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

gender wars“good cop” in these “good prisons,” public safety committee shape changingto jobs committee.In the hallways of the capitol, my heart broke when Mary Wiberg,director of Committee on the Status of Women, responded to JusticeNow interns carrying a petition against “gender responsive” prisons onbehalf of over 3,300 people in women’s prisons by saying that anyonecould have gotten thousands of women in prison to sign anything.And in a crowded office, my heart broke when a staffer burst intotears mid-meeting after declining my invitation for her to join JusticeNow on a prison visit, or to accept some collect calls, to hear directly frompeople inside about why they opposed these prisons.first writing since 6The process of writing this essay trailed me several years since the heightof the campaign; finishing the writing required a distance of time to justfeel, to sleep, these two years punctuated by many prior attempts to open,many leavings, being in the direct work, later returns to page.During this time, my partner and fellow activists were unexpectedlytargeted, harassed, and beaten by police at a protest. They were arrestedand charged with felonies and misdemeanors, some with terrorist enhancements,each and together held at atypically high bail. That weekendand in the weeks and months following, I learned in new ways, throughbody, more about how the persistence of state-sponsored crisis has shapedour movements than I ever would have wished. Here in our organizingfor loved ones to return and stay home—fundraising for bail and bond,building community pressure to drop their charges—here where my edgeas family of loved ones fighting back blended with the edge of their community’sresponse after attack, I re-encountered some of my own movements:the shape of organizations and people whose labor over time hasfed and raised me, a prison abolitionist attempting to wrestle the terrorof police and prison violence disarming resistance of each and all whereempire, racism, gender oppression, queerphobia, and silencing meet.Here my “personal” reopened my “political”; the layered secondarytraumas in my “political” further intensified my “personal.” I tracked theshape and sound of my body’s fight response. In this moment, in myfirst year outside of organizing within a full-time nonprofit framework, Iunderstood more about collective bodymemory and shaping than in thelast five years that I’ve actively been in practice expressing my commitmentto prison industrial complex abolition and continuing to explore285