"Pose" Star Indya Moore Demands Justice for Killed Trans Women: "We Are All Worthy of Safety"

Transgender actor and model Indya Moore addressed a crowd of protesters gathered in New York City’s Foley Square Monday to demand justice for Layleen Polanco, a transgender Afro-Latinx woman who was found dead in a cell at Rikers Island on Friday. Polanco was arrested on misdemeanor charges and jailed on Rikers in April when she was unable to post $500 bail. Nearly two months later, she was dead. “We are worthy of legal aid, liberty, justice, resources. And we are worthy of life. We are worthy of love,” Moore told the crowd. “If the sight of us using our bodies, our voices and our defiance to protest this oppressive administration and the people who endorse it, and the religions that are fighting for the right to dispose us as a spiritual practice, and police, prison and the political system that is giving the world permission to dispose of us, disturbs and frightens you more than our mysteriously dead bodies in the custody of Rikers Island … we will not back down and rest in peace no more.” Indya Moore was recently named one of the world’s 100 most influential people of 2019 by Time magazine. We’re also joined in studio by Raquel Willis, a transgender activist and writer, executive editor of Out magazine.