Prison
Whenever we address the issue of queers in prison, our gay and lesbian compatriots look at us in shock and horror and begin to slowly inch away from us. “We” are not criminals, we are told, and the issues of the prison industrial complex have nothing to do with gays and lesbians who are all good, law-abiding citizens who only wish to get married and live happily ever after behind real or imagined picket fences.
Sure… But seriously. Gays and lesbians are the most likely to be targeted by the very system that they fall over themselves to affirm and strengthen. Our bars are still being raided, our sex lives are scrutinized, and transgender sex workers are the most likely to be picked up and harassed by cops – even after becoming the targets of violence by clients and the police.
freenj4.wordpress.com
Until the 1970s, queers rallied to form solidarity networks with queers in prison, using prisoner correspondence and book sharing projects. Those have dwindled greatly and the “community” now seeks to fill the coffers of the prison industrial with money, legislation, and the bodies of its own. The passage of hate crimes legislation deludes us into thinking that we have finally managed to get the law on our side, to pay attention to the harassment and violence so many of us face on a daily basis. But measures like hate crimes legislation and the increased policing of “our” neighborhoods puts the most vulnerable among us in jail for perpetuity, and it makes the oppressive structures of prison a more insidious part of our lives instead of dismantling them.
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HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION
Why Hate Crime Legislation Is Still Not a Solution – Yasmin Nair (2011)The Self-Determination We Deserve – Jesse Crass & Nat Gray
Compilation of Critiques on Hate Crime Legislation – blackandpink.org
Do Unto Others: the Moral Slope of Hate Crime Laws – by Michelle Chen
SRLP Statement on Opposing Mathew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act – by Sylvia Rivera Law Project
QUEER/TRANS INCARCERATION
Flow Chart: Disproportionate Incarceration – Sylvia Rivera Law ProjectFlow Chart: Disproportionate Deportation – Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Flow Chart: Trans Youth in the Prison Industrial Complex – FIERCE
Free the New Jersey 4 – Collective Project
You Improvise to Survive – Prisoner Correspondence Project
The Bernard Baran Justice Committee – Collective Project
GENDER RESPONSIVE PRISONS
How Gender Responsive Prisons Harm Women, Children and Families – CURBKinder, Gentler, Gender Responsive Cages: Prison Expansion is Not Prison Reform – Rose Braz
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Culture
Criminal Queers – Film
They Don’t Really Care About Us – Music Video / Michael Jackson
