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

Abolitionist Imaginingswasi Balagoon, a black liberation army member. It took people a long timeto time to be able to say that, and now they can say that he was a black gayman and that he was a revolutionary. Of course he did his part in that partof the struggle and in his community and remained who he was, true tohimself. And I think that the formation of TIP in San Francisco—TransIn Prison—and those kinds of organizations that are specific, that workwithin the context of the broader prison industrial complex, are essential.RG: I think this question requires deep reflection on the real importanceof trans history within anti-authoritarian and abolitionist spaces and howthese trans legacies are passed on to people or not and held or not withinthe larger left/activist world.Too often, in abolitionist movements, we imagine that trans liveshave just started to exist, that there is no legacy of trans people engagingabolition. We often do not know or retell how trans people organizedaround state violence and the PIC, like the Street Transvestite ActionRevolutionaries organizing against police violence alongside the BlackPanthers and the Young Lords. We forget that, until recently, organizingled by trans people was in resistance to violence from the police. We failto remember that in the year following Stonewall, the first gay march inNew York City ended—on purpose—at the Women’s House of Detention,which held Panther 21 members Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur. Wehardly like to share that trans activists like Sylvia Rivera and whole communitiesof trans women were kicked out of burgeoning gay and lesbianmovements, feminist movements, and anti-authoritarian movements inorder to consolidate power, make the movement more attractive to institutionalpower, and win minor concessions from the state. Least of all, wedo not talk about how this violent exiling of trans women from radicalspaces continues to happen to this day.If we ignore the way this legacy and history of trans and gendernon-conformingpeople being pushed out of and marginalized withinabolitionist movements shapes current trans and gender-non-conformingstruggles, then we’re only getting part of the story and are perpetuatinghistorical exile and isolation; we are perpetuating violence.That said, I don’t believe it is enough to nostalgically and uncriticallycall upon STAR, the leadership of trans people during the StonewallRebellion or the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, each time we talk about transpeople resisting the PIC. When recalling STAR and trans leadership in theanti-state violence movement, we often don’t have enough understanding333