URBANA — International Transgender Day of Visibility always falls on March 31. This year, community members observed the day by holding a rally to protest anti-LGBTQ legislation and statements made by the Trump Administration.
About 100 people gathered outside the federal courthouse in Urbana and listened to various speakers tell personal stories, discuss LGBTQ history and call for resistance and community.
Tracey Dougan works at Edison Middle School in Champaign, where she teaches seventh-grade social studies and sponsors the school’s gay-straight alliance, Prism. She also organized and spoke at Monday’s rally.
“I can’t comprehend people that don’t like people just because of who they are,” Dougan said. “I don’t have the time, energy or patience for people that are just going to spend all their time othering and hating for no reason.”
She also shared that her decision to hold the rally outside the federal courthouse was intentional, citing how gender inclusivity has recently been targeted in the federal government, including mandates ordering federal employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures and mentions of transgender people being erased from the Stonewall National Monument website.
Several of Dougan’s students from Prism attended the rally, some donning pride flags and T-shirts showing the GSA’s logo.
Sophie Michaels, a transgender woman from Farmer City, Illinois, also spoke at the rally. In her speech, she said that President Donald Trump isn’t the only one capable of building walls.
“We’ll build walls of strength and solidarity and love and protection for those who are most vulnerable in our trans community,” she said. “We will also take away fear, because that’s what all this negativity and attacks are based on—this fear.”
Other speakers included Toby Beauchamp, an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, local musician ZENtheRapper and Champaign resident Marcey Goldstein. They highlighted the importance of community involvement and unity, and many spoke critically of local government officials’ weak support for the transgender community.
Transgender Day of Visibility, which was officially recognized in Illinois by Governor JB Pritzker earlier this month, has taken on many different meanings since it was first created by Rachel Crandell-Crocker in 2009.
For Willow McCartney, who attended the rally, it is “a day for us to basically scream out: This is who we are. This is who we are going to be.”
Tension surrounding the issue of transgender existence and rights has increased since transgender people have become a common target of President Trump and other politicians in their war against “woke” culture, a term he uses to label progressive values or policies.
Despite transgender people making up less than 1% of the U.S. population, over 500 bills varying in extremity that target transgender people have been introduced in 2025, according to the ACLU. Some bills would require teachers to tell parents if a transgender student uses another name or pronouns at school, while others would block access to gender-affirming health care or legal name and gender changes.
These bills most often focus on transgender youth, who are at a high risk of mental health challenges and suicidal thoughts and behavior due to the discrimination and harassment they face. According to a 2024 national survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention nonprofit for LGBTQ youth, 46% of transgender youth had seriously considered suicide.
Dougan said her students are scared too, but seeing community support at rallies like these and participating in clubs like Prism can help.
“It becomes a safe space for them to just be their unique selves,” she said.
Although they face continuous discrimination, legal threats and violence, many members of the trans community are committed to fighting for acceptance.
McCartney says they aren’t going anywhere.
“We have survived through a lot, throughout our time in history, and we won’t be eradicated,” she said. Doesn’t matter what anyone does, we will continue to exist, and that’s just a fact.”