Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Making It Happen, Mamawithout educating people about what’s going on. Of course, there arethe little differences and petty things that get involved over personalities.Before I got heavily involved, there were a lot of little personality clashesand the testosterone egos bumping into each other here and there. It wasa lot of the “pissing contests” the guys go through. It calmed down andthe dust settled and TIP got to rise up and TGIJP was a calmer space.JD: TGIJP has a few different committees. Can you talk about them andthe work you are currently doing?MM: Well the structure has changed from when I initially got involvedand so a lot of the membership also changed. My getting on board madeit a more comfortable and I think a more relaxed space in terms of meetings.The feel of everything changed and through that restructuringand getting everything to be more suitable to who we are as a differentorganization with the influx of more women of color and more transgenderedfemale participants. It developed into teams. There’s the legalteam, which is run by our lawyer. There’s the fundraising team, whichis grassroots fundraising. We have a separate person who helps with thegrants and that kind of annoying stuff that you have to do to survive.And then there’s the Make It Happen Mamas (MIHM), which of coursehappens to be mine since I’m the mama. And the three of them functionindependently but under the same guise. We’re a collective. And so, eventhough we function independently, there’s this common rule that directseverything. The legal team of course works on getting the girls the informationthat they need and helping them fight in court, and writing lettersto the judges and district attorneys about sentencing and stuff. Andin writing to the parole officers and advocating for our clients, whichare primarily transgender women of color housed in these kinds of situations.Not that we ignore white transgendered women, but our focusis primarily transgendered women of color since we’re at the very bottomof the pile. We help everybody, but concentrate on transgenderedwomen of color. The grassroots fundraising team, currently, is workingon developing outside funds so that we can become self-sustaining andnot need the grant money that we have to sustain us. So we’re workingon building up a database of funders. The team is working to get us tothe point where we can be self-sustained and we can function on ourown using the technology of today, which is the computer and Facebookshit and that kind of thing.271