This summer, the deaths of Mark Carson and Islan Nettles have shocked our communities and left us all grieving.

Since May we have seen 19 high profile incidents of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities in New York City, including these two homicides.

And the questions we at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) are asked again and again are why this violence is happening, what does it mean, and how can we keep safe?

We are all looking for answers. The media has been reporting on a ‘sudden increase of anti-LGBT violence’. The NYPD has released numbers which suggest anti-LGBT hate violence has doubled, from 54 in all of 2012 to 68 to date in 2013.

However, AVP gets almost 500 reports of this violence each year in New York City. That’s an average of 1.3 reports of violence each day. We see 25 to 30 anti-LGBT homicides a year nationally. What we are seeing at AVP is an overall greater visibility for the violence that LGBT people in New York City, and across the country, experience every day. We are also seeing increasing reporting of violence, in no small part due to this increased visibility.

What has been different this summer is the increase in anti-LGBT homicides of our community members. Mark Carson was killed on 17 May in Greenwich Village by a man shouting anti-gay epithets, and Islan Nettles was beaten exactly three months later on 17 August by a man shouting transphobic remarks. Ms Nettles would die less than a week later from her injuries sustained in that attack.

Alongside our anger, outrage and disbelief at this tragic loss of life, there is the fact we rarely see multiple anti-LGBT homicides in New York City in one year.

What is significant about these homicides is that Mark, a gay man of color, and Islan, a transgender woman of color, represent the numbers we at AVP know too well: 73.1% of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims in 2012 were people of color and 53.8% were transgender people. Individual acts of violence against LGBT people are frequent, but homicides impact people of color and transgender people most often: transgender people of color experience violence at two or three times the rates that most people do.

Individual incidents of violence aren’t the whole story, however. To really talk about violence we have to talk about the systemic violence people face. In 2012, transgender people were 3.32 times as likely to experience police violence, transgender people of color were 2.46 times as likely to experience physical violence by the police. Transgender women, in particular, were 2.90 times as likely to experience police violence, and they were also 2.71 times as likely to experience physical violence by the police. In addition to the high profile cases we saw these past few months, we also received multiple reports of police violence over this summer.

Why are reports of violence, individual and institutional, increasing? It’s impossible to pinpoint a single reason, but we can start with the ways which LGBT people are treated in the US. In 2013, it is still lawful to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, including in New York. This legal discrimination sends a message it’s acceptable to treat LGBTQ people as ‘other’, creating a culture of hate that allows for anti-LGBT sentiment, laws and policies.

The discriminatory basis for these laws is evident in the vitriolic hate speech we hear from politicians, public officials, and even the press. Most recently, a recording was leaked where San Antonio’s District 9 Councilwoman Elisa Chan called homosexuality ‘disgusting to even think about’.

We have heard public officials accuse our LGBT community members of being degenerates and pedophiles. Transgender people are mocked in the media, pronouns are misused, and hateful jokes are made at their expense.

The real question is what can we do about this violence? On a national level, we can work to change institutional discrimination and violence, to overturn laws that exclude LGBT people from the rights we deserve. We can say loudly and clearly that we will no longer accept hate language and public ridicule of our LGBT community members.

Here in New York City, we can employ community and neighborhood specific strategies to address violence. And these strategies must take into account that anti-LGBTQ violence is about racism, classism and anti-immigrant sentiment as well as homophobia and transphobia. The diversity of voices raised and the complexity of our identities is our greatest strength.

LGBT people will not achieve full equality until we change both the laws and attitudes that lead to violence for all members of our communities. We need to do a better job in this city about talking about anti-LGBT violence – and increased media and law enforcement attention can help raise awareness of those who don’t regularly experience it.

Now we need to expand that conversation to include institutional violence, hate violence, hate speech, intolerance and fear so that we can shift attitudes and culture to keep all people in NYC safe from bias-related violence.

We owe this to Mark Carson, to Islan Nettles, and to each and every member of our LGBT communities.

Sharon Stapel is the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP). AVP empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and support survivors through counseling and advocacy.