Every year, March 31 marks Transgender Day of Visibility, a day which seeks to commemorate the contributions and struggles of transgender people. In our current political struggle, however, we must address the truth that visibility itself has long been fraught for trans and nonbinary people. As we have received more recognition, the threat to trans people has only increased; our visibility has made us more vulnerable.

We stand as witnesses to a coordinated effort seeking to erase trans people from public life, to relegate us to a status outside the protection of the law, and to communicate to the public that we are unworthy of human treatment. This oppression is disproportionately borne by Black trans women and other trans women of color, trans people of color more broadly, trans immigrants, and trans youth. In working to address this rising threat, I have meditated often on the fact that these tactics are part of a repertoire that has also been used against Jews to cast us as outsiders or inhuman. This intersection of trans and Jewish knowledge calls us to pay attention to the ways in which the State seeks to foreclose the broad set of possibilities in life that should be available to us as human beings, whether we are speaking about the basic right to use the bathroom or we are seeking to address the myriad of ways, tangible and intangible, that human beings are systemically prevented from being equal members of society.

I have long felt that our BWC community has a unique role to play in this political moment. We have weathered the storms of two Red Scares and the Lavender Scare, and now face a new McCarthyist authoritarian movement to co-opt the cause of Jewish safety in order to silence voices of dissent. When the administration abducts community members off the street by using their immigration status as a pretense to silence dissent, this should raise alarm bells for us as trans and nonbinary people, as Jews, and as people working to create a more liberated world. The vision of our founders of an interconnected movement for liberation has never been so needed, in a time when the messaging we are receiving is telling us that as Jews, we should retreat from social justice causes and militarize our own communities in the name of keeping our people “safe.”

The attacks on transgender and nonbinary people are just one piece of a larger offer being made to American Jews: stand by and do nothing while others’ rights are taken away, or resist and have the State turn on us next. Our history shows us the choice our ancestors made, over and over: to stand by other marginalized communities and fight back for Jews and non-Jews. As politicians and other leaders point the finger at trans people, immigrants, and pro-Palestine activists, it is now our turn to hold our ground and insist that our founders’ 125+-year-old vision is not only still relevant, but provides a true path forward where all oppressed peoples achieve liberation. Where visibility of marginalized people alone can mean assault, arrest, forced disappearance, and even death, we must all stand visibly for one another against our authoritarian opposition, for the sake of ourselves, our descendants, and for the liberated world we are duty-bound to achieve.