Ahmad Goree and Stephanie Houston meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Muhlaysia Booker Foundation executive director, board president meet with federal officials in D.C.
From Staff Reports
Muhlaysia Booker Foundation Executive Director Stephanie Houston and Board President Ahmad Goree spent two days in Washington, D.C., recently, meeting with key officials in the nation’s capital and advocating for the foundation, the transgender community and their families and other marginalized communities.
Houston is the mother of Dallas trans woman Muhlaysia Booker, who made headlines in April 2019 when a video of her being beaten by a group of men in a South Dallas apartment complex parking lot as a crowd of people watched and cheered went viral. A month later, on May 18, 2019, Booker was murdered and her body dumped in the middle of an East Dallas street.
The trial for the man accused of murdering Booker, Kendrell Lavar Lyles, is set for Nov. 6.
Although the beating and the murder were later determined not to be connected, Muhlaysia Booker became a national example of the plight of trans women of color and the hate and violence they face.
Following her daughter’s death, Houston — with the help of Goree, the late Kirk Myers-Hill and other community leaders — established the Muhlaysia Booker Foundation to help other trans women escape that cycle of violence by providing them with housing, advocacy, emotional support, counseling, employment resources and training.
Ahmad Goree and Stephanie Houston with President Biden’s Senior Advisor Hannah Bristol, second from left, and an aide at the White House. (Photos courtesy of The Muhlaysia Booker Foundation)
On Monday, Sept. 25, Houston and Goree met with Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Clarke’s division recently secured a 23-year prison sentence for a man who used Grindr to lure at least nine gay men to a vacant apartment in Dallas where they were threatened and assaulted. Clarke offered to assist the foundation with its mission and connect Houston and Goree with other DOJ agencies.
Houston and Goree also went to The White House to meet with Senior Advisor to the President Hannah Bristol, Human Rights Campaign CEO Kelley Robinson, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine (the first openly-transgender person to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate and the highest ranking openly-transgender government official) and senior staff at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The following day, Tuesday, Sept. 26, Houston and Goree went to FBI Headquarters to meet with senior staff to discuss partnering with the agency on hate crime reporting and law enforcement sensitivity training. They also went to the Capitol to have a sit-down meeting with U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who pledged his full support to the foundation and to making sure the transgender community has better protections.
“It was an honor to meet with all these great people to share my baby’s story and know they all support the work we are during through the foundation,” Houston said.
Goree added, “These were not just meetings; we left each one with action items to work on together. We look forward to working with these national partners to make sure our community members have the protection to live safe and productive lives like anyone else.”
