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.
Team Members Archive
Alisha Williams
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/
Zahyr K-R Lauren
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.
Direct Services Team
To inquire about the legal services provided by Direct Services Team of SRLP, email legal@srlp.org or call 212-337-8550.
Sasha Alexander
Director of Membership
Sasha Alexander. is a non binary trans, black/south asian, artist, educator, and healer. A former youth organizer, Sasha has been working at the intersections of lgbtq, youth, media, economic, gender and racial justice movements for over 20 years. Sasha was named one of the inaugural Trans 100 for their organizing and media based work in trans communities of color. In 2013 after teaching at the intersections of youth media and social justice for over a decade, and called to action by the murder of 21 year old Islan Nettles, Sasha launched Black Trans Media committed to addressing the intersections of racism and transphobia by shifting and reframing the value and worth of black trans lives #blacktranseverything. Sasha works as the Membership Director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) in NYC a legal and movement based organization working for collective liberation; as the Co-Director of the Movement Building Team Sasha works to strengthen the leadership of trans, gender non conforming, and intersex (TGNCI) people specifically low income people, disabled folks, formerly incarcerated people, people living with HIV, immigrants, and people of color. Sasha loves time on the land, decolonizing everything, trans reproductive futures, their cat mumia shakur, art of all mediums, and movement history. Sasha uses the pronouns she/they/he and insists that you mix it up or use their name.
Rage M. Kidvai
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).
Mik Kinkead
Director of Prisoner Justice Project
Mik Kinkead (he/him) has been around the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) volunteering, interning, and serving on the Collective since 2008. In 2015, he joined SRLP staff as a staff attorney and the Director of the Prisoner Justice Project. He graduated CUNY Law School in 2013, where he participated in clinics focusing on the rights of youth in adult prisons and benefits access for low-income New Yorkers. Mik has previously worked as a staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, a case manager at the Ali Forney Center, and a lifeline volunteer for the Trevor Project.
Juana Paola Peralta
JPP is a queer fat hard femme Latin@ who dreams of finding new ways of loving, organizing & building each other up in a world that hurts a lot. Juana has been educating and organizing around issues of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability for over seven years.
Avi Cummings
Director of Grassroots Fundraising & Communications
Avi Cummings has worked and organized for many years around racial justice and white anti-racist solidarity, prison abolition, wealth redistribution, and queer and trans liberation. He previously lived in Madison, Wisconsin where he organized with the Groundwork Anti-Racism Collective and the Radical Teachers Collective. Avi loves climbing and dreams about hiking everywhere.