Leslie Feinberg

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist. Zie was a revolutionary transgender activist, and she goes by zie/hir and she/her pronouns.

"Feinberg was the opening speaker at the historic rally on the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall rally in New York City-a rally that drew one million people from across the country and around the world. A video about Leslie Feinberg entitled Outlaw has been distributed by Women Make Movies nationally and internationally. Feinberg's novel, Stone Butch Blues, published on March 1, 1993 by Firebrand Books, has received a wildly popular response in the United States and has been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Slovenian and Hebrew. The novel won the prestigious American Library Association Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and a LAMBDA Literary Award (Leslie Feinberg)."

"[Feinberg is] a historian, an activist, a relentless bridge-builder. The one whose 1993 novel, Stone Butch Blues, gave the word transgender legs." —Village Voice

Zie also wrote multiple books, starting with Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul. It was the first "analysis of the historical roots of transgender oppression (Leslie Feinberg)." The book won the 1996 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Non-Fiction, and in 1996, the paperback edition was released under "Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman". This book also contained speeches and/or memoirs by other transgender activists.

"Drag King Dreams, Feinberg's second published novel, was released by Carroll & Graf (Avalon) in March 2006 (Leslie Feinberg)." Feinberg, being the national leader of the Workers World Party - also a managting editor of Workers World newpaper - she is well-known for a person who helps with forming a strong connection between the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or other LGBT+ communities, and also works to build strong bonds of unity between minorities; acknowledging the struggles they (these minorities - of race, sexuality, ability, class, nationalities, etc) face, yet also at the same time in defense of them. "Feinberg has worked for more than three decades in defense of the sovereignty, self-determination and treaty rights of Native nations and for freedom of political prisoners in the U.S. Zie is an internationalist and has been part of the anti-Pentagon movement since the U.S. war against Vietnam (Leslie Feinberg)."

Zie unfortunately "succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness, in November 15, 2014. She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with hir partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, at hir side (Krista Kennedy)"

Hir last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

Sources: Krista Kennedy, http://www.lesliefeinberg.net/ Leslie Feinberg, http://www.transgenderwarrior.org/about.html