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Two transgender women were assaulted at a Minneapolis light rail station — and onlookers cheered on the perpetrators instead of helping the victims, advocates say.
After hearing the group make derogatory comments toward them at the station at Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis, the couple “confronted” the group, which led to a “physical altercation,” Minneapolis Police said. The Independent in the statement.
Community organizers held a rally at the site on Sunday in solidarity with the two transgender women, Dahlia and Jess.
Dahlia and Jess were leaving the station when someone started yelling transphobic slurs at them, said Amber Muhm, a rally organizer who spoke to them after the incident. The Independent. Jess begs them not to talk to them that way, prompting the men to “suck the punches” at her. Dahlia then hit the man with a cane, Muhm said.
Although this man was “knocked out,” four or five other men ran up and began to “mercilessly beat” the two transgender women, Muhm said.
“People were cheering for the attackers,” Muhm said. They were both knocked unconscious and Dahlia was left with a broken nose while Jess suffered “multiple contusions” to her ribs.
“Nobody was going to help him,” Muhm added, noting that blood from non-life-threatening injuries was still visible on the concrete during Sunday’s rally.
“It was a traumatic event and both are still dealing with very acute physical consequences, but it’s the community that keeps them grounded today,” he said.
The investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made, police said.
The couple moved from Iowa to Minnesota under the 2023 “Trans Refuge” law, which prevents out-of-state laws from interfering with gender-affirming health care practices.
“A lot of people are moving to Minnesota and have moved since we passed the trans protection bill, but I’m going to see a real spike after the election results,” DFL Rep. Leigh Finke, who sponsored the bill, told CBS News at a rally Sunday.
When asked if he predicted transphobic attacks would “absolutely” become more common under Donald Trump’s second administration, Muhm said:
“People are now being brave. There is a lot of false data, a lot of false narratives about trans people,” he said, adding that at the rally, people screamed that “they are doing surgery on 10-year-old children,” which “is not close to true medicine.”
Trump’s campaign vowed to use the federal government to “stop” gender-affirming health care for minors and label the treatment “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” They also baselessly claim that children go to school and undergo “brutal” gender-affirming surgeries.
After he was re-elected, The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention among queer youth, reported a “nearly 200 percent increase in topics of conversation related to the election in the 24/7 crisis service,” said Jaymes Black. , CEO of The Trevor Project, in a press release.
“While it is alarming, we are not surprised that the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ politics in the past few years continues to damage the mental health of young people,” added Black.
“People are talking to me about deleting their social media presence, going back into the closet,” said one speaker at the rally, according to the outlet.
Minneapolis’ trans community prepared for potential attacks by taking self-defense classes while others attended classes on how to get a permit to carry a handgun in public, Muhm said.
The day after Trump’s re-election, “we were flooded with questions. We still get a lot of requests,” Kimmy Hull, founder of Sequeerity, a company that specializes in de-escalation work, including offering classes that give permission to do it. The Independent in email. “Our courses are geared towards marginalized communities and we talk about whether firearms are really the right tool for them, the mental health side of ownership, and the need for a support system and self-care.”
There is also an “urgency” for self-defense classes now, Muhm said: “People are going to be more hostile and brave in transphobia, so what do we do to protect ourselves when we come out?”
