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

Maroon Abolitioniststions for involvement and barriers to participation, and explores spiritualityas a source of resilience and guidance. It examines the participants’political analysis and abolitionist visions, and explores the possibility of“non-reformist reforms” that take up the challenge of a radical anti-racistgender justice perspective. The article posits the existence of a uniqueabolitionist vision and praxis, centered on the participants’ direct experienceof gender oppression and racialized surveillance and punishment androoted in African diasporic traditions of resistance and spirituality. 5My research methodology draws from the insights of feminist actionresearch and participatory action research. The research is grounded in tenyears of activist ethnography in the anti-prison movement in the US andCanada. 6 In addition, I interviewed eight black 7 women and transgenderactivists between the ages of twenty and thirty-two from the US and Canadaduring 2007. The participants had been involved in anti-prison activismin Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and environs, New York, the San FranciscoBay Area, Chicago, and Lagos, Nigeria. 8 Most had been involved in morethan one anti-prison organization, and several had held both volunteerand paid positions, although the paid positions were seldom full-time orwell-remunerated and tended to grow out of prior volunteer work. Participantsrepresented considerable diversity in terms of gender and sexual orientation:four described their gender as woman or female, and four chosethe following gender-non-conforming labels: transsexual/trans-guy, trans/gender-variant/faggot, gender-queer, and two-spirited. 9 Three identifiedtheir sexual orientation as hetero(sexual), with the remainder identifyingas queer, gay, faggot, free-loving, bisexual, or fluid. Participants also haddiverse experiences of class, social mobility, and the criminal justice system;two had personal experience of imprisonment, and all had family membersor loved ones who had been in conflict with the law.“Love and Anger”: Reasons for ResistanceThe 1960s and 70s were marked by the rise of what have been labeled“new social movements” based on racial, gender, and sexual identities.Starting from these social locations, activists generated radical critiquesof interlocking systems of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, andcompulsory heterosexuality (Melucci 1989; Combahee River Collective1995). Despite recognizing the power of identity politics, commentatorshave also been critical of its tendency to promote a hierarchy of oppressionand to separate oppressed groups along lines of race and gender, thuslimiting possibilities for coalitional work, particularly around a common295