Uplifting Afro and Indo-Caribbean trans voices in the Caribbean diaspora.

After six years of advocacy, visibility campaigns, and support for New York’s Caribbean LGBTQ+ population, the Caribbean Equality Project (CEP) launched its Trans Justice Unit in 2021. The mission of the Trans Justice Unit (TJU) is to unite and empower diverse groups of trans-identified and non-binary people of Caribbean descent in solidarity. This is done as an act of preservation – of our respective cultures’ legacies of resistance against oppression in all its forms. The TJU mobilizes and supports Caribbean trans people through advocacy, trans-affirming healthcare, HIV care, housing and economic justice, workforce development, and immigration resources for asylum seekers.

The organization’s Trans Justice Unit is led by and for trans, queer, and gender non-conforming (GNC) Caribbean immigrants in NYC. Tiffany Jade Munroe is our Trans Justice Coordinator & Sai Ali served as our Trans Justice Organizer. The TJU is grounded in three pillars of action on behalf of the community, addressing three different but related aspects of trans disenfranchisement. The first pillar is legislative advocacy to continue challenging transphobia, anti-trans legislation, and systemic violence. The second pillar is oral history and storytelling by creating historical records of the stories and experiences of multiple generations of trans-identified people of Caribbean descent, in order to highlight and preserve their triumphs and struggles that have been forgotten or erased. The third pillar is creating a peer support system, beginning with a mentorship program whereby Caribbean people of trans experience can impart the hard-won wisdom and social connections developed to those most need it.

Caribbean Equality Project centers the power and visibility of its TJU leaders and members – through campaigns, art exhibitions, and social activations. The Trans Justice Unit amplifies the intersectionality and Caribbeaness of our TGNC leaders, celebrating the mundane joys, accomplishments, challenges, and camaraderie – which TGNC Caribbean people in NYC build to foster liberation.