SRLP is honored to share the following essay written by Brooke during our recent class at the Transgender Housing Unit of the NYC jails. This is a unit within the Rose M. Singer Women’s Jail which specifically houses transgender women. As it was SRLP’s first class since the THU moved from a men’s jail to […]
Archive | Everyday Abolition
Continuing the Fight for Trans Liberation
As our country celebrates the Fourth of July, a holiday that symbolizes freedom, we continue to see the ways in which our community is not free, especially members who are incarcerated throughout the country. Our members are confined, surveilled, and isolated on a constant basis, some even being forced into solitary confinement for long periods […]
Mother’s Day
What follows is an essay by SRLP PAC member Dana Gibson, aka Gee, reflecting on the memory of her mother. As we marked Mother’s Day and get ready to mark Father’s Day, it is so important we remember all those behind bars who cannot or do not have close family connections due to incarceration, transphobia, […]
Strength and Pride?
Below is an essay written by PAC member Dana Gibson, aka Gee. This essay contemplates what it means to survive while held in the torturous conditions of solitary confinement. To learn more about SRLP is fighting these conditions – and how you can help! – please visit our Ending Isolation campaign website. Strength and Pride? […]
SRLP Continues to Resist Against Violent Prison Conditions
In February, the NYC Board of Correction released an assessment of the Transgender Housing Unit (the THU) which can be found here.[1] The Board is a nine-person, non-judicial oversight body that regulates, monitors, and inspects the correctional facilities of the City. It is tasked with holding the Department of Corrections accountable for its implementation of […]
How Politicians Are Using Faux Progressive Arguments to Lock Up Young People
Dean Spade, Sylvia Rivera Law Project’s founder and member of our collective, wrote In In These Times about the ways in which the justification for expanding the carceral state and perpetuation of systemic racism is couched in progressive language. The push for new jails in Seattle in the name of racial justice and prison reform reveals why […]
Transformation from the Inside Out: SRLP Attends the Women’s Building Opening
Yesterday, SRLP Members and Staff attended the Women’s Building opening, “Transformation from the Inside Out”, at the former Bayview Women’s Correctional Facility in NYC, hosted by the Women and Justice Project. This historic opening symbolizes the importance of abolishing prisons and jails everywhere – the Bayview Facility opened in 1978, driven by racist War […]
Speak up against sexual violence at the Board of Corrections hearing
Thank you to those who came out to the membership meeting on Tuesday at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project to prepare for Board of Correction (BOC) hearing! We were so grateful to be able to listen to everyone’s innovative suggestions for making NYC jails safer for trans, gender non-conforming and intersex (TGNCI) folks. If you weren’t able […]
If You Give a Cop an Ally Cookie…
Since the tragedy in Orlando, police departments have been falling over themselves to proclaim that they are allies to the LGBT community, despite their historic and ongoing role as some of the worst perpetrators of violence against LGBT folks. Pride provided an opportunity for some outlandish displays of “allyship,” such as the NYPD’s introduction of […]
SRLP Members Help HALT Solitary in NYS Prisons
On any single day about 4,000 people are held in solitary confinement in New York State prisons. This is a fact that Marci, a member of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project’s Movement Building Team, knows all too well. Having survived solitary confinement herself, Marci is now joining a group of advocates on April 12 […]