PRISON ABOLITION IS NECESSARY FOR QUEER LIBERATION

Organizations all over the country like Queers for Economic Justice in NYC, are working hard to fight for racial and “economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.”4 Queer people in Philadelphia have a vast and vibrant history of resistance to oppression left to us by activists like Kiyoshi Kuromiya and Silvia Rivera (NY), and organizations like S.T.A.R. and Act UP! who have fought against the criminalization of queerness and HIV/AIDS. It is necessary for us as queer people (glbtqitsgvgnc) to continue and to intensify our confrontations of power at all of the places we, as individuals and as communities, experience oppression or unearned privileges.

Without dismantling the racist foundations of enslavement and genocide, the thirteenth amendment only abolished slavery except as punishment for “crime,” setting prisons as the new plantations, and sometimes only new institutions on old plantations.3 Due to this history and to the criminalization of not only certain actions but also of multiple communities, there has become a disproportionate number of queer people, especially queer People of Color, under the control of the injustice system and what is called the prison industrial complex.3

“The PIC is a system that uses policing, courts, and imprisonment to ‘solve’ problems. We don’t agree that we need the PIC to keep us safe. Instead, we work to build safe and healthy communities that do not depend on prisons and punishment.”1 Those in our community who have served time, those of us with family, loved ones and friends inside, and our allies, know that as long as prisons and the encompassing (hetero-supremacist, male-supremacist, white-supremacist, capitalist) system continues to exist, the “closet” will continue to exist on the inside of jails and prisons. If the “closet” exists inside the facilities, the hiding or “closeting” will continue in the community outside. “As dangerous as we know our culture to be for people outside of prison who do not identify as heterosexual or fall within the accepted ideas of gender, we must understand how much more dangerous it is inside the prison walls for queer identified persons.”2

It is impossible to create queer-friendly, human-friendly prisons and jails. Specifically, some issues confronting our queer family in prisons are: rape and coerced cavity searching, bad behavior citations for gender variance, genitalia based housing classification, denial of hormone access, prohibition in many facilities of materials relating to homosexuality or transgender living, consensual sex is criminalized, and access to safer sex and other harm-reduction supplies is denied.2 All queer people have a direct stake in the abolition of the prison industrial complex. We must prioritize the integration of decarceration and re-entry strategies into all of our work for equality and equity. “Strategically we need to make visible the struggle of all people in prison and help their voices emerge from behind the walls and into our individual and collective consciousness. Becoming aware is an important first step.”2

QUEERS WE ARE NOT FREE UNTIL EVERYONE IS:
¡¡NO MORE PRISONS!! ¡¡NO MORE CLOSETS!!

Resources and Works Cited
1) “What is Abolition” flyer from www.criticalresistance.org
2) Queers Against Prisons www.blackandpink.org
3) Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
4) Queers for Economic Justice www.q4ej.org
colours.mahost.org
Sylvia Rivera Law Project www.SRLP.org
Audre Lorde Project www.ALP.org
www.SouthernersOnNewGround.org
Trans, Gender-variant & Intersex Justice project www.tgijp.org
“Criminal Intimacy” by Regina Kunzel

** glbtqitsgvgnc= gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, gender-varian, gender non-conforming

Posted under revolt
No Comments