Manifesto: Queer Power, Trans Power chronicles the resistance and fight for liberation of LGBTQIA+ people in the U.S. Over the past five years Ginzburg made these photographs during marches, rallies, and actions that center and uplift marginalized communities. Recently, an unprecedented surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation has swept across the nation, prompting the Human Rights Campaign to declare a state of emergency. The current Trump administration has intensified these attacks, issuing executive orders that restrict gender-affirming care for transgender youth, bar trans individuals from participating in sports and serving in the military, and narrowly define gender as immutable, effectively erasing recognition of trans and nonbinary identities.

Ginzburg's portraits document and create visibility for his queer and trans siblings who take to the streets to fight for their freedom and their right to live fully and unapologetically. These photographs capture a community that refuses to be silenced and erased, standing up to the challenges of our time by demanding recognition, dignity, and equality.

The future looks like you and me. Black. Trans. Beautiful. Unapologetic.

Our stories began long before we were created, rooted in the resistance of those who came before us. Our family is bound together by the knowledge and emotional truth that we are born and created as human. Therefore, we demand dignity, compassion, and liberation for our siblings, elders, and future generations. We are a community of gender-expansive warriors, leaders, and artists—the shepherds of liberation, who teach, love, and serve through fellowship.

For too long, the wickedness of homophobia, transphobia, and racism has sought to destroy us. It aims to barricade us from love, to isolate us, and to starve us of our humanity. But we resist! We combat these forces with joy, radical expression of our bodies, our voices, and our solidarity. We break the molds of binary marginalization and emerge as miraculous clusters of treasure, a wondrous cornucopia built on the dreams of those who came before us.

We're conditioned to shrink our minds, our voices, our hearts, and our rage in order to survive and to make advances within a blatantly racist and fascist system.

Today, we declare: no more! We refuse to wait for liberation to be granted. We claim it. We create it. We demand freedom, and we demand it now!

In the summer of 2020, the entire world watched as George Floyd’s life was stolen, pinned beneath the barbaric system and the corrupt knee of racist cops. The revolution for Black liberation had revived all over this country and reached every corner of the globe. It reverberated with an undeniable fury and unified roar. Black people's pain shattered the thermostat. There was no excusing or justifying this brutal lynching. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Nina Pop. Tony McDade, murdered in Tallahassee just two days after Floyd. We assembled in the streets to mourn the weekly deaths of precious Black and Brown lives that were violently taken that entire year. The community was able to grieve and exercise our right to disrupt all status quo systems that denied their complicity, perpetuating lies and cover-ups by law enforcement. Our trans siblings were targeted, beaten, dismembered, and shot. We were done dying!

The fight for Black Trans Liberation has transformed how we think, respond, and engage with the world. Together, we dismantle the oppressive systems that attempt to dehumanize us, delegitimize us, and deny us our voices. Our ancestors fought with audacity. They cared for our people and nurtured their dreams. We bear the fruit of their labor, and we now take the mantle. We honor and celebrate our fearless leaders, advocates, artists, doers, visionaries, sex workers, and revolutionaries such as Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Audre Lorde, Octavia Spencer, June Jordan, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Pauli Murray, and Cecilia Gentili. Both my mothers: Kim Watson and Ceyenne Doroshow. They all worked tirelessly to agitate, educate, and organize. We stand on their shoulders. We carry their fight forward.

Historically, trans siblings and gender-nonconforming deities have been subjected to violence and erasure. We bear witness to their suffering and honor their power. Their fight is our fight, and our fight is global. A free Palestine. A free Congo. A free Sudan. A free Haiti.

We reject the false borders that divide us. We are stronger together, across every land, every ocean, every river.

America is regressing, but we are not afraid. In this country, transphobia has become a cornerstone of political campaigns. Hatred has been refueled and weaponized to fracture the fidelity of democracy itself. Gun violence, government corruption, job discrimination, climate collapse, and relentless attacks on our siblings’ rights have pushed us to the brink. The leaders of these systems have validated transphobia, racism, and fascism, turning them into tools of power. These misleaders are unable to coexist with all of humanity unless they maintain dominion, actively suffocating the lifelines and resources essential for collective wellness.

The desire to control our bodies and our strength reveals the insecurities of those who cling to these archaic structures. We reject their status quo, genocidal systems, and colonial legacies—deeply embedded thorns at our sides and in our minds. As trans people, we know what it means to audition for empathy, to appeal to the respectability of a society that fails us, only to be met with silence. But we do not need permission to exist. We simply exist! Our worthiness is not measured. It is inherent. It is sacred! It must be honored and protected by any means necessary. Our families are rebuilding, reimagining, and reinventing ways to cope, heal, and prosper. We will emerge from an era of uncertainty with a ferocious direction for transformation. Freedom is destined for us all!

Today we rise. We rise to confront a nation crumbling under its own failures. We rise to demand a better world.

We demand an end to trans violence! We will no longer be discarded, brutalized, or silenced. We demand protections that are permanent, not convenient! Conditional freedoms are traps, and we reject them. We demand a future of abundance for all! Affordable housing, sustainable food, and opportunities that honor the full spectrum of our humanity. We demand the obliteration of fear! Fear is a poison that strangles our hope and drives the systems of oppression. We reject it.

Our community is a testament that joy supersedes all hatred and forms of bigotry. We assemble in the streets, celebrating the right to live unapologetically. We build sanctuaries where our siblings find solace, peace, and the truth of their existence. We value the voices of queer, Asian, Palestinian, disabled, Indigenous, sex workers, immigrants, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people who are uniting in building a better, inclusive, safe, expansive, regenerative, and loving world. Mother Cecilia Gentili once wrote: "It is better to live a short life of authenticity than a long life filled with lies and sorrow."

We are the future! The leaders. The artists. The warriors. The shepherds of liberation.