Abolishing Queer Criminalization
by Kay Whitlock

Momentum to expose, resist, and dismantle the criminalization of queers and people living with HIV – particularly at the complicated intersections of race, gender nonconformity, poverty, immigration, and disability – is building.

The signs and portents are everywhere, even though you won’t be reading about it – at least yet – in the mainstream press.  It won’t be announced any time soon at the gala fundraisers of Gay, Inc., that constellation of image-and-money-driven networks of rich, white gay men and those nonprofit “gay and lesbian” behemoths  that seldom, if ever, address those complicated intersections in meaningful terms.

But don’t worry about that.   Stay focused on the momentum, which grows out of grassroots energy and the work over decades, usually unheralded, of countless activists (including many who have been or are incarcerated), artists, thinkers, scholars, and community-based organizations.  Their fury over police and prison violence, their vibrant, generous dreams of justice that were never built on the foundation of punishment and retribution, and their refusal to cast one another aside for the sake of political expediency should inspire us all.

What’s at stake is far more then “ending” police and prison violence.  That’s too timid.  We need more.

What’s at stake is a transformed society that dismantles structural violence in its countless manifestations.  All of us are harmed by that violence, with its profound social, economic, cultural, political, and religious injuries, but the heaviest brunt is born by communities of color, poor people, women, transgender, and gender nonconforming people, and people with disabilities.  And we need to understand the roots of this violence in structural racism that encompasses many communities of color, but has a history rooted firmly in chattel slavery and the institutional forms of violence that arose in the period after abolition to contain and control black people.

It is impossible to envision and create an authentically just society without exposing and dismantling criminalizing processes ,policies, and practices.

Two recent portents of a “growing-stronger” queer current in broad struggles against the criminalization of marginalized and vulnerable peoples are these:

“Anti-Criminalization” as a Major Theme for Progressive Southern Queers

 Founded as a multiracial LGBTQ organization in 1993, Southerners on New Ground, popularly known as SONG, has always worked across issues of race, class, gender, culture and sexuality with both LGBTQ people and allies.

It has long sought to “build and maintain a Southern LGBTQ infrastructure for organizers strong enough to combat the Southern-specific strategy of the Right to divide and conquer Southern oppressed communities using the tools of rural isolation, Right-wing Christian infrastructure, racism, environmental degradation, and economic oppression.”

For quite some time, SONG has been deeply involved in work in support of immigrant rights, most recently through its involvement in the Not 1 More Deportation Campaign (#Not1More) to expose, confront, and overcome unjust immigration law and governmental practices.  (This is a project of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, NDLON.)

In May 2014, SONG announced that anti-criminalization  is surfacing as a major organizing theme.

New Report Recommends Federal Policy Changes for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living With HIV

May 2014 also saw the release of an important new report:  A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV. Published by the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School and co-authored by the Center for American Progress,  The Center for HIV Law and Policy, and Streetwise & Safe (SAS) , the report was created with the input of 50 activists, policy advocates, lawyers, and grassroots organizations.

Two of the five co-authors, Dean Spade, legal scholar and activist affiliated with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project Collective and Andrea J. Ritchie, police misconduct attorney and coordinator for Streetwise and Safe, have long histories of groundbreaking work in exposing, organizing against, and working to dismantle law enforcement violence in queer and transgender communities.   Other co-authors are Catherine Hanssens, Aisha C. Moodie-Mills, and Urvashi Vaid.

Additional Resources

 To learn more about the criminalization of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV, click on the links in the post. Here are some other useful resources.

Infographics

• FIERCE: Trans Youth and the Prison Industrial Complex (pdf)
• Sylvia Rivera Law Project: Intersectional impacts of law enforcement profiling and violence on low-income, trans, and gender nonconforming communities (pdf)
• Sylvia Rivera Law Project: Trans immigrants disproportionately subjected to detention and deportation – suffering gender-related harm in the process
• Center for American Progress:  Why Are So Many LGBT People and People Living with HIV Behind Bars?   (Please note that this infographic assumes monolithic LGBT/People Living with HIV populations, undifferentiated by race, gender nonconformity, or income/poverty.)

 Reading

•  Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, ed. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith (anthology)
•  Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States,  by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock
•  Reclaiming Our Lineage: Organized Queer, Gender-Nonconforming, and Transgender Resistance to Police Violence,  by Che Gossett, Reina Gossett, and AJ Lewis
•  CI: Anti-Transgender Violence: How Hate Crime Laws Have Failed,by Victoria Law
•  CI: Remembering Transgender Victims of Structural Violence, by Nancy Heitzeg
•  CI:  Queer (In)Justice (Interview with co-authors), by Nancy Heitzeg with Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock

People Living with HIV

•  Positive Justice Project of The Center for HIV Law & Policy  The Positive Justice Project (PJP) is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to end HIV criminalization in the United States.