This week, Sasha Alexander, SRLP Director of Membership, joined the Empire State Pride Agenda for the kickoff of LGBT Health Month focusing on healthcare access issues for LGBT New Yorkers, and the new options available under the Affordable Care Act. Sasha represented SRLP at the LGBT Health Month press conference. Read SRLP’s statement below:
The brutality and harassment trans, gender non conforming, and intersex people are facing must end. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project will not stop until we have real access to affirming healthcare and services for all trans, intersex, and gender-non conforming people. SRLP is working to reduce the violence and harm that trans and gnc people experience from housing to education, employment to healthcare.
On the inside our Prisoner Advisory Committee works with us, as abolitionists, to end the prison industrial complex. In the PIC, community members deal with health issues like physical, sexual, and emotional violence, especially from the brutality of staff, the impacts of solitary confinement, and everything from not having access to gender-affirming clothing to being denied critical healthcare needs.
New York State’s proposed Medicaid regulation is an important step towards safe and affirming healthcare for trans people. However, as it stands, the new trans health regulation will not cover all of the life-saving surgeries or medical needs of our trans and gender nonconforming communities, particularly trans women, trans youth, low-income trans people, trans people in prison, and undocumented trans people.
In dismantling structures of oppression, the process is just as critical as the end goal, and we cannot model the state’s methods for creating “safety.” As it stands trans people are being murdered, suicide is rampant in our communities, and discrimination is an all too familiar experience. From immigration and detention, to the prison industrial complex, jails, and psychiatric institutions, the intersections of oppression are deeply embedded in our structures. Abolition means preventing harm, intervening, and working towards non-punitive accountability that puts the people most impacted at the center of decision making. Please join the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in working to uplift the leadership and success of low-income trans, gnc, and intersex peoples of color in our continued work.
Liberation is a collective process and we need each other.
Sasha and Olympia Alexander represent for SRLP in Albany for the kick off of LGBT Health month with Empire State Pride Agenda:
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