SRLP releases our 2020 Prisoner Advisory Committee calendar

Dear Beloved Community,

As we approach the end of a decade, we at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project are reflecting on our“What Would be Possible” campaign, as we envision our collective work for trans liberation centered in racial and economic justice and continue our work to uplift and bring visibility to the voices of our Prisoner Advisory Committee (PAC).

For almost 18 years, our commitment to providing direct legal services while organizing and pouring resources into directly impacted TGNCI communities has been the foundation of our work for trans liberation. Rooted in our abolitionist core values and mission, we at SRLP continue to center and commit to the work of protecting and building safety and self-determination for currently and formerly incarcerated TGNCI members.

While we also reflect and think of our organizational achievements and continue our critical work as abolitionists, we ground in the powerful collective work of our PAC through the many ways our communities resist cycles of oppression through their contributions. Early in the new year, we will be re-launching our groundbreaking report “It’s War In Here,” which documents the sexual violence and inhumane conditions of our incarcerated membership to better support policies, best practices and campaign goals that work to improve conditions of confinement and support our movement work as abolitionists to free our people.  You can read the 2007 report here.

I am extremely humbled, moved and proud by the brilliance of our PAC members. I continue to be enlightened, inspired and informed by their amazing contributions to our movement building work. In a recently letter to our PAC members, I wrote:

“I feel most strengthened and connected to you all in continuing the fight of our movement for trans liberation. You all have captured the radical transformative ways we work toempower and transcend through the many systems of injustices and cycles of oppression that attempt to bind us. My deepest hope is that our 2020 Prisoner Advisory Committee Calendar uplifts, heals, celebrates and amplifies your hearts, voices, and minds to overcome the many barriers that the state puts on you for solely existing.”

With love,

Kimberly McKenzie
Director of Outreach & Community Engagement

SRLP’s calendar is one of the important outcomes of our Prisoner Advisory Committee work, envisioned and produced in collaboration with incarcerated trans and gender non-conforming community members and allies on the outside. Even while existing under some of the most violent and isolating conditions, members of PAC continue to find ways to survive, resist, and break down physical barriers created to systemically divide our communities with powerful art and history.