I’m a Trans Woman in Prison, Where Being Myself Comes at a Cost

Do I speak aloud so everyone can hear me? Do I cry alone so no one knows I’m there? I hold on to everything that’s given to me, so that my tears may show darkness how to care.

Those are the questions I ask as a transgender woman in prison facing discrimination, objectification, and abuse. It’s like being trapped in a dark room with only flickers of light, little glimpses of agitating staff members poking at your sanity.

Ya’see, three years ago, I transitioned in prison. In the free world, I had too many stereotypes to maintain — I was going to church, singing gospel, selling drugs, and getting high. I was all over the place, having a total identity crisis.

But in prison, I met a guy, we got close, and I started to let my guard down. He brought out something in me I didn’t understand, but it felt natural. I tiptoed around that memory for at least a year after I was transferred. I was so different internally than what people saw. On the outside, I was masculine (well, sort of) with soft features, but I wanted to be a lady. I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be a wife. Lying on that rigid ol’ mattress, I realized: I’m transgender. I battled with what that meant, and at first, I felt a lot of self-doubt and confusion. Then one day without my permission, I found myself being me.

But being myself in prison comes at a cost. I quickly started to understand how many men in prison see transgender women as some sort of novelty. I’m supposed to wash clothes, make meals, and keep the living area clean. It’s part of the politics of prison.

For a while, those politics caused me to lose track of who I am and what I want in life. My dreams of being a musician began to fade away. My kindness became my weakness. Before I went to prison, I could speak openly with people. But in prison, words don’t mean the same things they mean in the free world. We’re held captive by what we’ve told a prisoner is “supposed” to be. Prisoners make assumptions about each other based on race, case factors, and sexual orientation, and sometimes dangers arise from that. Some call LGBTQ+ people “punks.”

With all the BS floating around behind the wall, I have to fight my way through the clusterfuck of expectations, as if I’m here to serve. It makes me feel small, inhuman. To most men here, transgender women are not who we are, but who they want us to be.

My old cellmate — I call him “Mr. Lack of Gratitude” — told me one night, “Know your place, I’m the man.” In another relationship, a man made it clear that I would be stabbed for walking away from him. It wasn’t an idle threat — I’ve seen a girl get stabbed on the yard by her jealous ex-boyfriend. After he calmed himself down, he sat me down, dropped his head, and said, “I can’t see you walking around the yard with someone else, happy, when you should be happy with me. So you have got to go.”

Some inmates only see me as a possession, and the religious ones simply consider me an abomination. The officers dehumanize me in too many ways when they strip search me in a room of men. But an old friend once told me that not everyone is going to agree with my choices in life, and they’re entitled to that. That’s when I realized, if I live to satisfy everyone else, how am I going to be happy with myself? I had to learn to let people be people.

No matter what, I can still rest assured that despite every act of discrimination I’ve faced, when my insecurities and self-doubt try to sabotage my joy, there is a light. Someone or something will pull me up from whatever pit I’m climbing from. It is my duty as a woman to pay attention, learn, grow, and contribute to the world around me. And I hope my journey guides me in the direction of peace, of love, and of understanding.

“We Do This ‘Til We Free Us” Makes Abolition Accessible Without Claiming It’s Easy

Content Warning: discussions of rape and abuse.

In “What Is Accountability Without Punishment?,” one of the more challenging chapters of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba’s powerful primer on prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition, she explores the loneliness of being what seemed like one of the few voices not celebrating – in 2019 immediately after Surviving R. Kelly had just aired and the #metoo movement was still making headlines – the news of Kelly’s impending jail time. Because, as she and others argued, jailing Kelly was not actually justice.

For over a year, we’ve heard repeated calls to fire and/or jail the officers who killed Breonna Taylor. Some were fired, actually. One of the officers had his book deal put in limbo. And Taylor’s family got $12 million. Was this justice?

More recently, Derek Chauvin’s trial for killing George Floyd ended in a rare murder conviction. Justice?

Today, Kaba – and a growing group of many other abolitionists – remains lonely, if not actively derided, on the Internet for not celebrating Chauvin’s conviction. But firings, taxpayer-funded payouts, a canceled book deal, or a murder conviction are not justice. Kaba makes it plain in the title of another chapter: “We Want More Justice For Breonna Taylor Than The System That Killed Her Can Deliver.”

We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is a collection of writings that aim at answering an elusive question from dozens of angles: what is justice? It contains essays, many previously published at Kaba’s blog Prison Culture and some published in major publications, as well as a few transcribed interviews. Some of it is practical, with specific goals and suggestions for systems-level policy. Some of it is thoughtful and meandering and visionary – and one chapter is even a short, fictional story. But all of it attempts to get at the truth: can the prison industrial complex provide justice? And if not, what can?

At the core of the abolitionist mindset, in my opinion, is the truth that we can’t justifiably or reliably classify other humans as strictly good or evil, as worthy of or beyond redemption, as deserving a lifetime of torture – or death – in a cage or that basic human right: freedom. It’s not our job to do so and it’s beyond our capabilities. As such, we cannot in good conscience support the prison industrial complex and do not believe it can provide justice. Because who hasn’t caused another human being harm? We might think that our harms are small, and “bad” peoples’ harms are large. But where do you draw the line?

The above point was made exceedingly clear to me when I first listened to Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” about a serial child murderer and rapist. “And in my best behavior, I am really just like him,” Stevens softly croons. “Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.” The good/evil, victim/perpetrator, survivor/abuser binary is yet another binary that needs to be dismantled.

Kaba is also perfectly content drawing inspiration from unlikely places. “Moving Past Punishment,” another of the excellent pieces in this collection, is also filled with wisdom, clarity, and challenge – and she aptly quotes Nicole Kidman’s character in the 2005 film The Interpreter: “Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.” Vengeance is not justice. And, as we discover through reading this collection, neither is punishment.

So how do we define justice when harm has occurred? When it’s minor and, especially, when it’s major? How do we reconcile our conception of justice with the truth that all of us have caused harm? When, as Kaba attributes to Danielle Sered in “The Practices We Need: #MeToo And Transformative Justice,” “No one enters violence for the first time by committing it?”

We’ve all known, for decades, centuries even, that “hurt people hurt people.” Something must be done about the hurt that people experience that goads them to hurt others. Punishment does not do this; it instead increases the amount of hurt in the world. Beyond the ethical, moral, and spiritual considerations of punishment, the other central truth of the abolitionist project is that punishment cannot prevent, reconcile, or provide justice for harm – and instead frequently exacerbates it. The promise of transformative justice, the hope of community accountability, the vision of prison industrial complex abolition, is that there’s a better way. A way that acknowledges the aforementioned truths. A way that can genuinely heal and prevent harm.

Maybe we’ve never seen another vision of justice. Maybe we can’t even imagine it. But Kaba’s book is chock-full of wisdom from thinkers, visionaries, and experimenters who are doing their best to figure out exactly what that something is. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they succeed. Always they learn.

We must create a society in which policing, prisons, and surveillance are unnecessary because people’s needs are met and healing is accessible and reconciliation and transformation are possible. Abolition is not a goal but an “organizing principle.” When we’re hurt, we often want vengeance, but vengeance is lazy. It feels good – but, as Kaba makes plain, “abolition is not about your fucking feelings.” Believing that punishment is the only appropriate way to reconcile harm is a “failure of imagination.”

If you’ve ever grasped at these kinds of questions, and the truths that accompany them – that the carceral, punishment based “justice” that our system tells us is the only option for responding to harm is woefully inadequate to do so, frequently punishes the wrong people, is biased toward the privileged, usually makes the problem worse, and that punishment simply does not work and is not justice – this is the book for you.

“What about the rapists?” is a common refrain for critics of abolition. But, as Kaba and all available evidence makes clear, “the criminal legal system does not even purport to care about whether survivors of sexual violence heal.” Kaba addresses this and many other critiques of abolition – but is also an equal opportunity critic. The collection is viscerally challenging, no matter your politics.

In “Accountability Is Not Punishment,” she makes the titular point – but also challenges advocates who, like myself, too often use abolition and transformative justice interchangeably and who posit TJ as an alternative to imprisonment. This “demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of the concept,” Kaba admonishes.

She also challenges those of us who, again like me, believe that TJ can provide healing. This is rarely true, she argues, and isn’t the point. A community accountability process is not a healing process – in fact, it’s usually profoundly unsettling and disturbing and difficult. Like everything else about abolition and transformative justice. Punishment feels good. Justice frequently does not. Accountability is often a prerequisite to healing and creates space for it that punishment does not, but it isn’t healing itself.

As most of Kaba’s writing and public speeches are, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is very accessible. It helps if you’re familiar with the concepts, if you know about the police violence cases she discusses, if you’re familiar with some of the statistics she cites, if you’ve read other books exploring these concepts and already have a critique of the prison industrial complex and are looking to go deeper. But it’s also a pretty good primer. It’s a decent place to get you started.

If you’ve ever dismissed abolition or transformative justice, believing abolitionists “think abusers and murderers should just have no consequences,” it’s a good book to challenge your thinking and expand your understandings of what’s possible. Because of course they don’t. But we’ve been taught – through our childhoods, our schooling, and throughout our lives, that punishment is the only way to respond to harm. That it’s a deterrent, that it’s fair, that it works. All evidence points to this not being true. And, it’s important to note, consequences and punishment are not the same thing.

This book is full of theorizing and visioning and wondering and experimentation. But it’s also full of lessons learned and clear guidelines, many of them especially important for the present moment. “Police ‘Reforms’ You Should Always Oppose” is short, to the point, provocative, and necessary, as the President and police departments across the country attempt to enact incremental reforms that may do little of significance to transform anti-Black policing in the United States and as many in LGBTQ+ communities continue to push for “reforms,” like hate crime laws, that typically do more harm than good. In “The System Isn’t Broken,” she provides 10 concrete “reform” steps that move us forward toward the “horizon of abolition” rather than further entrench us in its clutches.

Imagining what true justice would look like is difficult and strange and convoluted and there aren’t easy answers. Kaba, along with countless other writers, thinkers, and revolutionaries, has spent decades doing so anyway – and has given us this book as a gift as we attempt to do the same.

Organizers From Black & Pink on Supporting Our Incarcerated Queer and Trans Family This Pandemic Winter

The past year has revealed gaping holes in already failing systems around the country, with people in prisons and jails being especially neglected, hidden away by a system designed to dehumanize. Black And Pink NYC, a regional chapter under the national Black and Pink organization, is a volunteer-run abolitionist group working to liberate and support incarcerated LGBTQ+ folks and people with HIV/AIDS. Founded in 2014, the chapter now has about 125 inside members who are incarcerated throughout New York, with eight core organizers on the outside and a team of regular volunteers. They connect pen pals, provide coming home support, host holiday card campaigns, and redistribute money to commissary funds, among other projects.

I spoke with organizers Madelyn, Tanya N., and Jennifer Love about what the pandemic has revealed about the prison industrial complex, and what people can do to build collective solidarity.

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Mai Tran: How has COVID affected your group’s work and ongoing projects?

Madelyn: Mail processing has been completely changed because we went virtual and had to create a new front-end interface that didn’t rely on organizers handing physical letters. We’re still working out the kinks in those systems, but one of the benefits is that a lot of people who were unable or could only semi-regularly attend mail-processing events prior to the pandemic now can because of the virtual option. We’ve opened up the chapter mail processing to a wider audience and created a lot of new systems with accessibility in mind, moving forward.

Tanya N.: With our more accessible virtual mail processing, we found a way to not do everything through JPay, which is the profiteering online prison mail system. We’ve also been seeing some other really inspiring organizing for mutual aid, like the Free Them All 2020 campaign and other abolitionist efforts. We have also had multiple members who were incarcerated and got released during the height of the pandemic, or a couple months before. We’ve been building out our coming home support, and it’s a whole different process trying to look for housing during a pandemic, fighting with the city’s Human Resources Administration for benefits, and making sure people can get food when they might be immunocompromised or can’t get around.

Jennifer Love: Pre-COVID, our inside members already had a fight on their hands. Now, it’s even worse. By the time we get a letter from someone reaching out to us, they could be on an incubator. So many of them have reached out for help with a couple of letters, because they aren’t being properly cared for during COVID. A lot of people didn’t even count incarcerated people as a factor. It felt like we were the only ones who were listening to them, and making calls for them and making sure their voices were heard and their needs were being respected. Officers and staff members don’t want to humanize them and acknowledge that they are vulnerable people, and they’re not the ones out here walking around without a mask on. If any incarcerated person gets COVID, they got it from staff and officers who brought it into the prison or jail.

Tanya N.: So much has changed in our programming and in the rise of inside members who’ve had it so hard. A couple of our inside members died, and it’s really awful to go to a person’s address change and see on the DOCCS (Department of Corrections and Community Supervision) website that their status is found deceased, and that’s how we find out. That’s when pen pals come together and give each other mutual aid and emotional support, but it’s just constant, the terrors of the prison-industrial complex.

Jennifer Love: As a formerly incarcerated person, when I received letters from loved ones, even if they weren’t a page long, it meant the world to me. It made me feel important. It made me feel thought of. And when I write back, and you write back again, that’s one of the only things that kept you feeling human.

Mai Tran: With COVID and the protests over the summer, I think a lot more people are now aware of mutual aid and prison abolition. Did that have any impact on the support your group has been receiving?

Tanya N.: We have gotten more followers and an influx of people emailing our inbox, saying “how can I help?” In March, we put on a virtual pen pal webinar to accommodate some of that. It was great to see the increased interest. We got a record amount of online donations in June, but then the next month, it was back down to normal levels. It’s great that people are giving money, but redistribution shouldn’t be something you do once out of white guilt and then not again. It’s an ongoing thing.

It’s also important to do the reading and politically educate yourself and the people around you, because abolition is now a more popularly known term and concept, but we can’t let it turn into a buzzword. Abolition isn’t just going to protests, which is a really important direct action, but also actively prefiguring the world we want and creating social relations to starve the institutions that otherwise cage and torture people. One way of doing that is a pen pal relationship, like Jennifer was talking about.

That’s the solidarity work that we need to function. We’re helping each other. It is a family of people. Recently, we had a connect to get free furniture from a place that gives furniture to nonprofits, because one of our organizers finally found a new home and was able to move in. I told them the organizer would be picking it up with a driver, and the person on the other end was like, “can we actually not have clients go to the appointment, because this is a customer-facing business?” But what is a client? This person, who was recently incarcerated, is a central organizer in what we do. So that dichotomy between clients and a service provider is totally against what our organizing is about. We’re not social workers or a charity, we’re in this together for collective purposes.

Madelyn: One of the reasons why I love doing mail processing is it’s a really wonderful way to enact a lot of the things that Tanya’s talking about immediately, and Jennifer also mentioned how impactful receiving letters in any capacity can be. It’s responding to a solidarity request. It’s community-based and breaks down a carceral concept of charity, because you’re working with people who were inside members and now are out, or outside members who are just learning about what it means to be an abolitionist.

Mai Tran: Do you have any projects you hope to expand in the future, or goals for the chapter?

Jennifer: We have the Jen Love Project, which provides welcome home packages for LGBTQ+ people coming home from prisons and jails. Currently, I only service New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, with plans in the coming year to expand services to other locations.

Tanya N.: We are also fundraising for commissary funds. We’re halfway to our goal of $30,000. We’re always accepting contributions and two of our other organizers are launching that in the new year, to give $75 every quarter to each of our inside members. In the past, we didn’t have the budget to send money directly to people; we had done solidarity packages. But with the money we have, we can at least send $15 to everybody so that they can go to commissary and buy soap or food, because the cafeteria and everyone is in lockdown.

Principles of Pride: Police and Prisons Do Not Belong in Our Future

Introducing the Principles of Pride

As part of our No Justice, No Pride programming, our trans subject editor Xoai Pham has curated a five-part series called the Principles of Pride. The series unpacks the foundational values that clear a path forward for the LGBTQ movement, values that would make our ancestors proud.

Much of the history we now take for granted was considered impossible to the majority of our society. When the first Pride march took place in 1970, I’d bet many of elders and ancestors would have thought it impossible that trans people would garner success as media makers, artists, authors, scientists, and movement leaders. They might be surprised to see how many more of us than before have families that support us, the warmth of a home, and the healthcare that affirms who we are—though even with this progress, we know many of us don’t have the means to survive.

They might also be surprised to see that the police regularly make an appearance at Pride parades, despite the police brutality that instigated an LGBTQ movement in the first place.

Now, as we reflect on the centuries of violence committed since the first police forces were formed, we must consider why the call to defund police is so far-fetched. It’s time to return to our roots, so we can have a better compass for our collective future. Our Pride Principles series will delve into the values that we should work towards, to defend Black life, to truly honor the legacy of those who’ve come before us, and to create the conditions wherein all of us will thrive. The following piece is by the brilliant organizer, dancer, poet, and educator Benji Hart.

The justice we receive will be contained by the limits of our imaginations. Now is the time to expand beyond what we’ve known. Many lives depend on it.

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I became a police and prison abolitionist in the years after four police officers attacked me in the Bronx, New York.

I was a teenager, crashing with friends at their apartment off Gun Hill Road. While walking back from the corner store, four cops chased me and pinned me to the hood of a car. I was dearrested by my friends who came downstairs when they heard the car alarm go off, and brought the officers my ID from inside the apartment.

As a Black, queer, femme person from a police family, I had not been raised to fear law enforcement. This was the first violent interaction I had with the cops. Its randomness, the despicable ways I was manhandled and spoken to, the palpable fear I felt for my life, all pushed me to learn about the true nature of the police system—its roots in both slave patrols and brutalizing worker movements—and convinced me that this system could, and should, be abolished.

For the majority of my years in the police and prison abolition movement, this idea was treated by most in my life as too radical, and wholly implausible. This week, that is changing.

Massive, decentralized, and militant uprisings continue to sweep the U.S. after video of the prolonged murder of George Floyd, a cis Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25th went viral. The 3rd precinct in Minneapolis went up in flames, and riots have destroyed city blocks in every region of the country.

The reigniting of the call #BlackLivesMatter occurs as the U.S. passes the grim goalpost of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths—suffered disproportionately by people of color, poor, working, and incarcerated folks. Unemployment has skyrocketed, and the racist enforcing of social distancing has singled out Black and Brown communities for increased surveillance and violence. Simultaneously, our #BlackLivesMatter declaration has pulled in the names of the countless other Black people recently murdered by police—among them Breonna Taylor, an EMT shot 8 times by police in Louisville, Kentucky while asleep in her own home, and Tony McDade, a Black trans man killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida the same week as George Floyd.

This moment is both familiar and unprecedented. The riots harken back to those in Ferguson and Baltimore only years ago, yet the diverse crowds and sheer breadth of the response mark a new chapter. While George Floyd’s name may be the most prominent, there is a growing awareness that Black women and trans people are also regularly murdered by police. Whereas in recent memory looting and rioting were decried as “the wrong way to protest,” more are making space for a diversity of tactics, honoring lives lost over property damaged. And on the ground in Minneapolis, where the MPD boasts a host of reforms like deescalation and mindfulness trainings, Black organizers are calling for the defunding of the department, demanding investment in existing community-led health and safety programs. When communities care for one another, and are provided the proper resources to do so, they argue, police become obsolete.

It’s long been a value held in the movement for prison abolition—which itself draws tactics and values from the movement to abolish chattel slavery—that the only way to reduce police violence is by reducing policing itself, shrinking the scope and power of departments by cutting their budgets and reallocating resources to community programs like affordable housing, free mental healthcare, public education, and healthy food. Such notions, which might have at one point sounded ludicrous to some, are gaining traction given the unceasing murders of Black people by police. Faith is waning in the decades worth of reforms that have done nothing to curb the violence. Current uprisings are giving new life to the abolitionist framework—and how fitting that they do so during Pride month.

Of course, Pride is itself the annual anniversary of a riot. The first Christopher Street Liberation Day March took place on June 28th, 1970, commemorating the notorious Stonewall Riots the year before, in which trans and queer women of color clashed with police during the raid of a gay bar. The inaugural rally took place in front of the New York Women’s House of Detention, protesting the incarceration of sex workers, trans people, and survivors, and demanding alternatives to the policing and criminalization—like anti-crossdressing laws and policies allowing condoms to be used as evidence of sex work—that had forced them behind bars.

Three years later, when Sylvia Rivera, a Boricua trans woman who’d been integral to both Stonewall and the first Christopher Street march, was banned from the event for being too politically outspoken, she stormed the stage, delivering her infamous “y’all better quiet down” speech. She railed not just against her own exclusion from the march she’d helped found, but for the incarcerated trans and queer people she felt the movement was abandoning as it prioritized mainstream acceptance: “The people [of STAR House, Rivera’s organization] are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle class, white club, and that’s what y’all belong to! Revolution now!”

Pride as the site of queer resistance to policing and incarceration is hardly limited to the 1970s. In 2015, I joined other Black trans and queer organizers in blocking the Chicago Pride parade, calling for an end to stop-and-frisk, no new police and no new jails, and a reinvestment in housing and social services for trans and queer youth. The numerous Pride disruptions that occurred in the following years began a large scale conversation on the role of police in queer spaces, resulting in police being banned from participating in multiple Pride marches.

Legacies intersect in this Pride month to remind us that divesting from the police system is both a historically Black and historically queer demand, and that disruption and direct action can get that demand met. There is no stronger case for this than Minneapolis itself.

Within days of the rebellion in response to George Floyd’s murder, the Amalgamated Transit Union which represents local bus drivers made a statement decrying the racist attack, and allowing its workers the right to refuse to cooperate with police as they commandeered buses to round up protesters—a show of solidarity that has spread to other public transit workers around the country. The University of Minnesota severed its ties with the MPD, and days later Minneapolis Public Schools canceled its contract with the department—a demand Black students and families have been making for years.

I rejoice at these developments, for they justify the rage of the Black, queer teenager who was attacked in the Bronx. The demands I and other Black trans and queer people have been making in the years since that attack are more than plausible—they are necessary. A world without police simply requires the political will to actively divest from policing, and the collective desire to support rather than dispose of the most marginalized and criminalized among us.

Black protesters in Minneapolis have demonstrated what concrete steps can be taken in the direction of a police-free world. In honor of our movement ancestors, how do we follow suit? By lifting the demand to defund, divest, and abolish the police in every circle and institution we belong to, affirming the belief that public safety comes from members of the public having access to the resources they need to thrive, not from being harassed by law enforcement.

Skip the anti-bias training and get straight to ending relationships with police all together: Does your school have a contract with a local police department? Start a campaign to get it canceled. Does your medical center report survivors of violence to law enforcement without their consent? Link them to counseling and other social services instead of handing them off to police—who are themselves a source of violence. Does your neighborhood organization have a policy around calling 911? Discuss safety plans for moments of escalation that rely on relationships between residents, leaving police out of the equation. And at every chance, pressure local officials and organizations to cut the budgets of police departments (including failed reforms like body cameras and de-escalation training) in place of social programs that put resources directly in the hands of community members.

On June 3, 2020 officials in Los Angeles agreed to cut up to $150 million from the LAPD budget, to be reinvested in communities of color. This was only possible because of uprisings happening around the world demanding justice for stolen Black lives, and divestment from the policing system. And while a few million is a drop in the bucket of the $1.8 billion LAPD receives annually, cutting the budget at all is a largely unprecedented step towards abolition. Demonstrating that policing can be reduced, and the world very often improves as a result, is a crucial move towards the long term vision of a world where police are not relied on at all.

Happy Pride! May we rebel in ways that future generations can celebrate. May we defend protesters against violent state repression. And may we fight with every fiber of our being to abolish the police and prison systems, making the true safety our communities deserve possible.

Police and Prison Abolition 101: A Syllabus and FAQ

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How did we get our current system of policing & prisons?

Some readings associated with these concepts are:

• [PDF] The Prison Industry: How It Started, How It Works, How It Harms, from Worth Rises
• Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America
• Cruel and Unusual: Punishment and US Culture
• American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions
• Slavery by Another Name
• The Prison and the American Imagination
• The New Jim Crow

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What does abolition mean?

For further reading on what abolition means as a project, some brief, digestible digital reads:

• Decarceral Syllabus, from Project NIA
• The Case for Abolition
• What Abolitionists Do
• What Does Police Abolition Mean?
• Abolish the Police? Organizers Say It’s Less Crazy Than It Sounds
• You Are Already an Abolitionist

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Why the extreme measure of abolition when we could try reform, at least for right now, and return to the ideal of abolition in the future?

How advocates for abolition justify getting rid of consequences for violence or abuse?

Some resources to get started:

• How I Became a Police Abolitionist, Derecka Purnell
• Aching for Abolition, Camonghne Felix
• [PDF] The Critical Resistance Abolition Toolkit, especially p. 28-31
• [PDF] Community Accountability for Survivors of Sexual Violence Toolkit
• Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
• [PDF] Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and Other Forms of Intimate and Community Violence
• [PDF] Inside the Politics and Poetics of Transformative Justice and Community Accountability in Sexual Assault Situations
• The Revolution Starts at Home

What other options are there besides police? What advocates for abolition replace it with?

Some resources to get started:

• Alternatives to Calling the Police
• More Alternatives to Police
• [PDF] Harm Free Zone Project
• [PDF] Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Handbook
• Fumbling Toward Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators
• [PDF] Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide from Project NIA
• [PDF] Technologies for Liberation: Toward Abolitionist Futures, from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice

What does the process of abolition & decarceration actually look like?

This looks like:

• Refusing to call the police, talk to the police, or work with the police
• Pushing community organizations to divest from the police and refuse to work with them
• Using any social currency or personal privilege to resist the presence of police in your communities through practices like copwatching
• Defunding police and prisons at every level
• Opposing the construction of and investment in new policing and prison initiatives and buildings
• Opposing laws and policies, even ones with ends that we agree with, that rely on arrests and threats of incarceration as a means to those ends
• Voting out and fighting against elected officials that work with police, prioritize “law and order,” or prison reform; voting in and holding accountable elected officials that vow to defund and decarcerate, and refuse to work with police or ICE
• Fighting to end cash bail and working with bail funds to free people in jail right now and always
• Prioritizing resources, care and community support to formerly and currently incarcerated people
• Joining and following the lead of community movements led by formerly incarcerated people
• Providing resources, protection and material support to criminalized people targeted by the PIC, including drug users, sex workers, trans people, undocumented immigrants, and all Black people, helping them to stay out of contact with police
• Building strong local communities that know one another, communicate with one another, can ask each other for resources and reach out for one another in times of crisis
• Tapping into or building networks that are actively engaging in building infrastructure around conflict resolution, community safety, accountability, intervention and harm prevention

For more reading, try these resources:

• [PDF] Critical Resistance Abolitionist Toolkit
• TransformHarm.org
• No One Is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Police Abolition
• Against Carceral Feminism
• Decarceral Syllabus, from Project NIA
• Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture

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• Prison Abolition Syllabus 2.0
• Prison Culture Essential Reading
• If You’re New to Abolition: Study Group Guide

Extra! Extra!: Is the Arc of the Universe Bending Toward Justice for Trans Inmates and LGBT Rights in Utah?

This week’s Extra! Extra! brings a mix of hopeful and sobering news about trans rights, the criminal justice system, violence against women and the climate catastrophes in the Bay of Bengal and in Michigan. Also, Natalie updates us on the latest Veepstakes 2020 news.

Trans Rights

Supreme Court Won’t Block Surgery for Transgender Inmate

Natalie: I am, of course, thrilled about this outcome for Adree Edmo and her attorneys, but I couldn’t help but wonder what this portends for the case brought by the late Aimee Stephens. Are we dealing with a Court that’s more receptive to trans rights than, perhaps, it’s been given credit for? Is this an anomaly? I don’t know.

Update To Veepstakes 2020

Biden asks Amy Klobuchar to undergo vetting to be running mate

Natalie: Yesterday, my twitter feed blew up with a chorus unanimously chanting “no, no, no, no” in response to the news that Amy Klobuchar was being vetted for the vice presidency. The backlash was swift: people compared it to Hillary Clinton’s uninspired choice of Tim Kaine as her running mate in 2016 and expressed certainty that it would lead to the same outcome.

So, a few things: first, Tim Kaine was a choice foisted on the Clinton campaign by white supremacy and patriarchy which can only stand one glass ceilings being broken at a time. He wasn’t uninspired, the country that necessitated his presence is.

Second, we all knew that Amy Klobuchar was going to be vetted…we even said as much in this space just a few weeks ago. But the fact that news of that vetting has leaked actually makes it less likely that Klobuchar’s the lead candidate. The real Biden VP finalists aren’t the ones talking to the press right now. Everybody just calm down.

I Believe in Stacey Abrams. I’m Disappointed in Stacey Abrams.

Natalie: I agree with much of what Roxane Gay posits here about Stacey Abrams — I said as much two weeks ago when I assessed Abrams’ chances of being Biden’s running mate — and I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that politicians aren’t auditioning to be our friends (and, having met more than my fair share of them, I’m grateful for that). There are no perfect politicians who agree with me on everything…the best you can hope for, most of the time, is that you’ll find a candidate who is open to persuasion and ”not too sure that [they are] right?” But where Gay and I diverge is on the question of Abrams’ response to the sexual assault charges leveled against Joe Biden by Tara Reid.

Or, maybe, the more precise point is: I don’t know what Abrams could have said in that situation to make anyone feel better about her or, ostensibly, about Joe Biden? I hate that we ask women about this, rather than interrogating men — Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg will never be asked about this, right? — or Biden specifically…but if they are asked, I wonder, what do we expect them to say? What would be the right answer in this situation?

Perhaps we expect something like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, acknowledging the situation’s messiness but urging the focus on justice and rather than just politics… but if something did happen, doesn’t even that feel insufficient?

America’s Criminal Justice: The Haves and the Have Nots

Michael Cohen released from prison over coronavirus concerns

Natalie: After strong indications that they’d go to trial, Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, pled guilty yesterday to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud charges. There’s a chance that the couple won’t do any jail time due to COVID-19 and will, instead, be punished with house arrest. Combined with the news that Michael Cohen will be released from prison early and Paul Manafort’s release last week, it’s clear that the coronavirus is exposing inequities that exist in our justice system.

There is one justice system for the rich and well-connected and another for everyone else…and, in the age of COVID-19, that justice system may doom a lot of people to death sentences for relatively innocuous crimes… crimes far less offensive to society than the cabal that Manafort and Cohen unleashed.

How Police Turn Teens Into Informants

Himani: We’ve covered instance after instance of how COVID-19 is spreading like fire through jails and prisons in the US and abroad in Monday’s COVID-19 edition of Extra! Extra! That makes the news about Manafort and Cohen particularly galling. Really, this is just an extension of the disparities created by systems like bail and excessive and unequal sentencing.

But this Slate article reveals yet another twisted side of America’s criminal justice system that I wasn’t very familiar with: how young people are coerced into becoming informants and put at substantial risk by the police. In perhaps one of the most striking parts of this article:

There have been a series of botched informant operations in the last 10 years that follow the pattern of Nick Taiber’s story, only with far worse results. Rachel Hoffman in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2008 was arrested on marijuana and ecstasy possession, and threatened with very serious charges. In exchange for leniency, she agreed on doing a $13,000 drug and gun deal in a sting operation set up by the police. The police lost track of her, and she was shot in the head by the dealers. Andrew Sadek in North Dakota had a similar story: He was threatened with 40 years, so instead he started buying drugs for police at North Dakota State College of Science. Andrew disappeared and was found in a river with a gunshot wound to the head and a backpack filled with rocks. Andrew’s parents think he was murdered. The police say it was a suicide—Andrew’s way of trying to get out of his informant deal. His parents are still fighting the police in lawsuits to this day.

If The States Fail, Where Does that Leave Us?

Wisconsin is starting to resemble a failed state

Natalie: This is entirely the fault of Wisconsin Republicans and those conservatives on the state supreme court, rushing to inflict as much harm as possible before the clock on their majority hold runs out. It is, unfortunately, a preview of what’s coming for us all if polling continues to suggest the possibility of Democratic takeover of the Senate in November. Mitch McConnell will go down this same path… of that you can be certain.

Rachel: What’s being done to the people of Wisconsin is horrific; I’m grimly reminded of the 2000s-era Republican outcry about “activist judges,” and the mock concern that judges would serve a personal political agenda rather than the best interests of the nation. Weird how now — much like the people who were so outraged about their prerogative to not bake gay wedding cakes, but who now don’t want to wear masks — that tune has changed! I agree with the the premise of this piece wholeheartedly — the state and the judicial branch are not functioning in a manner that at all serves the people of Wisconsin — but would also gently push back against the unspoken presumption that prior to this moment Wisconsin (and arguably any state) was a successful state. As someone who used to live in Milwaukee, the state has been failing its people for a long time; as with so much else, the current crisis has just pushed it to its most extreme and made it more transparent. As before this pandemic, the answer to where it leaves us is each other; individuals and communities still have some power to take care of each other, and the more people who work together and organize, the greater that power is. The cruel reality of the pandemic is that even if our own choices are somehow unassailable, we’re impacted by the choices of others that are beyond our control, and I know how frustrating that is — while it isn’t possible to totally mitigate the damage caused by rulings like these, it’s also important to remember that even without state action, we aren’t helpless! Community power has always been able to accomplish things the state can’t, and this is more true now than ever.

Georgia Republicans cancel election for state Supreme Court, so governor can appoint a Republican

Himani: I think I’m not alone in feeling like there’s pretty much nothing the White House, Congressional Republicans and Supreme Court conservatives can do, at this point, that will faze me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to be horrified, but as so many political thinkers have written again and again and again since 2016, the strategy is entirely about a slow and steady chipping away at democracy that allows for a creation of two completely different narratives about what’s happening while making it pretty much impossible to hold any of these power-hungry authoritarians accountable. (This just happened again this week, by the way, when the Trump administration released emails from Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice detailing her concerns about sharing sensitive information with Michael Flynn because he was known to be in contact with the Russian ambassador. The White House and their allies are already spinning this into more fuel for their nonsense conspiracy theories about how Trump has been wronged and Biden is untrustworthy; somehow Bill Barr, of all people, is the voice of reason here. I can’t believe I’m saying that.)

Anyway, my point is, the federal government has sunk so low that, in some ways, I already think of it as a somewhat failed state. But what flies under the radar so often is what’s happening at the state-level, which is where a lot of power sits as well – especially right now, during the pandemic, because the White House has abdicated all responsibility for the situation. The article about Wisconsin is damning but unsurprising given the long-game Republicans have been playing there, as Natalie says above. And it seems that Georgia isn’t too far behind. When democracy becomes so utterly distorted by gerrymandering, stolen elections, farcical elections that are blatant attempts to distort the results, and flat out cancelled elections, we have to acknowledge that this is no longer democracy before we can begin to address the problems. But every one of those attempts to restore democratic order and fairness is met with the charge that somehow that is silencing the voice of the people when really it’s an attempt to restore the voice of the silenced majority. When things are this far gone, I’m not sure what can be done to restore democraticj processes?

Rachel: I assume we’re all tired of the discursive tic that “if this were any other time with less going on, this would be the story of the century,” but I can’t agree with Himani enough that the direction Georgia has taken in the last few years is indescribably wild and indicative of what seems to be some pretty irreparable breakdowns in US legislative infrastructures. If Wisconsin, as previously asserted, is a failed state, Georgia at this point seems functionally a rogue one, completely disregarding election sanctity and brazenly illegally consolidating power in what would be unquestionably viewed by Americans as an oppressive dictatorship if it was occurring anywhere in the global South. Again, I know we’re all tired of the refrain that “if this were happening in another country, the US would have invaded it to protect democracy,” but Jesus Christ! Would really love to hear from anyone based in Georgia right now about what they’re experiencing and how local communities are responding!

Equality Utah hosts GOP candidates for governor

Natalie: Back in 2008, when Proposition 8 — a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in California — passed, it did so thanks to the financial support of Utahns and the LDS Church. I couldn’t have imagined an event like this with prospective leaders in Utah, discussing LGBTQ+ issues, then… and even now, the idea that four Republicans would engage in this conversation feels surreal. I guess it’s true what they say, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Let’s just hope it keeps bending.

Himani: I do have a propensity for leaning into despair, though. This article about the LGBT forum in Utah is a refreshing reminder that so many activists are doing the work to push the needle bit by bit for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, as in this particular example, and countless other instances of fighting for the rights of so many other disenfranchised and marginalized groups: people of color, people with disabilities, people who are or were formerly incarcerated.

Checking In On Those SCOTUS Oral Arguments

Which Supreme Court Justices Get Interrupted the Most?

Natalie: “…Female justices may be three times more likely to be interrupted than male justices, and that conservative justices were more likely to interrupt than liberal justices.”

This is my shocked face.

Himani: The only thing I have to add to this is that there’s an obvious confound in the fact that of the four liberal justices on the bench, three of them are women whereas all of the conservative justices are men. This isn’t to say that all the liberal justices should be men or that there aren’t conservative women in high levels of the justice system (looking at you, Sandra Day O’Connor), but I think it highlights something important about women and power in America. Americans across the spectrum will say they like the idea of women in power, but once women start to hold those positions, every attempt is made to silence them. We have seen this play out in so many different aspects of our politics: the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, how people on the right and left talk about Nancy Pelosi, how the right talks about the members of “The Squad,” what happened with Katie Hill – this list is truly endless – and now we can add the day to day operations of the Supreme Court to that list.

Violence Against Women

Deadly attack at Toronto erotic spa was incel terrorism, police allege

Rachel: I’ve been thinking about the “incel terrorism” news all week with deeply conflicted feelings. On the one hand, although the headline doesn’t emphasize it, this was first and foremost a violent hate crime directed at sex workers, and in a time when sex workers are facing unprecedented risk and outrageous failures from the state. I’m haunted by the recent murder of Marylene Levesque, a sex worker in Canada who was violently murdered by an incarcerated man on day parole, who was specifically directed to see sex workers as part of a ‘risk-management strategy’ [that] was developed to allow Gallese to meet women to respond to his ‘sexual needs.'” Marylene’s safety was such a low priority to the state that she was essentially offered as a human treatment plan as an attempt to keep more valuable, non-sex-working women safer from a person who was incarcerated for murdering his wife. To that end, it does feel good to see this instance of violence against sex workers taken seriously enough for charges to be filed and for it to be taken as what it is, sexualized misogynistic violence that targets sex workers as effigies and examples.

On the other hand, given the way that we culturally understand ‘incels’ and have historically imagined their relationship to sexual economies — it’s not unusual for people to suggest that incels just see sex workers or have sexual services provided to them so that they won’t become violent, reifying the idea that killed Marylene Levesque — I’m not sure that this conviction isn’t something of a Trojan horse in that regard. And of course, it also reifies the problem of using carceral strategies and policing to address what are ultimately cultural problems — in the same way that solving gun violence at the level of legislature often ends up creating more violence at the level of mass incarceration against the most marginalized people while never reaching violent white men, I’m concerned about who will ultimately be the most impacted and the most harmed by enshrining new criminal law on the phenomenon of sexualized male violence rather than addressing its causes.

Activists Call For Investigation Into Case Of Female Genital Mutilation, Saying It Would Be A First For Russia

Himani: FGM is an incredibly disturbing practice that occurs all over the world although there’s a certain racism in terms of how its discussed as being mostly associated with African nationals. (In fact, the feature image for this article participates in this same racism: the article itself is about a situation in Russia but the picture looks like it was most likely taken in an African country.) This is a disturbing account of the procedure being forced onto a young girl. The girl’s mother filed a criminal complaint in 2019, and activists are petitioning for the local branch of the Investigative Committee to investigate the situation, which would be a first in Russia.

Trump Administration To Planned Parenthood: Return Coronavirus Relief Funds

Himani: Meanwhile, abortion access in the US continues to be restricted in the US. In the latest iteration, the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans are demanding that local Planned Parenthood chapters return small business loans they received through the Paycheck Protection Program. It seems particularly insidious to compare Planned Parenthood clinics to large for-profit entities like the Lakers, Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris that had also received small business loans and been pushed to return those loans after public scrutiny.

Long-Awaited Justice for Rwandan Genocide Victims and Survivors

Rwanda’s Most-Wanted Fugitive, Félicien Kabuga, Arrested For War Crimes

Himani: Twenty-six years after the Rwandan genocide where more than 800,000 people were killed in just three months, one of the leaders of the violence has finally been apprehended. He will be tried for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Colombia Peace Agreement: Four Years Later

Colombia’s FARC Rebels Agreed to Peace — But They’re Still Being Killed

Himani: In 2016, the Colombian government and Revolutionary Forces of Columbia (FARC rebels) reached a historic peace agreement which would end over a half century of war in the country. As part of that agreement, former members of FARC were promised protection. And yet, within the past four years, nearly 200 former FARC members have been by drug traffickers, right-wing paramilitaries and even the military itself.

Climate Change

The Weird American Story of Why My Hometown Is Underwater

A massive cyclone battered India and Bangladesh. The coronavirus makes recovery even harder.

Traffic Is Way Down Because Of Lockdown, But Air Pollution? Not So Much

15 Years Later, Has PREA Protected LGBTQ Prisoners Against Sexual Assault?

The minute Ashley Sawyer walked into prison in February of 2015, everyone knew who she was. Her partner, Annette Douglas, had died in the same facility one month earlier.

“There was an instant judgment made before I even got to present who I was or how I identified,” Sawyer said in an interview. The prison was small, and Douglas had talked about her. It was known that Sawyer dated women, so she was watched, closely.

Sawyer, 34, says she became close friends with another inmate in Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, Vermont’s only women’s prison. She maintains that the two never fooled around, never even kissed. But “people joked that Amanda was my prison wife,” Sawyer said.

One day, Sawyer and Amanda were in the showers in the housing unit they shared – showering at the same time, but in separate stalls, Sawyer told me. But that didn’t matter. Another inmate alerted an officer, who kicked the pair out of the shower, dripping wet.

“I was instantly angry,” Sawyer said. “I got dressed and opened my cell door and freaked out on the whole dayroom.” There was never any formal disciplinary action taken, Sawyer said, no reports or follow-ups. Just a moment of utter humiliation.

September 2018 marks the 15th anniversary of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a law and accompanying standards that addressed rampant sexual abuse and misconduct in federal, state and local prisons across the country. PREA provided prisons with the guidelines for staff training and technical assistance to prevent sexual assaults and protect victims. It also called for the development of more specific standards, some of which would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex inmates. Those standards include mandatory staff training, screening LGBTQI inmates for likelihood of victimization, and bans on searches solely to determine genital status.

But PREA didn’t just change a few rules; it was a complete shift in the culture of American prisons. And to a great extent, it has succeeded in making prisons significantly safer for LGBTQ people. But PREA wasn’t an anti-discrimination bill, and for many queer folks, the already traumatic experience of incarceration is still heightened by bullying, abuse and a simple lack of understanding – from other inmates and from corrections staff.

Since she left Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in 2016, Sawyer has become a criminal justice reform activist. “PREA came out of a lot of really horrific situations for people. We had queer people and transgender people being raped and being put into jails that they shouldn’t have been put into. We had women being sexually assaulted by male guards,” Sawyer said. But in her experience, a law that was intended to keep people safe had been turned into “another tool to dehumanize people.”

How We Got PREA

LGBTQ people make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population. An astounding 33.3 percent of women in prisons and 26.4 percent of women in jails self-identify as lesbian or bisexual, rates that are three times higher than that of the general U.S. population. That’s also higher than rates for men identifying as gay or bisexual in prisons or jails (9.3 and 6.2 percent, respectively). And those people are at a significantly higher risk of sexual assault when they are in a correctional facility.

A February 2017 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that 12.2 percent of sexual minorities reported being sexually victimized by another inmate and 5.4 percent reported being victimized by staff, compared with 1.2 and 2.1 percent of straight inmates, respectively.

Transgender people are by far the most vulnerable, with an estimated 35% of transgender inmates in federal prisons and 34% in local jails reported experiencing one or more incidences of sexual violence at the hands of staff or a fellow inmate, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 2015.

The U.S. government knew about the culture of rape and sexual abuse in prisons in the 1990s, but they failed to take the issue seriously. Lawmakers were particularly unmoved by reports of the victimization of female inmates. In fact, legal scholar Brenda V. Smith wrote in 2008 that PREA only got off the ground because of a concern among lawmakers and conservative groups that “innocent” white male prisoners would be victimized by more sophisticated inmates and would be exposed to HIV.

But after lobbying and rounds of revisions from groups across the political spectrum, Congress unanimously passed PREA in 2003. The Department of Justice spent nearly a decade studying the problem and began implementing regulations in May of 2012. Now, staff is trained to identify and prevent sexual assault, rape kits and counseling are provided to victims, and facilities have to pass audits or risk losing some federal funding.

“There’s the actual act itself, then there’s the federal PREA standards,” said Jen Sprafke, the assistant superintendent at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, where Sawyer was detained. Sprafke also served as the PREA Training Coordinator and PREA Director for the Vermont Department of Corrections, and trains corrections staff on working with LGBTQI inmates. “The PREA standards said you’ve got to come up with your way of doing it. These are some things you can’t do, so you better figure out what you can do.”

States got to work passing their own legislation and changing facility procedures. Among the changes were limits on cross-gender viewings and searches (who could conduct strip searches on whom), mandatory reporting of sexual assault, and procedures for what would happen if an assault was reported.

“It forced the conversation,” Sprafke added. “It didn’t set the rules, but it made states pay attention to the issue and come up with what they were going to do.”

In Vermont, the conversation led to a four-hour session on caring for queer people during the five-week training program for corrections officers. The training covers LGBTQI terminology, as well as expectations for how staff will treat LGBTQI inmates.“What we say at the beginning of the training is, this is not about changing someone’s mind,” Sprafke said. “People are allowed to believe what they want to believe. But this is the department’s understanding, this is the department’s set of definitions, and once we conclude this training, these are the words that we expect that folks will use.”

How PREA Affects Transgender Inmates

Dylen Hathaway, 36, was the first openly transgender man detained in the Vermont Department of Corrections. He first entered incarceration at the state’s women’s prison in 2003, where he remained until 2005. “They had no idea what to do with me,” he said.

Hathaway said it was determined that his testosterone prescription was not “medically necessary.” In those early years, he said, certain corrections officers would use she/her pronouns just to upset him. They used his dead name on purpose. He already struggled with self-harm, but the trauma of being misgendered and denied hormones worsened that behavior.

The second time Hathaway encountered the VDOC was for a few short months in 2013, and then a longer sentence beginning in 2013 and ending in 2015. By that time, PREA had gone into effect and Vermont had made significant strides towards protecting vulnerable groups.

This time, Hathaway was asked to fill out a form as soon as he was brought to Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. He provided his gender, sexuality, pronouns, preferred name and special accommodations he was requesting as a trans person. Hathaway said he requested men’s underwear and a separate shower time.

Both these requests came with consequences. Women’s underwear was provided to him for free, but he’d have to pay commissary for the same underwear that cis men inmates received automatically. And the separate shower meant every time he bathed, Hathaway was singled out. His pronouns were mostly respected this time, but when the logistics of his shower proved especially difficult, Hathaway said, certain officers would call him “princess.”

Like Ashley Sawyer, Hathaway found his sexuality policed. Hathaway had a consensual relationship with another trans inmate, and they did fool around, mostly in the shower. But on the other man’s last day in the prison, Hathaway recounted, the two men were showering in separate stalls. Like Sawyer, the two were thrown out of the shower. “We weren’t doing anything,” he said. “They just put him in the hole” – administrative segregation – “for hearsay.”

Sprafke, the assistant superintendent, said that separation following an allegation of what she called “sexualized behavior” is done on a case-by-case basis. “If somebody is moving, whether it’s out of a cell or out of a unit, the priority is always to move the alleged perpetrator.”

The challenge, though, according to Sprafke, is determining what consent looks like in a prison environment. “If two people engage in a sexual act and say that it was consensual, we don’t actually know that it was consensual, because there are power dynamics where we don’t know who’s strong-arming who. We don’t know if someone is getting something from someone. And so we have to assume, in all cases, that maybe the person isn’t saying it right now, but they’re going to say it later, that it’s non-consensual.”

A mental health worker in a Vermont correctional facility, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said that PREA has also been used to further target LGBTQ inmates. “There is no consensual sex under PREA,” this worker told me, “at least not in Vermont. In the most basic terms, inmates are considered property of the department, and they’re not entitled to make their own decisions about their sexual interactions.”

Sawyer said that when she left Chittenden in 2015, and even more recently according to women she speaks to in the facility currently, most guards don’t allow any touching, even platonic touch between inmates. “There’s no hand-holding, there’s no touching, there’s no hugging, there’s no nothing. … Do some officers allow it? Yeah. Do people do it anyway? Absolutely.”

Still, the mental health worker said that PREA standards and subsequent legislation had brought about significant positive changes. Sexual abuse reporting hotlines, a number that inmates can call to report abuse, has increased clarity about just how many sexual assaults occur in prisons. More people receive hormone treatment in the Department of Corrections, and have an easier time accessing things like gender-appropriate underwear. And many people in positions of authority in the DOC — particularly women and queer people — were actively advocating on behalf of queer inmates.

Moving Forward

Until 2015, case law in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which includes Vermont and a number of other states, stated that unwanted genital touching and verbal assault were morally reprehensible, but didn’t violate the Constitution.

“The courts look to evolving standards of decency to figure out what is cruel and unusual punishment,” said Gabriel Arkles, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. And the Second Circuit judges took PREA into consideration when they overturned the previous ruling, Boddie v. Schneider. “One way that PREA has been helpful, is shifting norms in the courts, and hopefully beyond that, around what can just be shrugged off and what is actually serious sexual violence that people can seek some sort of redress for.”

In essence, Arkles added, PREA would be excellent if it were thoroughly implemented and enforced. PREA regulations say that investigators aren’t supposed to assume the guards have any more credibility than prisoners, but that often doesn’t happen in practice. “Right now, it’s very often that when a guard assaults a prisoner, it’s just that prisoner’s word against the guard. If the prisoner’s word were taken seriously, and not as an attempt at manipulation or a lie, that could really shift things.”

The hard-fought gains in individual facilities, at the state level in the courts are under threat in the Trump administration. In May of this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ignored PREA when he advised the Bureau of Prisons to disregard a person’s gender identity and expression in determining placement and instead house trans inmates based on “biological sex.” Without clear guidance and moral leadership from the federal government, states have less incentive to protect their most vulnerable inmates.

Some Really Actually Good News: Obama Commutes Most of Incarcerated Trans Woman Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

With less than three days left in office, President Obama commuted much of Chelsea Manning’s remaining prison sentence. Manning is set to be freed in May 2017 instead of finishing her 35-year sentence which would have ended in 2045.

Manning, an army intelligence analyst, was convicted of a military leak in 2010 that shed light on abuses of detainees carried out by Iraqi military working with American forces and showed civilian deaths in the Iraq war were much higher than officials suggested, among other secret information. Manning made the files public in order to incite “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.” Wikileaks made the information known and was how the group came to prominence.

Prosecutors charged Manning with multiple counts of the Espionage Act as well as “aiding the enemy,” which later was dropped. Manning pleaded guilty to many of the charges brought against her in hopes for leniency in her sentencing but instead was met with the harshest punishment for a leak case.

“I take full and complete responsibility for my decision to disclose those materials to the public,” Manning wrote in her clemency application. “I have never made any excuses for what I did. I pleaded guilty without the protection of a plea agreement because I believed the military justice system would understand my motivation for the disclosure and sentence me fairly. I was wrong.”

She received a 35-year sentence and has been incarcerated at a male military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which has proved to be more tortuous punishment for Manning since coming out as a trans woman.

She endured solitary confinement for 11 months during her pretrial confinement at Quantico and then was denied treatment from the prison for her gender dysphoria even though military doctors diagnosed her since 2010. After the ACLU pressured the military to allow Manning to live her life as a woman, they only allowed Manning to take hormones, wear women’s undergarments and some makeup, but have not allowed her to grow her hair longer than the male military-standard haircut and have not given her access to a surgeon that she can talk to about possible bottom surgery. All these factors have made it extremely difficult for Manning to live her truth as a trans woman. In the past year alone, Manning has attempted to kill herself twice. To add insult to injury, she was punished for her suicide attempt in July with solitary confinement.

In November, Manning applied for clemency, desperately asking Obama to commute her sentence to time served so that way she has a chance to live. “I have spent almost all of my adult life either homeless, in the military or in prison,” she wrote. “I haven’t had the chance to live my life yet.”

Last week, NBC News reported that Manning was on Obama’s shortlist for commutation. As President, Obama is granted power under the US constitution to fully pardon individuals who have been convicted of crimes, or to commute their sentences. Since November when Manning applied for clemency, many have urged Obama to commute Manning’s sentence saying it would solidify his legacy as “standing up for trans people’s rights.”

“The Obama administration has done many commendable things to protect the rights of LGBTQ people, but in the case of Chelsea Manning they have systematically mistreated her and denied her access to medically recommended gender-related healthcare,” Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who represents Manning, told the Guardian. “Chelsea won’t survive another five years in prison, much less another 30.”

It’s still unclear how Obama’s decision may play out in regards to Wikileaks founder, accused rapist and seeming Russian hacking sympathizer Julian Assange, who has previously said he would allow himself to be extradited to the US where he would face prosecution if Obama granted Chelsea Manning clemency before his term ended. Currently Assange is “within the confines of the Ecuadorean embassy in London,” where he has sought political asylum for the past five years. At this time neither Assange nor Wikileaks have issued a statement.

As Friday fast approaches and our country’s impending doom under a Trump presidency will come to actualization, this was one of the last good things Obama could’ve done for us and for Chelsea Manning. He saved Chelsea Manning’s life and allowed her time to live, live, live — free from the confines of a male prison and out in the world as a trans woman. Credit goes to the trans citizens and activists who have worked tirelessly for Manning’s safety and freedom for many years now.

Finally Free! Four Wrongfully Convicted Latina Lesbians Cleared on All Charges by Texas Court

After two decades since they were accused of a crime they didn’t commit and languished in prison for more than a decade, four Latina lesbians from San Antonio are finally free. This morning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez were cleared on all charges and legally exonerated after being convicted of sexually assaulting two little girls in 1997.

“Those defendants have won the right to proclaim to the citizens of Texas that they did not commit a crime. That they are innocent. That they deserve to be exonerated. These women have carried that burden. They are innocent. And they are exonerated. This Court grants them the relief they seek,” wrote Judge David Newell in the court’s opinion.

Seven of the nine judges heard the case and they all agreed the women should get a new trial and five of them said they are innocent — a declaration that rarely happens in today’s criminal justice system and may lead to compensation for time spent in prison in the future.

The women were accused of sexually assaulting Ramirez’s two young nieces in 1994. Since then, the San Antonio Four have denied the accusations and proclaimed their innocence — they turned down plea bargains and even had to face solitary confinement while in prison because they refused to take part in the sex offender program. The women were tried and convicted in 1997 and were sent to prison in 2000.

In 2012, one of the girls recanted her testimony. In addition to her recantation, the forensics used against the women is now debunked science and is no longer used to indicate sexual abuse in young girls. Vasquez was released on parole in 2012 and the others were released on bond in 2013 but they all were still labeled sex offenders and had a record.

Their exoneration has been a years-long process and has happened with the help of many people and organizations who believed in the women including the Innocence Project. On Friday, I published an interview with Austin-based filmmaker Deborah Esquenazi to talk about her documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, which follows their story and had a huge role in helping the women become exonerated.

I’m so elated to hear that these women are finally cleared and can continue to live their lives to the fullest with their families. The San Antonio Four’s exoneration serves as a ray of hope in these dark times and reminds us to continue to fight like hell for justice.

You can catch Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four on Investigation Discovery on Sunday, Nov. 27 at 9 a.m. EST. 

Chelsea Manning is Missing, and Incarcerated Trans Women in Texas Are In Danger [UPDATED]

feature image via shutterstock

In the latest chilling news regarding incarcerated whistleblower and trans woman Chelsea Manning, Chelsea’s legal team says they’re unable to reach her, and have been since at least Oct 4th. She’s missed several planned calls, and family, friends and her legal team have not been able to contact her. They’re describing her as missing, an alarming development after her suicide attempt in July and subsequent sentencing to solitary confinement as punishment (she was sentenced to two weeks, but had one week suspended). As Jezebel says, “Military officials have not issued any statement explaining her whereabouts.”

https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/785176322792235008

SIXTH day of no calls from Chelsea. We *still* have *no idea* what is going on. We continue to be very worried. https://t.co/0ORLZdVHgS

— Chelsea Manning (@SaveManning) October 10, 2016

A few states away from Fort Leavenworth, KS, where Chelsea Manning is being held, another incarcerated trans woman is also in danger. The Texas Observer covered the case of Vanessa Gibson, a trans woman incarcerated in Gatesville, TX who “alleges that TDCJ’s refusal to provide her with gender confirmation surgery violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, because the procedure has been deemed medically necessary by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.” Gibson’s suit was dismissed. When the Observer article about the case was shared on Facebook, it received several comments from users who appear to be Texas Department of Criminal Justice correctional officers deriding Gibson, encouraging her to self-harm, and threatening violence to her.

A user named Dakota Hoffman posted a comment reading “Let the fucker suffer” on the article about Gibson. Hoffman’s profile identifies the user as a TDCJ corrections officer, and Hoffman’s account shared the story from the Facebook group Texas Correctional Employees – Huntsville. “One to the back of the head,” added another user, Francois Jean-Baptiste, whose account also self-identifies as belonging to a TDCJ corrections officer. In addition to identifying themselves as TDCJ employees in their Facebook profiles, Hoffman and Jean-Baptiste are listed under the job classification “Corrections Officer III” in the Texas Tribune’s database of state employee salaries.

A spokesman for the TCDJ says that this behavior isn’t indicative of a systemic issue with treatment of trans women in Texas prisons — even though at least two other trans women incarcerated in Texas, Taylor Hearne and Passion Star, have petitions or lawsuits in place alleging that correctional officers have deliberately ignored threats of violence and sexual assault against them and retaliated when they objected to being strip-searched in front of men.

“She has filed dozens of grievances, complaints and requests to be placed in safekeeping, but instead of taking measures to protect her, TDCJ officials have told her to ‘suck dick,’ ‘fight’ or to stop ‘acting gay’ if she does not want to be assaulted,”according to the LGBT civil rights group Lambda Legal, which is representing Star in the lawsuit.

Chelsea Manning is a high-profile prisoner whose case has made headlines for years; most Americans will never know the names of Vanessa Gibson, Taylor Hearne, or Passion Star. But their harrowing treatment at the hands of the prison system continue to show us clearly how dangerous incarceration is for trans women — who, despite OITNB, are almost always housed with men — and how crucial it is for those of us outside the prison to maintain pressure on the criminal justice system for their safety and humanity.

UPDATE: Chelsea Manning’s lawyer reported that she has been located. She was in “disciplinary segregation” (code for solitary confinement).

We spoke to Chelsea.She had been in disciplinary segregation. Now out and ok. She thanks all for love and support.We will monitor situation.

— Nancy Hollander (@jujitsulawyer) October 11, 2016

Chelsea Manning Ends Hunger Strike, Makes History as Army Says She Can Access Transition-Related Care

feature image via torbakhopper

On September 9th, incarcerated people around the US began the largest organized political action by prisoners in US history with a general work strike. Chelsea Manning, imprisoned for 35 years by the US military for violating the Espionage Act by leaking military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, began a hunger strike. She shared that her suicide attempt earlier this year was driven by lack of treatment for her gender dysphoria, and she declared a hunger strike until she received the medical treatment she was due.

“Today, I have decided that I am no longer going to be bullied by this prison—or by anyone within the U.S. government. I have asked for nothing but the dignity and respect—that I once actually believed would be provided for—afforded to any living human being.”
“I do not believe that this should be dependent on any arbitrary factors—whether you are cisgender or transgender; service member or civilian, citizen or non-citizen. In response to virtually every request, I have been granted limited, if any, dignity and respect—just more pain and anguish.”
“I am no longer asking. Now, I am demanding. As of 12:01 am Central Daylight Time on September 9, 2016, and until I am given minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity, I shall—refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten my hair in any way; consume any food or drink voluntarily, except for water and currently prescribed medications; and comply with all rules, regulations, laws, and orders that are not related to the two things I have mentioned.”

Now, Manning’s hunger strike has ended; Army officials have reportedly told Manning that she can receive gender affirmation surgery, and her lawyers say she was “shown a treatment plan that included information about surgery and the medical team necessary to move forward with that surgery.” She will also be allowed to wear her hair long, as is her preference, although allegedly she will be forced to keep cutting it until her gender affirmations surgery, and can only wear it long afterwards. All of this information is only coming through Manning’s lawyers, as the army has refused to confirm or comment directly on the decision.

Manning’s statement was of relief, and also frustration at the lengths she was forced to go to to obtain medical treatment:

“I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted — for them to let me be me. But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long. Also, why were such drastic measures needed? The surgery was recommended back in April 2016. The recommendations for my hair length were back in 2014.”

Although the military’s communication with Manning is good news, there are still concerns and challenges ahead. It’s not clear how quickly the army will move on Manning’s treatment plan; there’s no way to know when her surgery might actually occur, and as Manning told Vice, “Until then, I must live with the humiliation and pain.” As Vice points out, transgender inmate Shiloh Quine was granted a lawsuit settlement involving the state of California paying for her gender confirmation surgery over a year ago; she’s still waiting on it.

Manning also still faces potential charges related to her recent suicide attempt; she’s scheduled for a hearing on Sept. 20 to discuss whether her attempting suicide should be classified as “misconduct,” for which she would be punished, with the possibility of solitary confinement. Even with the possibility of appropriate medical treatment on the horizon, Chelsea Manning still faces harmful and dehumanizing treatment as an incarcerated person.

Unending relief: .mil does right thing; just let me be me https://t.co/wO8Nf1xwMx #hungerstrike (Still being charged w/ suicide attempt)

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) September 13, 2016

Although questions still remain about when and how Manning’s gender affirmation surgery will proceed, this decision by the military remains a very important precedent. No US prison inmate has ever received gender affirmation surgery while incarcerated; Flor Bermudez of the Transgender Law Center told ABC that she hopes other prisons will become more likely to grant trans prisoners the same access to treatment.

“We hope that this is an example for other jurisdictions, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who are currently drafting medical guidelines and transgender-specific placement policies, to issue policies that allow for this medical treatment to be available,” Bermudez said. “We have been arguing that it is constitutionally required…. The Transgender Law Center supports the advocacy that has been done on behalf of Chelsea, because the military has been trying to prosecute her for an attempted suicide, which is specifically a symptom of their own causing,” Bermudez said.

Chelsea Manning’s legal team is continuing to pursue the issue of Manning being allowed to wear her hair the way she prefers, and hope that “all charges related to her suicide attempt and the investigation that followed are dropped.” You can sign a petition asking that Manning not face charges related to her suicide attempt here.

Largest Prison Strike in US History Hopes to Expose Injustice and Suffering

by Rachel and Yvonne

Largest Prison Strike In US History Happening Today

Today, September 9th, is the date of the largest coordinated prison political action in US history, 45 years after the prison riot at Attica Correctional Facility for inmates’ rights. Across the US, incarcerated people at a wide range of prisons plan to stop working indefinitely. It’s a dangerous move for many of them — misbehavior or breaking rules in prison can result in added punishment and longer sentencing times, prolonging the same isolation, dehumanization and harmful treatment that’s being protested. The hope, however, that disruption in the prison workforce will disrupt the profitability of the prison-industrial complex, where incarcerated people work for little to no money to provide profit for huge corporations — and create pressure around the civil rights of prisoners. Sofie Louise Dam has a beautiful and comprehensive visual explanation at The Nib of the realities of the prison system in the US, history of political organizing in prison, why it matters, and why today is so important.

In Florida, prisoners organized on Thursday, in advance of the planned strike, with an uprising of 400 inmates. Prisoners “caused damage to nearly every dorm” to protest their treatment in a prison that’s been routinely criticized. From the Miami Herald:

Florida’s prison system, the third-largest in the country, has been dangerously understaffed for nearly a year, and several sieges have occurred in recent weeks. To further exacerbate tensions, many inmates have been in forced confinement in their dorms, allowed out only to eat because there isn’t even enough staff to guard them during outside recreation. Over the past two years, the Miami Herald has published a series of stories documenting the brutal or unexplained deaths of inmates in Florida prisons, a record number of use-of-force incidents and corruption by guards and top officers.

The incident was eventually brought to an end when guards used “canisters of chemicals” that were designed to “[make] it hard for the prisoners to breathe, the officer said.”

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Law & Order

+ California Governor Jerry Brown will decide if he will sign or veto a proposed bill that would end its statue of limitations on sexual assault. State Senator Connie M. Leyva authored the bill and it was supported by both parties. The current limitation on reporting sexual assault in the state is 10 years. If Brown signs, California will become the 17th state that has no limit when a survivor can report a sexual assault.

+ A 14-year-old girl shot a female classmate before fatally shooting herself at Alpine High School in West Texas. A federal agent was also shot when another responding officer accidentally discharged his gun. The gunshot victim and the officer are being treated at nearby hospitals. The motive is unknown at this time.

+ The Department of Justice found Texas is violating court orders by spreading misinformation about its illegal voter suppression law. The Associate Press reports: “Under an agreement reached last month, the state allocated $2.5 million to educate Texas voters on the new ID law modifications in time for the November election. But the federal government argues in a motion this week that the state is actually publicizing misinformation on its websites and educational and training materials.”

+ California Governor Jerry Brown has signed “ambitious” legislation aiming to combat climate change in his state, which will hopefully get emissions to “40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.”

+ Officials in Virginia are asking for a federal civil rights investigation at Hampton Roads Regional Jail; they want to know why inmates keep dying there, saying that there are “significant questions about the provision of medical care at this regional jail.”

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Police/Violence

+ A New Orleans man has been charged with a “hate crime” and other offenses for breaking a window at a French Quarter hotel and shouting racial slurs at arresting officers. According to the Times-Picayune, this is the first time Louisiana’s “blue lives matter” provision is being used to charge someone with a hate crime against police officers.

+ Darsean Kelly and another man were standing on the sidewalk minding their own business when Aurora, CO police told them to turn and put their hands behind their heads; reportedly police were responding to a call of a man threatening a child with a gun, but the caller didn’t give a description of the man, so there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why Darsean Kelly and his friend were assumed to be him. Kelly asked why he was being detained and told police officers “i know my rights,” before he was hit in the back with a stun gun, causing him to fall into the street. When Kelly was arrested, it was on the charge of “disorderly conduct for failing to obey a lawful order, and the officer wrote that he thought he might be reaching for a weapon.”

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University Policies

+ The University of Oregon has decided to remove the name of a former classics professor who was also a KKK leader from a campus building. The university president said it took “dialog, logic and research,” somehow, to determine “it would be inconsistent with our values to have a building named after an exalted cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan.”

+ A Harvard student wrote an anonymous op-ed about how the university failed her in multiple ways after she was raped by another student; one of the points she discusses is that Harvard’s health center doesn’t have rape kits stocked, and Rocky Mountain PBS found that “Of the top 100 colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2014, only four provide the exams in their student health centers. Twenty-two schools offer them at university-affiliated hospitals.” The Harvard student, and many others, had to travel to a separate hospital across the city to have a rape kit done (something which may not be feasible at a university that isn’t in a large US city with semi-reliable public transportation like Cambridge).

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Election 2016

+ Hillary Clinton has had a press conference! The topic was that it would be a very bad idea to elect Trump as President, for a lot of reasons. Not wrong!

Trump, she began is “temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be Commander in Chief.” And she pointed out that, once again, he spent his time in public praising Vladimir Putin: “Bizarrely, once again he praised Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin, even taking the astonishing step of suggesting he prefers the Russian president to our American president. That’s not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country and Commander in Chief, it is scary. It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do and then make excuses for him.”

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Grab Bag

+ Conservative leader and activist Phyllis Schlafly, 92, died on Monday. She spent most of her life fighting against LGBT equality and is considered one of history’s worst homophobes. Related: How Phyllis Schlafly’s Legacy Paved the Way for Today’s Ann Coulters

+ Prominent activist Darren Seals was found shot to death in a burning car on Wednesday night in Ferguson, Missouri. Police said they found Seals dead before 2 am about 12 miles from his home and only after the flames were extinguished. The 29-year-old assembly line worker and rapper became involved with activism in the area after Mike Brown was killed. Seals actively tweeted about politics and the Black Lives Matter movement and frequently disagreed with prominent Black Lives Matter leaders.

+ Amber Briggle, mother of an 8-year-old trans boy, invited Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to dinner with her family in order to advocate for transgender children impacted by discriminatory policies that Paxton defends. “We didn’t choose this fight, but when the politicians choose to use my child as a literal pawn in a pissing contest, I think any mama bear is going to stand up and do what she thinks is right,” Briggle told the Texas Standard last month. Paxton attended with his wife and learned some magic tricks from MG, Briggle’s son.

+ The CEO of the San Francisco 49ers has announced the the team will donate $1 million to “the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation, both of which make grants to grassroots organizations working on the ground.”

+ Protectors in North Dakota have been organizing direct actions consisting of chaining themselves to construction equipment this week. The latest, on Thursday, ended without arrest when rain fell and made it impossible for construction to continue for the day.

+ Airbnb, which has been consistently criticized for how consistently its users racially discriminate against customers, has announced new policies aimed at addressing the problem. In addition to reiterating to Airbnb property renters that they need to work with people “regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age,” they plan to de-emphasize user photos, so it’s harder to discriminate against someone based on visible markers of identity, and emphasize instant bookings, which don’t require host approval.

+ A study from the University of Chicago shows a higher likelihood of poor birth outcomes for women of Arab descent in the months following 9/11 — which can be linked to “stressful experiences,” like discrimination.

News Fix: What The Department of Justice’s Decision to Close Private Prisons Really Means

Justice Department Plans to End Private Prisons, But It Affects Only A Fraction of Inmates

The Department of Justice announced on Thursday they would end contracts with private prisons after their current contracts expire, noting that for-profit prisons do not provide the same level of safety and security as facilities operated by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision over a memo to officials instructing them to either decline or “substantially reduce” contracts with private prison contractors, with the goal of ultimately ending their use of private prisons.

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Yates wrote in the memo.

The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report that concluded private prisons had a higher rate of safety and security incidents than federal prisons. The private facilities had a higher rate of assaults — inmates on staff and inmates on other inmates — and had eight times as many contraband cellphones confiscated each year than federal prisons. The report also pointed out other problems with private prisons including “extensive property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer.”

Although many are lauding this significant announcement, it only affects a fraction of total inmates, many of whom are housed in state prisons, where the memo has absolutely no effect on them, even those privately run. In fact, the decision only affects 13 federal prisons currently operated by private contractors and some 22,000 prisoners.

In addition, this decision has no effect on the majority of federal private prisons which are run by the Department of Homeland Security who inhumanely and irresponsibly profits off of detained immigrants. For comparison, the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 200,000 individuals in custody last year while the DHS’s immigration and detention centers detain 400,000 individuals per year. According to a Center for American Progress report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement only operates 11 percent of the beds in 250 immigration detention centers while 62 percent of them are operated by for-profit prison corporations. (If you want to learn more about this industry and how corporations can get away with profiting over detaining immigrants, check out this documentary called Immigrants For Sale.)

Think Progress reports on the dire situation at immigration and detention centers:

Men, women and children packed into private immigration detention centers are often forced to sleep on cold floors or in bug-infested tents, sexually assaulted by guards, and go without edible food or other basic services. Many have even died because their medical needs went ignored, or because the conditions have re-traumatized them, driving them to suicide.

Despite the many reports of human rights violations, ICE has failed to investigate these prisons and continues to renew contracts — even as the DOJ admits that egregious abuses in private prisons have prompted their decision to stop using them.

In fact, the ink is still drying on ICE’s new contract to pay CCA $1 billion to jail women and children seeking asylum in the U.S. for at least four more years.

Yates said the Justice Department would review the contracts of the private prisons as they come up for renewal, which all will come up within the next five years. Despite this decision only affecting 12 percent of the federal prison inmate population, it seems it could push for more change within prison systems including ICE’s contracts with private prisons.

Since the DOJ announced their decision, the two largest private prison companies GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America took a dip in the stock market — a really small blow compared to their incredible financial and lobbying power. They, of course, aren’t going down without a fight. The two companies released statements decrying the Justice Department report and their decision.

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Law & Order

+ In 2015, five Chinese feminists were arrested for planning a public rally against sexual harassment. Their human rights attorney, Wang Yu, was detained for over a year, charged with subversion of state power, and just “confessed” to her crimes shortly before her trial. It is generally believed that her public confession was coerced, potentially by torture, and scripted.

+ Chris Christie has signed into law legislation that punishes boycotts of Israel.

+ The Oceti Sakowin, indigenous people of the Dakotas, have been protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would run underneath their water supply and poison it if the pipeline were to break or leak as it ages. Now a federal court has issued a restraining order against the protesters, saying they can’t block construction.

+ Major health insurer Aetna, which is attempting to merge with other major insurer Humana despite concerns that it violates antitrust laws, will stop offering most of its plans under the Affordable Care Act, forcing its customers with Obamacare to pursue other insurance options.

+ A federal judge has blocked parts of an anti-abortion law in Florida that attempted to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. However, other parts of the law remain unobstructed, like a section that requires medical professionals administering abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, an unnecessary stipulation designed to reduce abortion access.

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Election 2016

+ In news that you probably weren’t expecting today, Donald Trump said he was sorry. For what exactly is unclear; at a rally in Charlotte, NC, Trump said “sometimes you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing… I have done that.” Well, he’s not wrong. It’s interesting that this move comes only a week or so after Trump warned the GOP that he would never “pivot” to gain more general support — and his overall campaign has been so vociferously harmful that saying he’s sorry for anything, ever looks like pivoting.

Perhaps relatedly, Paul Manafort, the campaign manager Trump hired in march to replace Corey Lewandowski, has resigned, in the same week that Trump announced he was hiring Breitbart’s Steve Bannon as his CEO. Rumors have said that Manfort essentially gave up at trying to steer Trump’s campaign weeks ago, and apparently now he’s giving up on it officially.

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Grab Bag

+ Alaskan Natives have lived in Shishmaref for 400 years; now they must leave it because climate change is causing the island it’s on to sink. The island has seen serious beach erosion and flooding for the past 40 years, and now the entire community will be forced to relocate.

+ The Egyptian Radio and Television Union has suspended eight TV anchors for being too overweight. They’re asked to go on diets during their suspension to work on more “appropriate appearances.”

Indiana Lost $60M After Passing Anti-Gay Law Last Year, Doesn’t Stop Them From Proposing New Ones This Year

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Impacted The State

+ A new study by Visit Indy, a tourism organization in Indianapolis, found the state may have lost up to $60 million in hotel profits, tax revenue and other economic benefits. The tourism group surveyed 12 out-of-state conventions and found they all decided against hosting their conventions in the state specifically because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allowed discrimination against LGBT people on religious grounds.

“The evidence of the disastrous consequences from Gov. Pence’s discriminatory RFRA flight last year is undeniable,” JoDee Winterhof, the senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Despite the profound economic damage they inflicted on the state last year, anti-LGBT lawmakers are so vehemently opposed to eequality that they are pushing for an even more catastrophic ‘Super RFRA’ this year.”

The “Super RFRA” will be debated tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee along with five other pieces of anti-gay legislation. While Gov. Mike Pence tried to fix the state law after a national outcry and clarified the legislation couldn’t be used to opt out of nondiscrimination protections, the new bill would allow anti-LGBT businesses to turn away LGBT customers.

Law & Order

+ David Fowler, head of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, filed a lawsuit to challenge how Tennessee is affected by the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage. He, along with several other ministers, asked Williamson County Clerk Elaine Anderson to stop issuing all marriage licenses until their lawsuit is settled. And to make matters embarrassingly worse, State Rep. Susan Lynn, along with 16 other Republican cosponsers, filed a resolution in the House to support the lawsuit. “I have dozens of sponsors, and the message of my resolution is clear,” she said. “We as a state have been violated, and we expect the doctrine of separation of powers and the principles of federalism reflected in our Constitution to be upheld.”

+ In super great news, a grand jury in Texas indicted two anti-abortion activists who shot undercover videos of Planned Parenthood that ignited a firestorm of anti-choice legislation and propaganda against the organization for allegedly making a profit off of selling fetus tissue. The grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing. David Daleiden, president of The Center for Medical Progress, and Sandra Merritt, the founder and CEO of BioMax were indicted for “tampering with a governmental record,” a second degree felony. Daleiden was also indicted for “prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs,” a Class A misdemeanor.

Police & Prison

+ President Obama announced a series of executive actions banning solitary confinement for juveniles in the federal prison system and as punishment for prisoners who commit “low-level infractions.” The new rules also state that the longest a prisoner can be punished with solitary confinement for their first offense is up to 60 days and not a whole year like it is currently.

+ Air Force veteran Anthony Hill was naked and unarmed when DeKalb County police officer Robert Olsen shot and killed him near his apartment outside of Atlanta. A grand jury indicted Olsen on six counts including murder. 27-year-old Hill was experiencing a breakdown after he stopped taking his medication to treat bipolar disorder and PTSD. Think Progress reports:

According to a Washington Post investigation, Hill was one of more than 120 people with mental illness killed by police in 2015, making up a quarter of all people shot and killed by law enforcement last year. As with Hill, officers in most cases were not responding to someone reporting a crime, but rather a relative, neighbor, or bystanders calling for help dealing with a mentally fragile person behaving erratically.
One of the many banners supporters held outside the courthouse on Thursday read, “Mental illness is not a crime.”

Undocumented Immigrants

+ As many as 1,000 undocumented immigrants living in Flint aren’t getting the help they need during this water crisis because they’re too scared to go to water distribution centers because they don’t have proper identification.

+ Musicians/singers Juanes and John Legend performed outside an Arizona detention center for activists and detainee’s families after touring the jail, in an effort to draw attention to immigration and mass incarceration.

+ Latino Rebels launched their #MIGRAMAP to help track ICE raids across the country. “The collaborative project aims to gather data from and for our community’s needs and will capture the official and unofficial national story of these ICE raids. This will give everyone the opportunity to fight for undocumented people in their local community.”

International News

+ As one of his last acts in office, Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva vetoed legislation allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. He said the issue should be subjected to a public debate since it’s a “sensitive social topic.” Cavaco Silva’s term is up on March 9 and will be turned over to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

+ Four people were killed in a school shooting in a small town in Canada on Friday. An unidentified male was taken into police custody. The shooting happened at La Lonche Community School in northern Saskatchewan, which has about 900 students ranging in age from kindergarteners to high school seniors.

+ J-FLAG, a Jamaican LGBT organization, surveyed a few hundred queer people from the island and found that 75 percent of respondents have considered emigrating from Jamaica, a country with strict laws against LGBT people. Many of the respondents also experienced widespread harassment and discrimination but didn’t report it to the police because they thought the police would take no action, the incident was minor, or they feared a homophobic or transphobic response from authorities. They found 71 percent of gay men, 59 percent of lesbians, 35 percent of bisexuals, and 29 of trans people said they were harassed or faced discrimination.

+Orashia Edwards, a bisexual man from Jamaica was finally granted refugee status and can stay in the UK after fighting for three years. 

Sports!

+ Trans athletes don’t have to get bottom surgery to compete in sports in accordance with their gender under new guidelines that will be adopted by the International Olympic Committee, according to OutSports. The IOC hasn’t officially announced the guidelines but OutSports reports the IOC met in November and will most likely adopt the new rules before this summer’s Olympics. “To require surgical anatomical changes as a pre-condition to participation is not necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights,” the guidelines state. According to the new guidelines, a trans woman would be able to participate in women’s events one year after hormone therapy instead of having to get bottom surgery and be on hormone therapy for two years as the rules are now.

+ The Edmonton Oilers of the Canadian National Hockey League wrapped their sticks in Pride Tape to show their support LGBT inclusivity and diversity.

5-Year-Old Girl Has Two Moms, Is Therefore Barred From Her School

+ A five-year-old girl was barred from returning to her private Christian school because she has two moms. The girl attended Mt. Erie Christian Academy in San Diego for pre-school and summer school and just days before school started in September, her parents — Sheena, a stay-at-home mom and Lashaune, who is in the Navy — were summoned into the pastor’s office where they were told they weren’t welcomed at the school anymore.

San Diego TV station KGTV reports the school cites an admission policy document to justify their action:

“On those occasions in which the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home is counter to or in opposition to the biblical lifestyle that the school teaches, the school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, living in, condoning or supporting sexual immorality; practicing homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity; promoting such practices; or otherwise having the inability to support the moral principles of the school”

The mothers are looking for an attorney to file a civil rights lawsuit. The school is private and doesn’t receive any federal funding, so it’s within its rights to discriminate against LGBT people, says San Diego attorney Eugene Iredale, who spoke with KGTV.

+ Today is #PinkOut Day, which is being held to support Planned Parenthood. There are events happening all around the nation and PP health centers are offering free STD testing in 28 cities. Check out what is happening in your city and how you can support Planned Parenthood.

+ Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina still stands by her inaccurate descriptions of Planned Parenthood videos while on Meet the Press even though the videos have been debunked.

+ Gaia Vince, a journalist based in London, was named the winner of the 2015 Royal Society Winton prize for Science Books for her work on her book Adventures in the Anthropocene: a Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. This is the first time a woman write wins the prestigious prize in its 28-year history.

+ Michelle Obama introduced a new campaign called 62 Million Girls which focuses on girls’ education at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival. “Right now 62 million girls are not in school… they deserve the same chances to get an education as my daughters and your daughters,” she told the audience.

#62MillionGirls do not have access to education. Share a photo & what you learned in school: http://t.co/A4AkZqxAuLhttps://t.co/LuDF85C8FC

— First Lady- Archived (@FLOTUS44) September 27, 2015

+ Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave a speech at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in which she spoke about the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and remarked on how the Civil Rights Act made progress but not nearly enough when it comes to structural racism. She also said violence against Black people hasn’t disappeared, citing the deaths of Black people at the hands of police.

“None of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets. This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.”

+ In a first, a transgender woman won a legal victory under the Prison Rape Elimination Act and received $5,000 in damages for the violation of her rights while she was in a Maryland prison. In August, Judge Denise Oakes Shaffer ruled that Sandy Brown’s rights were violated when she was placed in solitary confinement for 66 days, taunted by guards who sexually harassed her while she showered and who told her to commit suicide, according to the AP. She was also strip-searched by both a female officer and a male officer upon arriving Patuxent Institution, a temporary mental health facility for prisoners. All of these offenses are in violation of PREA regulations. As a result of the suit and Shaffer’s ruling, Maryland correctional facilities have initiated policy changes for the treatment of transgender inmates which includes a policy where trans inmates choose the gender of the officer who searches them and that “officers will undergo training within the federal law and PREA’s mandates to ensure affirmative, respectful engagement with transgender individuals.”

+ A group of “anti-gentrification activists” called “Fuck Parade” attacked a cereal cafe in East London on Saturday. The owners and staff of Cereal Killer Cafe said they had to barricade themselves inside the cafe while the protesters wrote “scum” on their windows. The Fuck Parade marched through the low-income neighborhood of Shoreditch where the luxurious cereal cafe, which sells expensive cereal by the bowl, is located. The activists were trying to call attention to the gentrification of the area that is, as one protester put it, “destroying the lives and demolishing the homes of some of London’s most vulnerable people.”

+ In a speech at a New York fundraiser, President Obama dismissed Republicans opposed to same-sex marriage, saying they’re living in another era and that the conversation has moved on from equal marriage rights.

+ While filming in the street, Sarah Teale, a BBC TV reporter, was harassed by a man while reporting on street harassment.

GBT Pods Won’t Keep Trans and Queer People in Immigration Detention Safe

Christina Lopez is an undocumented Peruvian trans woman being held in a “GBT pod” in the immigration detention center in Santa Ana, California. She needs medication for Hepatitis C, but after repeated requests, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to deny her access to them.

Lopez’s medical crisis is the latest in the ongoing denial of basic needs for trans women and other LGBTQI people in immigration detention. Hers is one of many cases which are leading LGBTQI activists across the country to demand freedom for LGBTQI people from immigration detention.

Earlier this summer, ICE released a memo announcing a shift in policy that moved towards creating different options for transgender women who have been detained in men’s detention facilities, even suggesting that there was a possibility that trans women could be held in women’s detention centers. Getting trans women out of men’s detention centers is an obvious win – it’s well-known that trans women face major amounts of sexual violence in detention centers, and it’s inherently transmisogynistic to keep trans women locked up with men in the first place.

Since the memo was released, however, it has become clear that this means the creation of new spaces called “GBT pods” in detention centers, specifically for trans women and gay and bisexual men. Lopez is housed in a GBT pod, and her case illuminates that they are not a viable alternative. “It’s been shown that ICE isn’t capable of caring for folks in general, but especially trans women. So that includes medical neglect, sexual assault by peers and sexual assault by guards,” said Jamila Hammami, Executive Director of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP), which supports detained and formerly detained immigrants in New York.

The only way for LGBTQI immigrants to be safe is for them to be released from immigration detention.

Jennicet Gutiérrez, an organizer with Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement, publicly called on President Obama earlier this year to release transgender women from detention centers, and she said stories she had heard from undocumented trans women who had been in detention centers inspired her to speak out. She told Autostraddle, “With the mistreatment, the lack of medical care, and the horrible stories I heard when I spoke to undocumented trans women who were released from detention centers… To me it was very critical at that moment to raise my voice on behalf of the undocumented trans and queer LGBTQ community.”

“They treat us badly either way”

The theory behind GBT pods is that, since the people detained there will not be with the general population, and the guards will have special “sensitivity” training, they will be safe. But GBT pods are not a new concept, and they don’t have a track record that lives up to their claims of safety. The staff at the Santa Ana GBT pod, which has existed for several years, have been reported to have told detained trans women to “act male” or use their “male voice.” The same investigation by CIVIC found that women in the facility were frequently subject to full body cavity searches, often by male guards.

The ICE memo issued earlier this summer reiterated the need for proper training for those entrusted with the care of transgender women, however, there is little guarantee this will happen, or that if it does happen, it will be effective or administered with comprehensive oversight. Santa Ana’s GBT pod isn’t the only one with a spotty record. Around the country GBT pods, “alternative lifestyle tanks,” and other special units for GBT people have each found their own special ways to exclude, isolate and abuse GBT inmates. It’s all but impossible to find a story where GBT people haven’t been subject to harassment and abuse, whether or not they are in a special section, whether or not their guards have been “trained” on caring for GBT inmates.

So far, the public information about where GBT pods will be is limited. Reports from Hammami and Rita*, a currently detained trans woman seeking asylum, who was recently moved to Santa Ana, suggest that they’ve expanded the number of people at the GBT pod in Santa Ana. There is also a “makeshift” GBT pod in the detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It seems that there is a larger GBT pod on track to open in Adelanto, California, which is about an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles. This has bad implications for people who will be detained there, as Adelanto is notorious for subpar medical care, and it is owned by a private company, which also makes for less transparency and accountability when it comes to conditions and compliance with ICE policy.

Rita wrote to me about her experience in the men’s detention center in Eloy, Arizona, and then in the GBT pod in Santa Ana. At Eloy, she was sexually assaulted on multiple occasions by guards. She was finally transferred to the GBT pod in Santa Ana, California this summer, but it is unclear if her transfer was a result of new ICE policy or because of action Rita took on her own behalf to demand her transfer. “Here we are only trans women… they are bringing more trans women from other detention centers and I think that’s good,” Rita told me. But she also said there seemed to be little concern over the fact that LGBTQI immigrants are considered vulnerable, confirming the continued practice of full body cavity searches. “They treat us badly either way, and without conscience,” she wrote.

“Support makes a difference”

In late August, activists and organizers from across the US and Canada came together at the second Queering Immigration conference, put on by QDEP. Groups included Mariposas sin Fronteras from Tucson, Arcoiris Liberation Team and Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project from Phoenix, Immigration Equality, Detention Watch Network, United We Dream, and Mason Dreamers, all of which work with the undocumented community in different ways. Connected to the conference, QDEP organized an action outside ICE Headquarters in New York City, demanding an end to GBT pods.

Several of the people who spoke at the rally shared about their experiences in detention. One speaker stressed the urgency and timeliness of the protest, pointing out that ICE is actively developing policy and protocol around detaining LGBTQI people.

The action called on ICE to release all LGBTQI immigrants from detention, echoing the calls from the Free Nicoll Week of Action earlier this year, as well as Gutierrez’s call to the president. This demand is directed at ICE and the president because immigrants are detained at the discretion of policy they create and enforce. Immigration detention is not the same as prison – people are held there not as a part of a sentence for a crime, but in order to contain them while their immigration cases are determined.

Also at the conference, Karolina and Joselyn, two trans Latina activists who work with QDEP and Mariposas Sin Fronteras, spoke about their experiences and gave tips to what would be actually helpful to trans women who have been or are currently detained. These ideas included helping people access basic needs, like housing, food and healthcare, raising money for bail funds, and visiting or sending letters to incarcerated LGBT people.

Karolina and Joselyn’s discussion painted a broader picture of the needs for undocumented queer and trans people – getting them out of detention is a huge and critical step, but making sure their basic needs are met outside of detention is a fight unto itself. Karolina and Josselyn discussed facing discrimination in their job searches, housing challenges and healthcare. Healthcare is a huge battle for undocumented queer and trans people. Trans and queer citizens and legal residents face huge barriers in the US healthcare system to begin with. Undocumented people are additionally excluded from government-funded healthcare programs like Medicaid, and can also be put at risk for deportation in hospitals and doctors’ offices, like we saw last week when Blanca Borrego was arrested at her gynecologist’s office after the office staff called the police because of her ID.

Gutiérrez also discussed the challenges facing trans women upon their release from detention centers:

“People are released from detention centers and there are very few resources we have at the moment. …When one of our sisters is released and she doesn’t have any family support, we come together as a community and we try to help them get back on their feet and reintegrate into society. But this is an issue that organizations have been working on throughout the US for the past two to three years. It’s nothing new.”

Many local groups do outreach through direct visitation and letter writing with people in detention centers. Gutiérrez spoke to the importance of that support: “That support makes a difference. I spoke to Jimela, who was in detention for about six months… she opened up about how much it gave her hope [to have someone reach out to her] and helped her feel really really good.”

But ultimately, Gutiérrez said, “I think one of the biggest things is to put pressure on [ICE] to release them.”

To get Christina Lopez the care she needs, Familia TQLM, Not1More Deportation, and GetEQUAL have organized a petition for her release. Their work continues alongside other groups organizing across the country, both to support detained LGBTQI immigrants and those who have been recently released, and to pressure ICE to end LGBTQI detention.

*Note: To protect her privacy and safety while she is detained and her case is open, Rita’s name has been changed. Rita’s words have also been translated from Spanish — special thanks to Audrey for helping with translation.

Daily Fix: Undocumented Woman Arrested at Doctor’s Office and More News Stories

Who Has Been Personally Victimized by Kim Davis

+ Alright, folks; for the past several weeks Kim Davis has been in these news roundups, so here’s hoping this is the last update I write about her but who knows when this shitshow is gonna officially end. Without further ado: Kim Davis went back to work, after being in jail for five days for continually refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Rowan County in Kentucky. She said she will take no action against the deputies who are actually abiding by the law and a judge’s orders to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and stresses they can only issue them if her name and title aren’t on the documents. She still continues to refuse to issue the licenses herself. It’s unclear whether licenses issued without the clerk’s name and title are valid.

+ The Miss America pageant aired this weekend and some contestants took some surprising stances during the question and answer portion. Miss Mississippi, Hannah Roberts, was given a question about Kim Davis and whether issuing same-sex marriage licenses violates her religious freedom. Roberts firmly believed it didn’t violate her religious freedom and instead Davis was violating the law. Miss Tennessee, Hannah Robison, was asked if Planned Parenthood should be defunded and she answered no because the funding goes to all kinds of necessary women’s health care.

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Sports!

+ Casey Stoney, Arsenal soccer player and former England captain, talked to the Telegraph about coming out and being a parent with her partner Megan Harris. She also talked about donating her eggs. “I think it’s a great thing if you can enable people to have a family,” Stoney said. “I want to donate my eggs one day. I think more people should come forward and donate. Everyone should have a right to have a family.”

https://twitter.com/CaseyStoney/status/628316146845007872/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

+ April Gross, a four-year member of Kent State’s football team, kicked an extra point in the first half in a win over Delaware State on Saturday, making her the second woman to score in a major college football game.

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Law & Order

+ The San Francisco jail is taking steps to house trans women with other women. Starting next month, inmates and the Sheriff’s Department will undergo education and training, including learning how to use proper pronouns and how to effectively stop harassment of trans inmates, which could help pave the way to integrate trans women with the rest of the population. “The high majority of municipal jails and prisons in this country make invisible, suppress or isolate inmates who are transgender,” Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said in a statement. “The driving reason is for their protection. However, this practice comes at a dehumanizing cost, often resulting in abuse and high recidivism rates due to in-custody and post-release neglect.” At the moment, San Francisco’s trans women are housed in a separate unit for their own protection. With the new plan, trans women may stay in a separate unit. If they want to be housed with other women inmates, they’ll go through a review process. The National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Transgender Law Center, TGI Justice Project and the Human Rights Commission worked with the sheriff to come up with this plan.

+ Blanca Borrego, an undocumented Mexican woman, was arrested in Houston after going to a women’s health clinic for her annual gynecological exam. She could face deportation. Borrego and her two daughters waited in the waiting room of the Northeast Women’s Healthcare clinic for nearly two hours when she was finally called into an exam room, where she was held until police arrived to arrest her. Clinic staff say Borrego, a first time patient at the clinic, used a fake ID when she was filling out her paperwork so they called authorities. According to Borrego’s attorney, she is now facing one felony count of “tampering with a government record” after authorities found a fake Social Security card in her purse. As of Friday, Borrego was still in Harris County jail with a $35,000 bond her family can’t afford. RH Reality Check points out Borrego’s arrest is a reminder of why many undocumented women, especially Latina women in Texas, struggle to get the health care they need because they fear going to the doctor.

“Blanca Borrego’s arrest — which took place in the middle of a visit to her doctor — is a tragic reminder of the ways our flawed immigration laws make it difficult for immigrant women and families to live with dignity and health,” Jessica González-Rojas, the executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), said in a statement provided to RH Reality Check. “When local law enforcement officials take it upon themselves to act as immigration enforcers, especially to such an aggressive extent, it creates an environment of fear and mistrust that can cost lives.”

+ In a unanimous verdict, a federal jury awarded $17 million to five women farmworkers who formerly worked for Moreno Farms packing plant in Florida after they endured sexual harassment by their employers. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit, two sons of the owner of Moreno Farms and a third male supervisor frequently sexually harassed women workers and threatened to fire them when they refused their sexual advances and rape. The five women rejected their advances and were subsequently fired.

+ In a very peculiar case, 25-year-old Gayle Newland, who was accused of pretending to be a man to get a female classmate into bed, was convicted of three counts of sexual assault. Newland told a jury the victim was a closeted lesbian and knew Newland was posing as a man. Newland admits to creating a fake Facebook profile under the name Kye Fortune in order to meet girls but denies she mislead the woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by Newland wearing a “prosthetic penis” while the woman wore a blindfold. Newland was charged with five counts of sexual assault between February and June 2013. The woman willingly wore a blindfold numerous times while with Newland because Kye Fortune told her he was recovering from a brain tumor and didn’t want her to see his scars. I mean, when it’s all laid out like this, it’s really weird how the woman didn’t know about this sooner:

“The court heard that the pair spent at least 100 hours together in person after striking up an intense online relationship over two years, and even became engaged. At each meeting, the complainant wore a blindfold, not just when they had sex but when they sunbathed or watched films together and even on one occasion when they went out in Kye’s car. The woman told the court she only uncovered the deception after ripping her blindfold off and seeing she had actually been having sex with Newland.”

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Grab Bag

+ On Monday, Florida started to replace the terms “bride” and “groom” with the gender-neutral term “spouse” on marriage licenses. Florida’s Bureau of Vital Statistics and Florida Department of Health also updated their forms to remove gendered language that only suggests a man and woman can marry.

+ Ethan Schmidt, a Delta State University professor was shot in the head and killed in his office on campus in Cleveland, Mississippi. Schmidt was a scholar and teacher of Native American history in the US and the history of interactions between European colonists and indigenous peoples. His colleague and a suspect in the murder, Shannon Lamb, killed himself. Earlier in the day, authorities were searching for him. He’s a suspect in another killing, that of his girlfriend Amy Prentiss, that happened earlier Monday morning 300 miles away.

Daily Fix: Officer Pepper Sprayed Black Lives Matter Activists After Their National Conference and More News Stories

This is the week’s news so far!

+ More than a thousand Black Lives Matter activists met in Cleveland, Ohio this weekend for The Movement for Black Lives National Convening, an inaugural national conference about systemic racism, police brutality and violence and intersecting issues like immigration, economic justice and LGBT issues. It took place at Cleveland State University.

As the conference ended on Sunday, a white transit police officer pepper-sprayed a crowd of Black Lives Matter activists who were protesting the arrest of a black 14-year-old. According to the Greater Cleveland regional transit authority, officers were taking the teen to the police station because he was drunk on a bus. After seeing the boy in the squad car, a large crowd of activists blocked the car and tried to get him out of it. The crowd was also chanting and demanding the boy be released. One of the officers began pepper spraying the crowd.  Law enforcement agencies responded, including the Cleveland Police, who are not affiliated with the transit officers. No arrests were made.

+ Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis announced that a committee of outside lawyers will investigate Sandra Bland’s death. The committee will be led by former prosecutors and defense attorneys Lewis White and Darrell Jordan. They’ll make recommendations on possible criminal charges to Mathis and if Mathis disagrees, the committee of lawyers has the authority to present their findings to the grand jury reviewing Bland’s death.

+ Sandra Bland’s autopsy and custodial death reports are now available to the public. The autopsy findings match the police’s story that she hung herself.

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+ Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco will be the first to offer a LGBT high school history class. It will cover pivotal moments in LGBT history including the Stonewall riots, the AIDS crisis and the legal battle for marriage equality. The college prep class was approved by the University of California, qualifying it for the UC system.

+ The Boy Scouts of America made it official and lifted the ban on gay and bisexual adult leaders and volunteers, but will allow local chapters to set their own policies for adult leaders and volunteers. The BSA’s national executive board ratified the resolution yesterday after it received unanimous support from the executive committee when they met on July 10. The decision is a baby step in the right direction but not enough, since local troops — of which 70% are sponsored by faith-based organizations, many with anti-gay beliefs, according to The Advocate — can refuse to let gay people work with them.

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+ Meagan Taylor, a black trans woman who was profiled by hotel staff and police as a sex worker, was released from Polk County Jail in Des Moines last Wednesday.

+ Rexdale Henry, a 53-year-old Native activist was found dead in the Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a day after Sandra Bland was found dead in hers. He was arrested for failure to pay a traffic citation. Officials haven’t publicly released his cause of death but Henry’s friends and family sought an independent autopsy. His body was flown to Florida for a private autopsy that was funded by anonymous donors.

+ Ralkina Jones, a 37-year-old Cleveland woman, died in a Cleveland Heights jail cell on Sunday. She was arrested on Friday and charged with assault, domestic violence, endangering a child and criminal mischief. According to police, she broke her ex-husband’s car window and tried to break his windshield with a tire iron. Jones hit her ex-husband on his arm before getting into her car and almost running him and his friend over, while her 12-year-old son was in the backseat of the car. Police say she was “lethargic” when they checked on her in jail. She was taken to the hospital Saturday evening and was given medication for a prior health condition and later returned to the jail. She was found dead early Sunday morning. An autopsy was scheduled to happen yesterday.

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+ KC Haggard, a 66-year-old trans woman, was stabbed to death on the street in Fresno, California last Friday, making her the 11th trans woman murdered this year. The news comes a few short days after India Clarke, a young black trans woman, was found dead in Florida. KC was fatally stabbed in the neck early Thursday morning by someone in the front passenger seat in a light-colored Saturn SUV. The stabbing was captured by a local tattoo shop’s security camera and in it you can see the passenger beckoning KC to the window and striking her as soon as she leaned into the window. The SUV quickly sped off after they struck KC. She was left on the street for 2o minutes before someone called paramedics. Police are investigating this as a homicide and are still looking for the suspects. Karen Adell Scot, executive director of TransCare organized a vigil for KC last week at the spot where she was killed. A second vigil to memorialize KC is tentatively scheduled for Thursday at the Fresno LGBT Community Center.

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+ On Friday, a federal judge in California ruled that the detention of undocumented mothers and children is a violation of a 1997 court settlement and they should be released immediately. The 1997 Flores agreement set guidelines for holding minors in immigrant detention and mandates for them to be held in the “least restrictive setting” possible and to adopt a “general policy favoring release.” Immigration judges have begun to release women and their children without bond who were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

You Should Go or Help Other Humans Go to #QI2: the Queering Immigration Conference

The second Queering Immigration Conference is coming up on August 28th-30th in New York City! I will be there, reporting and learning. You can be there too, but even if you can’t come, you can still support it by donating to the solidarity travel fund to help get undocumented and formerly detained people there!

Queering Immigration is run by the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP), which provides all types of support to queer, trans and otherwise identifying LGBTQI folks coming out of immigration detention. The conference will create space for formerly detained and undocumented people to learn about legal issues, detention and survival strategies, as well as provide education to social workers, other social service providers and allies so they can better understand the lived experiences of undocumented LGBTQI people. Sessions will include workshops on detention, immigration law, case management, health justice and movement building. They will be led by community members, organization leaders, and representatives from government agencies like the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Office of NYC Council Member Daniel Dromm.

“A lot of folks have their own opinions and viewpoints of what immigration looks like,” QDEP Executive Director Jamila Hammami told Autostraddle. “I think if they came to this event they’d be able to see what trans and queer migration really looks like.”

Hammami also says that an important goal of the conference is to make connections between the LGBTQI immigrant rights movement and other movements. “We’re working really hard to unite the prison abolition movement and the immigration rights movement together. Black and Pink will be coming this year, and I’m really pumped about that,” she said, continuing,

“It’s so important to be linking our two movements… they are essentially the same thing: people profit from putting people in prison and from putting people in detention. It’s all racist and it’s all classist and it’s all transphobic and homophobic, so why don’t we work together? I’m really pumped to have those discussions with people who have maybe never even thought about that within the immigration movement. It’s going to be a very interesting introduction.”

Hammami also said the faith community will have a big role the conference:

“At QDEP, we’ve really included the faith-based community in our work. We’re very connected with it, and I know that that’s something that’s been really difficult for a lot of LGBTQI folks to wrap their head around. But we have several sessions being led by different faith leaders that are LGBTQI identified, themselves, or that are focused on providing services or helping other organizations move into being accepting of trans and queer folks.”

The state of things for trans and queer undocumented immigrants in the US has been in the news a lot lately. In the past month, Jennicet Gutierrez called on President Obama to release trans women from detention centers, calling attention to the sexual abuse trans women face when detained in men’s detention centers. Shortly after, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a new memo saying that trans women can now be detained in women’s facilities.

These are the most recent developments in years of organizing by trans and queer immigrant communities that have been impacted by the violence of the detention and deportation system. This violence, Hammami pointed out, has been identified by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees as an international issue. This conference will bring together people organizing and connected to the queer and trans undocumented community around the US and the world.

I am SO excited to be reporting at this conference, and I hope you will join me there and follow along at the hashtag #QI2!

When: 9AM on August 28th to 4PM on August 30th
Where: The New School in New York City

To register, click HERE. Scholarships and reduced rates are available for impacted community members and students.

If you can’t go but you want to support other people in going so that the conference is as amazing as possible and as accessible as possible to the communities most directly impacted by the issues that will be discussed, YOU CAN. Just go to the registration page, scroll down and put your donation in the additional contribution box, or follow the instructions on the page to contact Jamila.

News Fix: Supreme Court Backs Fair Housing Act and Affordable Care Act and More News Stories

SCOTUS Smackdown

+ This morning the Supreme Court ruled on two major cases: King et al. v. Burwell and Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, which concerned the Affordable Care Act and the Fair Housing Act respectively. Both are considered big left-wing wins. The decision in Burwell says that people who buy their health insurance through government exchanges are eligible for tax subsidies regardless of where they live, which means that over 6 million people who were at risk of losing subsidies to make sure they could afford coverage can now keep them. The decision in the Fair Housing Act case confirm that “disparate-impact claims,” or claims that a practice has an adverse impact against a specific group, are covered by the Fair Housing Act, even if the practice isn’t based in clearly discriminatory intent. A ruling about the cases concerning marriage equality will likely come tomorrow or Monday.

Aftermath of the Charleston Terror Attack

+ After an alarming uptick in sales of Confederate flags after the Charleston terror attack, several retailers, including Amazon, eBay and Etsy, have stopped selling it.

+ In addition to the murder charges against Dylann Roof, , the Justice Department will likely file federal hate crime charges. Federal prosecutors say they have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty against Roof.

+ A week after the Charleston terror attack, state Senator Clementa Pinckney has been laid to rest. Hundreds attended the service, which occurred as the Confederate flag continued to fly above South Carolina’s capitol.

Ann Shephard, 65, an African American Columbia resident stood in the 90-degree heat in black mourning clothes, sobbing as she held up a black parasol. “A cloud has been over me since this happened,” she said after the casket passed. “I look at it from every angle and it doesn’t make sense to me.”

+ At least two senators, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., are considering ways to push for more gun legislation in the aftermath of Charleston. Having tried to pass a background check bill after Sandy Hook that failed, they are now reportedly “open to exploring what is possible.”

Violence, Prison and Justice

+ New autopsy results on Freddie Gray sort of provide some answers but also sort of don’t clarify anything at all. The medical examiner finds that Gray died of a “high energy injury” inside the police van in which he was detained, and that it was sustained somewhere between the second and fourth stops of the five stops the van ultimately made.

+ One aspect of the prison system we don’t always discuss is how incarceration impacts voting rights; in the US, states can decide individually to restrict voting access to people depending upon their criminal histories in what’s called felony disenfranchisement. In some states, being convicted of a felony can mean that you lose your right to vote permanently. Previously, Virginia required those formerly convicted of felonies to pay off their outstanding court costs and fees before voting again, essentially paying to get their right to vote back; as of this week, that’s no longer the case in Virginia, which means that ex-felons can also now hold public office, serve on a jury, and/or serve as a notary public without having to pay.

+ Remember Marilyn Mosby, the Maryland state’s attorney who, sadly, made a kind of modern history when she announced she would seek justice and files charges against the officers responsible for Freddie Gray’s death? She’s now profiled in Vogue, and I would definitely recommend reading the whole thing.

“There have been decades of failed policies: zero tolerance and harassment and people being locked up for small crimes,” she says, “policies that drive a divide between communities and law enforcement. So many people feel like they are voiceless, that they’ve been dehumanized. What we saw in the riots is a result of that.”

+ Thanks to student activism, Columbia University has become the first US university to divest from private prisons.

Presidents Past, Future and Never

+ A new campaign video from Hillary Rodham-Clinton features same-sex couples in advance of the SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling announcement.

The two-and-a-half minute video, titled “Equal,” shows various same-sex couples in happy moments, including several who are in the course of exchanging vows for their wedding ceremonies. One the early clips in the video shows the same footage from Clinton’s campaign announcement video of Jared Milrad and Nathan Johnson, a Chicago same-sex couple who support Clinton and are planning to wed this summer.

+ Bobby Jindal joins the cast of GOP characters running for president. His announcement video has been described as “bizarre.”

LGBTQ-Specific News

+ Effective January 1, 2016, any insurance company that participates in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program has to provide transition-related coverage.

“The Office of Personnel Management’s action eliminating blanket trans exclusions represents a huge step toward ending one of the last remaining ways the federal government itself discriminates against transgender people,” according to National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling. “Until now, the federal government has been providing discriminatory healthcare plans to its trans employees. Transgender workers have been required to pay out of pocket to cover care deemed necessary by their doctor – often for services that are covered for non-transgender people.”

+ Buzzfeed speaks with several asylum seekers who left their home countries to escape homophobic violence only to be detained.

“They affect you in different ways because in Jamaica as a lesbian I was a complete person and being a lesbian was a small part of who I was that was challenging, as it impacted my survival. In the UK I was non-existent – the only part of me that mattered was the fact that I was a lesbian and it was being hung up in an arena that had already assumed I was lying and locked me up… If I had known how challenging it would be psychologically to claim asylum I wouldn’t have. And all the people I am close to that are now refugees, we have all said, given what you go through, we wouldn’t have claimed asylum. You have done nothing you would consider criminal but they strip your rights, your voice, your person.”

+ You may recall that a hyperbolic and terrifying referendum called the “Sodomite Suppression Act,” which advocated killing people who engaged in same-sex acts, was being championed by a scary minority in California. Thankfully, the measure has been thrown out.

+ The Stonewall Inn, historically gigantic for being the site of the riots that originated Pride celebrations in the US and, in many ways, the modern LGBT rights movement, has been designated a landmark in NYC, which means that it’s impossible for the bar (or at least the outside of it) to be changed without the permission of the Landmark Preservation Commission.

Miniature Sports Corner

+ Mo’ne Davis, the 13-year-old who is better than all of us, has been officially drafted by the Harlem Globetrotters. Although Davis is best known for pitching a shutout in the Little League World Series, basketball is her favorite sport; she’s now set to play with the Globetrotters anytime she wants after finishing college, although right now she’s donning the jersey of the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy varsity team.

+ Melissa Mayeux is a 16-year-old French shortstop who is very good at baseball, and technically there’s a chance she could be the first woman signed in major league baseball. She’s one of four people from all of France going to the MLB European Elite Camp, and is the first woman ever to be signed to MLB’s international registration list. I realize this is sort of toeing the line as far as what constitutes ‘news,’ but you’re reading the person who truly thought from the ages of 8 to maybe 12 that she was going to be the first female player for the Red Sox, so please let me have this.

Grab Bag

+ Gender neutral names for babies are reportedly rising in popularity.

+ An alarming case in England serves as a useful primer for the legal rights of everyone involved if one neighbor decides they have been cursed by their other neighbor, a witch.

+ A new report by the ACLU reveals that after the housing market collapse, the wealth gap between black and white Americans grew significantly, and that while white communities are generally able to rebound from the financial crisis, black communities aren’t recovering as well, for reasons that likely include discriminatory lending practices. The financial disparities could have repercussions that ripple through generations.

The ACLU study predicts that by 2031, the typical white household will have 4.5 times more wealth than its black counterpart. The forecasted $98,000 decrease in wealth per black family (versus wealth levels if the Great Recession hadn’t happened) would hamper their ability to secure their children’s future with things like home down payments, college tuition and an inheritance. And research shows that even when you control for the child’s income and education, parental wealth impacts the home equity value of their adult children—particularly for black families.

+ Jennicet Gutiérrez, a representative of FAMILIA TQLM, interrupted Obama at a White House reception to call his attention to the urgent issue of LGBT detainees facing deportation. “There is no pride in how LGBTQ and transgender immigrants are treated in this country. If the president wants to celebrate with us, he should release the LGBTQ immigrants locked up in detention centers immediately… The White House gets to make the decision whether it keeps us safe,” said Gutiérrez. She was met with frustration from Obama and Biden, and removed from the reception.