaintances of their killers. Nearly nine times as many females were murdered by a male they knew than were killed by male strangers.
• Black women are disproportionately impacted by lethal violence committed by males. In 2023, Black females were murdered by males at a rate two and a half times the rate for white females murdered by males.

• Firearms were the weapons most used by males to murder females in 2023. Nationwide, for homicides in which the weapon used could be identified, 65 percent of female victims were shot and killed with a gun. Of these, 64 percent were killed with a handgun.

Domestic Violence against particularly women is an epidemic here and around the world. The United States comes up woefully short on its actions to reduce domestic violence from police training, to shelters, to community services support, etc. There are twice as many pet shelters as there are women’s shelters. Domestic violence continues to rise especially with the increased focus on toxic masculinity.