Director of Development and Finance

Maxwell Scales is a longtime SRLP supporter and volunteer who currently serves as the Director of Development, overseeing our institutional funding and daily financial operations. Born and raised in the South, Max has been living/learning/working in NYC for over 15 years. Max has a decade of experience as a professional fundraiser; prior to joining the SRLP staff, he did development work at Lambda Legal, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), focusing on events, planned giving, direct mail, and major gifts. He is a Certified Non-Profit Accounting Professional. Max is into intersectional lenses, wealth redistribution, and spreadsheet shortcuts.

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• Tel: 212-337-8550 x301

Director of Grassroots Fundraising & Communications

Ethan Lin is a longtime donor and supporter of SRLP who dreams of building a world in which all of us have access to resources that enable us to become the best version of ourselves. In his spare time, he enjoys running and dabbling in epistemology.

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• Tel: 212-337-8550 x300

Miasha Forbes is a Human Rights Activist, Community Leader, Motivationalist, and Writer. She is the founder and Executive Director of Just For Us: Gender Diversity Project, a not-for-profit advocacy and aid organization for people who are transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming. Miasha is a core collective member and board member at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), a legal aid organization based in New York City that provides social, health, and legal services for low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming. She also lends her time to other various LGBT community based organizations throughout the city of New York, and is a tireless advocate of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. Preferred Gender Pronouns: she/her/Miasha (Me-Sha)

Lucas is a transgender queer bi-racial latino man, originally from Maine, who now goes to CUNY School of Law in Long Island City, Queens. Lucas got involved in the work of SRLP as a legal intern during the summer of 2012, a personal dream of his since 2001. He is excited to now be on the SRLP board and continue his involvement with SRLP. When not doing law school work, Lucas plays guitar, ukelele and piano (if he can find one), spends as much time as possible outside, and reads mystery stories.

Helen Stillman is based in Brooklyn, with part of her heart residing in her hometown of Seattle. Before moving to New York, Helen worked with LGBTQ youth in Washington State and central Appalachia. Helen is the Donor Program Director at North Star Fund, a community fund supporting grassroots organizing in New York City. She has been a member of SRLP’s Fundraising and Finance Team since 2011.

Gabriel Arkles lives in Boston, where he teaches in the Legal Skills in Social Context program at Northeastern University School of Law. He has been an SRLP collective member since 2004, and worked on SRLP’s staff as an attorney from 2004 to 2010. He is deeply honored to be a part of SRLP’s work, and wants to keep working with people at SRLP and everywhere for trans liberation, prison abolition, racial justice, economic justice, disability justice, and reproductive justice until we win! Gabriel’s articles, which are mostly about gender, race, and the prison industrial complex, have appeared in a number of law reviews and anthologies. Gabriel was on the board of the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, an organization that provides bail and bond support to criminalized LGBT immigrants in New York, and is just starting to get involved with other organizations like Black and Pink and Queer Muslims of Boston. In his free time, Gabriel cuddles his cats, reads science fiction, and plays role-playing games.

Dean Spade is a member of SRLP’s Fundraising and Finance Team. He is a professor at Seattle University School of Law. From 2002 to 2006 he was a staff attorney at SRLP. He wrote a book about trans politics and law influenced by his experiences working with SRLP, called Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law.

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Alisha  has been a member of SRLP’s core collective since 2009 and served as a Director of the Prisoner Justice Project 2012-2014. As a Director of Prisoner Justice Project, Alisha was able to engage in community organizing for prison abolition while seeking immediate institutional changes to provide access to safer correctional housing for trans community members. Alisha is now a staff member at the Urban Justice Center’s Peter Cicchino Youth Project where she works with homeless or street-involved queer and trans youth. Through her own writing and speaking engagements, she seeks to center the voices of incarcerated trans people. Please check out writings from incarcerated members of SRLP’s Prisoner Advisory Committee at http://srlp.org/category/pac/

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Director of Survival and Self-Determination Project

Zahyr  Lauren is a proud Black transmasculine gender non-conforming human serving the community as the Director of SRLP’s Survival and Self Determination Project. After some years as an Investigator and Mitigation Specialist at The Southern Center for Human Rights, working with and for incarcerated people, Zahyr earned a JD at Northeastern University Law. In Zahyr’s role, ze will assist hundreds of community members each year in name change proceedings, government identification issues, health care challenges and immigration proceedings. Zahyr is passionate about exposing the kind of systemic violence that makes accessing life sustaining services incredibly difficult for countless people of color who are resource poor, transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming, and those who live at the intersection of these identities.   Ze is also a firm believer in the idea that the lawyers place in revolution is one of support and service. Zahyr is dedicated to being a part of a movement that amplifies those voices that the law intentionally tries to shut out.

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• Tel: 212-337-8550 x304

Paul Rapoport Foundation Equal Justice Works Fellow, Immigrant Justice Project

Rage M. Kidvai is an attorney and Paul Rapoport Foundation Equal Justice Works Fellow in the Immigrant Justice Project. Rage received their Bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, and their J.D. from the City University School of Law, with a clinical focus on criminal defense. A former SRLP intern and collective member, Rage is committed to supporting folks experiencing and working hard to challenge state violence and oppression. Their prior work outside of SRLP has included representing survivors of inter-personal violence on their welfare & immigration cases, family defense work for parents facing allegations of neglect due to their poverty, and criminal defense representation at public defender offices. Rage is thrilled to be able to grow with those involved with SRLP, and hopes to provide support to the amazing legal staff in the SRLP Direct Services Team (DST).   

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• Tel: 212-337-8550 x305