8/18: Connecting Our Communities: Welfare System & the Prison Industrial Complex
Connecting Our Communities: Welfare System & the Prison Industrial Complex
Queers for Economic Justice is helping to broaden the current conversation around Reproductive Justice by highlighting the experiences of low-income queer and transgender folks who navigate the welfare system and prison system.
Join Queers for Economic Justice as we begin a dialogue about the connections between the Welfare System and the Prison Industrial Complex. We will focus on reproductive justice in low-income queer and transgender communities and highlight the research and work that is being done to confront the systemic reproductive and sexual violence we face. The event will provide a space for community discussion and allow activists, community organizers and those most impacted by the Welfare System and the Prison Industrial Complex to share their knowledge. Additionally, we will begin brainstorming creative solutions to the problems we face (and overcome) daily.
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Highlighted Speakers Include:
MYA LAYLANI VAZQUEZ, TransJustice at the AUDRE LORDE PROJECT
Mya will be speaking about TransJustice’s campaign against transphobia in the Human Resources Administration.
MISS MAJOR, Organizing Director of Transgender, Gender Variant, & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP)
As one of New York’s best known drag queens, Miss Major participated in clashes with the police amid the Stonewall Riots. She was a member of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and now is the organizing director of the TGIJP in San Francisco, CA and will speak around her work fighting the prison industrial complex.
TERRY BOGGIS, Director of CENTER KIDS, LGBT Community Center
Terry will be speaking about the challenges facing low-income queer and trans folks wanting to parent, and will be sharing information about the services available at Center Kids at the LGBT Center.
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
7:00 to 9:00 PM
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor,
New York, NY 10001
Please contact Reina Gossett at rgossett@q4ej.org or 212-564-3608 for more information or to RSVP
Act Queer! Teleconference: Police, Prisons and Queer Organizing
The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice research, organizing and advocacy.
Our June 25, 2009 teleconference focused on queer organizing around prisons, policing, and violence around the country.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
Travis Sands & Christoph Hanssmann, Queer & Trans Jail Stoppers (Seattle, WA). Discuss the reasons for the forming of the group, the work they’re doing in coalition to stop $232 million dollar jail, and how they’re using this as an opportunity to build movement toward a queer movement that sees racial justice as part of its work.
Materials from Queer and Trans Jail Stoppers
Join the Facebook Page Queer and Trans People Say no New Jail in Seattle (or Anywhere)
Queer and Trans Jail Stoppers Talking Points
No New Jails Queer Graphic Image
Ejeris Dixon, Safe Outside the System Collective, Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, NY). Discusses the politics, vision, and strategies of building community led solutions to violence against LGBTQ and gender nonconforming folks in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
Deon Haywood, Women With A Vision (New Orleans, LA). Discusses how an HIV prevention & education organization is having to transform its work to doing organizing, leadership development and advocacy, due to the post-Katrina criminalization of sex work through Lousiana’s “Crimes Against Nature” statues, that forces sex workers to be distinguish as sex offender. This work is happening with the help of CHAMP’s Project Unshackle.
Materials from Women with a Vision:
Newspaper Article on Crimes Against Nature Laws
Louisiana Crime Against Nature Law
Lori Girshick, Sociolgist/Researcher/Writer. (Arizona). Discusses the results of an upcoming research project on masculine-identified women in the California Prison System.
If you have questions, comments, or know of other resources or events related to this topic, please feel free to post in the comments section!