Director of Outreach and Community Engagement
Kimberly Mckenzie is a black trans woman of color organizer and abolitionist with over 10 years of work experience in grassroots organizing for marginalized trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex communities. Currently as the Director of Outreach and Community Engagement at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Kimberly McKenzie is dedicated to empowering the leadership and political voices of marginalized trans communities filling many different leadership roles that focus on growing the self-advocacy skills, political education and sustainability of TGNCI community members of color facing poverty, violence, and discrimination. Kimberly Supports the mission of ending mass incarceration within the intersections of Woman, Race and Gender while building community resources.
She was also one of the many organizers who spoke on behalf of the JusticeforLayleen campaign to demand justice and accountability’s to the city’s placement of trans woman placed in solitary confinement at Rikers. And she is also a current member of the TGNCNBI taskforce to review the Department of Correction (DOC), ), policies related to TGNCNBI people in custody to ensure that the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) properly implements SRLP’s feedback and comments on the treatment of TGNC people. Kimberly is committed to creating long-term systemic solutions to end race- and gender based oppression. She believes that those who are directly impacted are experts on their lived-experience and must inform strategies and solutions to address our overall work to decriminalize, decarcerate, and liberate. While we work to change laws and policies we must also address the root causes of our conditions seeking to shift narratives and our relationships to power. As an abolitionist she also believes it is imperative to address the legal, systemic, institutional, interpersonal, internalized, and ideological barriers that the State has imposed to criminalize our communities. Because of her commitment to creating long-term solutions to end race- and gender based oppression, Kimberly is deeply dedicated to SRLP’s strength and sustainability. Dedicated to empowering the leadership and political voices of marginalized trans communities, Kimberly firmly believes that in order for TGNCI communities to contribute to the work of our liberation, they must be free from violence and discrimination. Kimberly continues to support and advocate for TGNCI communities in the broader work for social justice and long-term systemic change.
Her deepest hope is that we can advocate for our communities and the immediate support needed to our communities facing a multitude of oppression to find ways they can be inspired to overcome the many barriers the state puts on them for solely existing.
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