SRLP in the Media
In recent years, we've witnessed an increase in media, legislative, and judicial activity surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage. It's an issue that has prominently featured images of upper-class, white, professional gay and lesbian couples. "Gay politics" has been defined most visibly as concerning whether couples like these can be legally recognized as co-parents, can inherit each other's wealth, and can share health benefits from each other's jobs.
While this sort of gay politics has been growing more visible, a different queer politics, focused on racial and economic justice and grassroots activism, has been growing stronger. Queer and trans people concerned about the growing wealth divide in the United States, the stagnation of wages, the increase in immigration enforcement and imprisonment, and the U.S. government's assault on poor people and people of color, both domestically and internationally, have been organizing. The activists and organizations leading this work have reframed queer politics and queer activism. They have declared that property rights associated with marriage and access to military service are not the greatest needs of the most vulnerable queer and trans people. They have been working on police brutality, welfare rights, immigration, health care access, foster care, criminalization, and other key issues facing queer and trans poor people and people of color.
Toilet Training 2-minute trailer
Criminal InJustice Kos is a weekly series devoted to exploring the myths of "crime", "criminals", and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/sexuality/age/disability in policing and punishment. Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system.
This week, they focused on the abuse of Trans prisoners, offering lots of excellent resources including links to resources created by SRLP. Check it out!
New Orleans' Black and transgender community members and advocates complain of rampant and systemic harassment and discrimination from the city's police force, including sexual violence and arrest without cause. Activists hope that public outrage at recent revelations of widespread police violence and corruption offer an opportunity to make changes in police behavior and practice.
A Wisconsin law banning transgender inmates from receiving taxpayer-funded hormone therapy in prison has been struck down. The ruling represents a substantial victory for the five transgender women (that is, women born with "male" genitalia who identify and live as female) who pressed the case, and for transgender inmates in general -- but experts stressed to Broadsheet that having access to hormone therapy is not the only serious issue facing incarcerated trans people.
Porno Bingo at PIECES bar raises money for LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations throughout the year. On St Patrick's Day 2010, SRLP was the beneficiary. Thanks to all who made this night an incredible success! Pix online here.
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.
