Good afternoon! My name is Miss Billy Cooper.
I'm a 62 year-old African-American transgender woman.
I have lived in San Francisco's Tenderloin District 6 area for over three decades.
And I am a community activist and community advocate.
And I am a person who has been clean and sober for over 20 years.
We are celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility
to help us stay visible in San Francisco and beyond.
I encourage everyone to think about taking the vaccine.
I, myself, am a United States veteran.
And I have taken my first shot two weeks ago, no side effects,
and I'm waiting to take my second shot on April the 8th.
I am a person living with HIV. I am a long-term survivor.
I was diagnosed May the15th, 1985.
I am the first Black, transgender woman to have been given the honor
of starting a group six years ago at the
San Francisco AIDS Foundation called TransLife.
We are a community group for trans men and women, gender non-conforming,
gender non-binary and gender fluid people.
And I'm so happy that the San Francisco AIDS Foundation has
given me the platform to be a leader in my community.
I feel it's very important for each and every person to take a vaccine to help
transgender people feel more secure in and around other people.
Because they talk about herd immunity, so trans people should also feel
as though we have herd immunity when it comes to taking the vaccine.
So I implore each and every transgender, gender non-conforming,
gender non-binary person to take the vaccine.