SRLP in the Media
Over the objections of lawyers for New York City, the opinion of a plaintiff's expert witness who refused to hand over data to the city on the basis of attorney-client privilege may be submitted in a suit brought by a transgender lesbian who claims her civil rights were violated during her arrest at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
In denying the city's request to preclude the testimony of Dean Spade, an assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law and a founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a civil rights organization, Southern District Magistrate Judge James Francis IV ruled last week that the information at issue was "plainly protected by the attorney-client privilege" and that the data sought by the city provided only a single basis for Mr. Spade's opinions.
Leading advocates for transgendered New Yorkers and a top official from the city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) announced that New York’s sprawling welfare bureaucracy is now prepared to implement best practices guidelines for working with gender-nonconforming clients —more than four years after the policy was worked out in principle and nearly eight years after enactment of a gender identity and expression nondiscrimination law.
From GritTV: Barack Obama made the first transgender political appointments that we know of recently–Amanda Simpson, appointed last week as senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security in the Commerce Department, and Dylan Orr, special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Labor Kathleen Martinez in the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor–but even David Letterman couldn’t resist making a crack at Simpson’s expense.
The “T” at the end of LGBT often seems like an afterthought, with transgender rights being excluded even when LGBT rights are approved. Today on GRITtv we talk to Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Naomi Clark of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and blogger at Feministe, and filmmaker Jules Rosskam of Against a Trans Narrative, featured on GRITtv last summer, about being transgender in the U.S. and how far we still have to go.
DCTC sent a letter today to the Governor and Attorney General of Maryland, asking them to stop the proposed changes we wrote about earlier to the MVA’s policy on changing the gender marker on state-issued ID’s.
Queers for Economic Justice held a national conference call to discuss 2009’s queer politial agenda as part of an ongoing monthly series on racial & economic justice issues that impact poor/low-income, people of color, disabled, LGBTQ communities.
Presenters included:
Nicky Grist, Alternatives to Marriage Project (Relationship recognition policy)
Robert Espinoza, Funders for LGBTQ Issues (Racial Equity in LGBT Philanthropy)
Karina Claudio, Gays and Lesbians of Bushwick Empowered (Trans Unemployment & Employment Non Discrimination Act)
Gabriel Arkles, Sylvia Rivera Law Project (Hate Crimes & Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act)
As a U.K. court moves to protect its MTF inmates from rape and assault, America’s transgender prisoners continue to suffer. Article features interview with SRLP Collective Members.
President Obama recently signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law -- expanding existing federal hate crimes laws to protect against assault based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability.
So why would the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a pioneering group that works on behalf of transgender, transsexual, intersex and other gender non-conforming people, oppose it?
Stefanie Rivera, SRLP Collective Member, Interpreter, and Prisoners' Rights Intern, reflects on the Transgender Day of Remembrance for the glaadBLOG.
The recent focus on “counter-terrorism” in law enforcement and government agencies has severely limited trans people’s freedom. In the name of the War on Terror, the U.S. government has increased restrictions on identity documents, which are necessary for trans and cis people to drive, fly, cross borders, or engage in many kinds of movement. Following September 11, the Bush administration asked all states to tighten laws about changing one’s gender marker on driver’s licenses. Additionally, according to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “in local jurisdictions, procedures for changing your name have been made more difficult.” Whether or not identity documents are as important for “national security” as the U.S. government has suggested, these policies unduly deny trans people access to various modes of transportation, since many trans people’s gender presentation will be in flux at one moment or another.
http://q4ej.org/welfare-warriors-organize-educateresearch-make-movies
...Miss Major, a Stonewall veteran and organizing director of Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) in California, Terry Boggis, Center Kids Director at the NYC LGBT Center, Mya Vasquez Trans Justice coordinator at Audre Lorde Project and Stephanie Rivera of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project all spoke to an audience of sixty about topics ranging from trans experiences in prisons, violence at the HRA office, and queer parenting to reproduction in the face of eugenics...
