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

gender warsToday my bodymemory still holds the breaks. It holds the break inbeing labeled “bold broad” by a white cisgender lesbian-identified statecommissioner after testifying against a prison system leader for her lack ofleadership amid a “gender responsiveness” meeting where a subcommitteeproposed to offer “elective” sterilization to people in prison during laborand delivery as “medically necessary”; the break in not knowing what tomake of this commissioner likening my testimony to her witnessing ofACT UP days. My bodymemory holds the break still from dodging whatone campaign intern observed as “looks of death” from the office housingour campaign target. It holds the break in a Republican consultant, sayingthat I “must have come from a nice family” (not black, brown, drugaddicted,violent).And deep, deep inside it still holds tender so many collectively ungrievedsorrows of mass imprisonment, in layer upon layer of secondarytrauma in the stories we’d been asked to receive in refusing to lose touchwith growing numbers of loved ones stolen by the state.These punctuations in memory, the still chronic tire from shapechanging, are part of the discomfort in returning here to reflection. I’mleft with the gift of question, where I will leave you: How has our increasedengagement in state-centered organizing influenced our individualand collective visions and shaping? How do we change shape to blendwith external conditions while remaining centered with our principlesand building and strengthening connection between each part we bringin? How have our campaigns and actions weakened the prison industrialcomplex, and how might they have strengthened it?When attacked by the state with the threat of its building more prisons,how might we stretch our hearts and build new muscle to move fromautomatic reaction toward grounded and timely response aligned withour truest vision and principles? How do we escalate on a timeline andtenor responsive to what external conditions demand and to internal capacityand scale? Can we wage campaigns targeting the state that strengthenand grow the resilience muscle of our movement body, account fordiffering locations and entries, care for each and all parts and range ofability, and stay open to transformation toward the movement body thatwe want to inhabit? How do we account for individual and collective tireand break in changing shape, in continuing amid attack? The anti-prisonand prisoner-rights movements face particular challenges in facilitatingmass-based organizing, given that our constituency is under direct attackby the state—how do we account for and meet these challenges?289