When Islan Nettles, a 21-year-old black transgender woman, was brutally beaten near a New York City police station in Harlem and later died from her injuries on Aug. 22, 2013, transgender activists, LGBT and anti-violence advocates, public officials, and allies took to the streets to demand justice and an end to the staggering amount of violence perpetrated against transgender people.

But a year after Nettles' death, many in the transgender community say that justice has not been served, and that despite their calls for action and recent strides in the visibility of transgender Americans, nothing has changed to reduce violence against their transgender brothers and sisters both in New York and nationally. They still feel endangered.

"Trans people still face the problems with violence, housing, employment, healthcare, and discrimination," said Tanya Asapansa Walker, a transgender woman and U.S. Army veteran who lives in New York City, in an interview with BuzzFeed. "Nothing has changed. We are marginalized in society and we feel — I feel — unsafe."

Walker and dozens of transgender women and men, advocates, and allies gathered at Harlem's Jackie Robinson Park on Monday evening to remember Nettles and several other transgender women who have been killed across the country in recent months, as well as to demand an end to the violence after recent incidents in New York and Washington, D.C. They chanted the names of the sisters they have lost, like Nettles, Mia Henderson, Kandy Hall, Tiffany Edwards, Zoraida Reyes, and Yaz'min Shancez and declared "not one more, not one more, not one more."

"These trans women are being murdered in the streets and it is no coincidence," said Lourdes Ashely Hunter, co-founder of the Trans Women of Color Collective, at the rally. "It is linked to how our community continues to make advances for lesbian and gay people, but they continue to leave trans people in the dust, under the bus, out in the cold."

To this day, nobody is behind bars for killing Nettles, and many other transgender homicide cases remain unsolved throughout the country.

Nettles was attacked early on Aug. 17, 2013 after she and some friends encountered a group of several men on a street not too far from her Harlem home. Nettles was severely beaten when the men became violent and she was taken to a local hospital, where she fell into a coma. Days later, on Aug. 22, doctors declared her brain-dead at Harlem Medical Center and took her off life support. Shortly after the attack and before her death, a man was charged for assault, but those charges were later dropped. Last November, police and the Manhattan District Attorney's office said they were "aggressively investigating" the case.

Pastor Vanessa M. Brown of Rivers at Rehoboth Church in Harlem gave Nettles' eulogy last year and told BuzzFeed that the lack of progress in the investigation and what she describes as "no change" in reducing violence against transgender people since then is "very heartbreaking."

The rally also comes on the heels of video that surfaced online earlier this month showing a transgender woman of color in a violent altercation with a man at a New York City subway station in Brooklyn. The video shows witnesses standing by and photographing the incident and captures the man making anti-gay comments, like "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Both land several punches to each other's faces, but the man overpowers the transgender woman. At one point, both nearly tumble onto the tracks as a train enters the station. After learning of the video, police said they have little information on the incident as a victim has not come forward.

Recent attacks are not isolated to New York. In Washington, D.C., in the shadows of the nation's capitol and the headquarters of national LGBT rights organizations, a transgender teenager was stabbed after she was harassed on a D.C. Metro train and, in a separate incident, a transgender woman was robbed at gunpoint near her home earlier this month.

Nationally, more than a dozen transgender people have been killed since Nettles' death, along with several other instances of attacks on transgender people. Advocates point out, though, that these numbers do not account for what they say could be countless attacks on transgender people that are not reported to authorities. Out of 18 anti-LGBT homicides in 2013 included in a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, almost three-quarters, or 72%, of homicide victims were transgender women, and 67% of homicide victims were transgender women of color.

"Unfortunately, this crisis is nothing new," said Elliot Fukui, program coordinator of the TransJustice group at the Audre Lorde Project. "The loss of trans life is nothing new. There is more attention to this crisis being paid and that is progress, but when this starts happening, there is also backlash."

One thing that has changed, or is different, in recent months is that more journalists are reporting on violence against transgender people, according to Cecilia Chung, senior strategist at the Transgender Law Center, a national advocacy group. This could be due to increasing awareness around transgender issues, she said.

"If we look at this year alone, we've definitely seen an increase of deaths related to violence and I think that's what made it stand out more," Chung said. "Until we actually change some structural barriers and really provide resources to support the resilience of the community, this will continue to be a trend."

Chung said that violence against transgender people occurs so frequently because they are marginalized by the systems and institutions in society. "If you look at some of the data, a high number of trans people of color make less than $15,000 a year and in order to survive they must be exposed to a lot of high-risk elements in their lives," she said. "Where they live, or the type of relationship they end up in — those all play a huge factor. The bottom line to that is, violence is an indicator of the marginalizing that our community faces."

Chung and Fukui are among a handful of transgender advocates who told BuzzFeed that economic and employment disparities, and lack of access to healthcare, housing, and education lead to transgender people becoming targets of violence.

"We have a long way to go in addressing issues with housing, employment, and affordable healthcare," Fukui said. "This is about racism, control, and policing of our community in ways that are violent and actually increases violence. Our communities have the solutions and know what we need in order to survive. I think once we break this really intense spiderweb of oppression at work in the United States, we'll be able to really break this down."

Mara Keisling, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, also said that the violence stems from cultural and economic problems. Because of these factors, "you're going to have more violence," she said. "You'd like to think that it's improving, but we've just had our worst recorded month of murder in the history of the transgender movement and we're not hearing about all of them, too."

Part of the solution, advocates say, is educating society so that "people will start to recognize that trans people are no different from them," Chung said, and points to the example of Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox, who is a transgender woman of color. Additionally, fixing employment programs so that they include transgender people, establishing nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws, confronting homophobia and transphobia, and ensuring the education system meets the needs of transgender students, will ultimately impact violence.

"This is the tipping point," Chung said.

In Harlem on Monday, transgender women and activists like Walker and Hunter and many more who came together at the rally, though, said they fear that even a year after Nettles' death and the ongoing national movement for transgender equality, change isn't happening soon enough. Several of the speakers at the rally, who stood and spoke passionately into a white and blue megaphone to the crowd, acknowledged that after the rally ends and they go their separate ways, that some might not make it home.

Hunter and other members of TWOCC asked transgender people of color in attendance to gather in front of the park's stone bandshell and led them in a chant.

"We must love each other and protect each other," they yelled loudly across the park. "We have nothing to lose but our chains. It is our duty to fight. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."