{ "id": "p16022coll97:196", "object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll97/id/196", "set_spec": "p16022coll97", "collection_name": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "collection_name_s": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "collection_description": "
The Tretter Transgender Oral History Project (TTOHP) collects, preserves, and makes accessible oral histories of gender transgression, especially as theyintersect with race, age, sexuality, citizenship, class, and ability. The project seeks to document the power and vision of trans movements for justice through the stories of activists working to imagine another world.
\n\nThe first phase of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project was led by poet and activist Andrea Jenkins—who became the first Black transgender woman to serve in office in the US after she was elected, in 2017, to the Minneapolis City Council. This phase of the project sought to document the life stories and experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people, with a focus on people living in the upper Midwest as well as those often excluded from the historical record, including trans people of color and trans elders.
\n\nThe second phase of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project is led by trans studies scholar Myrl Beam. This phase of work seeks to document histories of trans activist movements and politics in the US, and is grounded in the belief that trans movements for justice are about more than rights: they are about survival, and about creating a new, more fabulous, more livable, and more expansive world––one not structured by racialized gender norms. The oral histories collected during this phase document the transformative power of trans movements, and the stories of trans activists who are building them.
\n\nFor more about the project, visit: https://www.lib.umn.edu/tretter/transgender-oral-history-project.
", "title": "Interview with Dean Spade", "title_s": "Interview with Dean Spade", "title_t": "Interview with Dean Spade", "title_search": "Interview with Dean Spade", "title_sort": "interviewwithdeanspade", "description": "Dean Spade is a white trans activist, writer and teacher. He founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. He is the author of the book Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, and, at the time of this interview, taught at the Seattle University School of Law. In this oral history interview, Spade discusses his early life, becoming an activist in New York in the 1990s, the decision to pursue a law degree, and the process of founding SRLP. In addition, Dean discusses the mainstreaming of trans politics and his belief in the value of mutual aid projects.", "date_created": [ "2019-11-09" ], "date_created_ss": [ "2019-11-09" ], "date_created_sort": "2019", "creator": [ "Spade, Dean" ], "creator_ss": [ "Spade, Dean" ], "creator_sort": "spadedean", "contributor": [ "Beam, Myrl (interviewer)", "Billund-Phibbs, Myra (project assistant)" ], "contributor_ss": [ "Beam, Myrl (interviewer)", "Billund-Phibbs, Myra (project assistant)" ], "notes": "Forms part of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, Phase 2.", "types": [ "Moving Image" ], "format": [ "Oral histories | http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300202595" ], "format_name": [ "Oral histories" ], "dimensions": "1:13:10", "subject": [ "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 2" ], "subject_ss": [ "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 2" ], "language": [ "English" ], "city": [ "Chicago" ], "state": [ "Illinois" ], "country": [ "United States" ], "continent": [ "North America" ], "geonames": [ "http://sws.geonames.org/4887398/" ], "parent_collection": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "parent_collection_name": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "contributing_organization": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contributing_organization_name": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contributing_organization_name_s": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contact_information": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455; https://www.lib.umn.edu/tretter", "fiscal_sponsor": "This project is funded through the generous support of The TAWANI Foundation, Headwaters Foundation and many individual donors.", "local_identifier": [ "tohp414_192" ], "dls_identifier": [ "tohp414_192" ], "rights_statement_uri": "http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/", "kaltura_video": "0_iddxdfsl", "page_count": 0, "record_type": "primary", "first_viewer_type": "kaltura_video", "viewer_type": "kaltura_video", "attachment": "188.pdf", "attachment_format": "pdf", "document_type": "item", "featured_collection_order": 999, "date_added": "2020-05-19T00:00:00Z", "date_added_sort": "2020-05-19T00:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2020-05-22T00:00:00Z", "transcription": "Dean Spade\nNarrator\nMyrl Beam\nInterviewer\nInterview Date: November 9, 2019\nInterview Location: Chicago, Illinois\nThe Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, Phase Two\nTretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nPage 1 of 23\nMYRL BEAM: Awesome, thank you so much for doing this.\nDEAN SPADE: No problem.\nBEAM: Would you talk a little bit about how you came into movement work?\nSPADE: Sure.\nBEAM: What your process in was?\nSPADE: It's like, where to start...I mean, I had a strong sense of myself as an outsider as a kid,\ngrowing up in rural Virginia and having a single mom who...we weren't Christian, and we were\nreally poor, and then I think especially when I was in high school and I had some feminist\nawakenings on my own, but there was like no one to talk to about that, and I couldn't really\nfind much. But I, you know, looked up Roe v. Wade in the library, that kind of thing. I think\nthere was just this lack of, this was not popular where I lived, but I was mad about the way\nthings were, at school and with my friends and stuff, and especially around like, teen sexuality\ndouble standards and stuff like that. And then I left home, and I found gay people. And then I\nended up...and I did some stuff on- I went to UC [University of California] Santa Cruz for a year\nwhen I left, and I went and did some stuff on campus that I wouldn't consider totally activism, I\nwas like, finding the gay groups, you know, and I found things in town, like there was a\nwomen's self-defense class that feminists, older feminist lesbians were,- you know what I\nmean, just finding whatever was there. But my interest was in...I was into things that were\nquestioning authority, that was what I wanted to study and learn about, and I took some\nclasses at Santa Cruz where I got to learn some of those things, and begin to get any kind of an\nidea about this. And then when I went to New York, I think my real entry into grassroots groups\nthat were not part of a campus was, I worked at a lesbian bar called Meow Mix, and I worked at\na gay bookstore called A Different Light. And especially at A Different Light, I met a real range of\nqueer and trans people who were in the sex trades, who were...some of them were in art\nscenes, a few of them were NYU [New York University] American studies graduate students,\nthere were just all these different people from different class, and race, and social positions,\nand some of those people invited me to Sex Panic. And that was an ad hoc group that met at\nthe LGBT Center at the time, and it was full of a lot of people had been in ACT UP [AIDS\nCoalition to Unleash Power], and was a group that was...you know, it was under the Giuliani\nadministration in New York, so Rudy Giuliani was this kind of...really at the forefront of, you\nknow, neoliberal mayor-ing. He was doing all this anti-welfare stuff, making it really hard to get\nwelfare, he was going after the taxi drivers, he was going after street vendors, he was zoning\nsex work out of Times Square, there was a whole thing, that was also happening at my job at\nPage 2 of 23\nMeow Mix, where there was a whole set of fire marshals, and they would send them to all the\ngay bars to try to fine the gay bars out of existence, and they were enforcing these laws called\n\"cabaret laws\" that had been on the books from, like, the early 1900's, that said you couldn't\ndance unless you had a special cabaret license, and they would only ticket at bars they were\ntrying to close down...there was this kind of like, \"cleaning up the city,\" and...you know,\nimprisoning a lot more people for being homeless, or being publicly mentally ill, and putting\ncameras in the parks, there was this kind of general trend, they were closing down the piers, to\nredevelop a big, gentrifying park at the piers that gay people had always gathered at, and\nwhere there'd been a public sexual culture...all of these things were happening at once, there\nwas a lot of organizing happening around the city around it, and I was part of this group that\nwas also explicitly saying, There's a kind of moral panic being mobilized, that's a moral panic on\nthe national level around HIV/AIDS, and also kind of anti-sex, like, we've got to get rid of all the\nsex work in Times Square, all the generalized, different kinds of sex industry there, and we've\ngot to crack down on these, you know, clubs and bars and piers, and we were a group of people\nwho were trying to think about resistance to that on a lot of fronts, and in coalition with all the\nother groups fighting Giuliani. He was in a really open public fight with Housing Works, the big\nAIDS housing organization... And so we were trying to do that in an explicitly pro-sex way. So I\nwas part of that group, and I was also part of a group of younger people inside that group who\nsplit off, and we had all these critiques of the older people, and we formed something called\nthe Fuck the Mayor Collective, and we also put on our own events, and did our own graffiti and\nsticker campaigns, so that really threw me into intersectional, multi-issue, racial and economic\njustice-centered queer and trans politics, and at the exact same time, I was in college, and I\nstarted interning for places like Lambda Legal, and GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against\nDefamation, the media advocacy group, and at that time, in the mid-90's, those groups were\ndoing marriage stuff on a kind of new level. They'd done the Hawaii marriage case, that was in\nthe works, so there was a possibility there was going to be a marriage in Hawaii, and, you know,\nit was around the time that DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] passed, and at the same time,\nthere was this national legislation against welfare and against immigrants, and they weren't\ndoing anything on those, and so I was going to these jobs and being like, \"Why don't we work\non that?\", you know? I had been on welfare growing up, my mom was an immigrant, both my\nparents are immigrants, I was like, these things really matter to me, I don't understand why you\nguys aren't working on them, and it was kind of like, \"That's not a gay issue.\" So I was having\nthis, like, I was having this deep learning about the difference between this white lawyer-led\ngay politics in these big nonprofit organizations, versus these grassroots orgs where nobody\nwas being paid, where there was a much more robust way of thinking about queer and trans\nliberation, and where...it was like opposite world. Like, on the one we hate the police, and then\nthe other one, they're trying to pass hate crimes laws. On the one, we hate the military, and the\nother one, they're trying to get us into the military...on the one, we're like, trying to have total\nPage 3 of 23\nsexual liberation, on the other one, they're trying to get us married, and I just was like...that\nwas the period during which I figured out what I believed. And if I hadn't found that grassroots\nwork, I probably would've been more heavily drafted into that nonprofit-ized legal work,\nbecause I thought that was like, what I was supposed to go do, because of what I believed in,\nand so thankfully I found these other kinds of mentors and teachers, and these other activists.\nBEAM: Did you go to law school in that moment, is that sort of...?\nSPADE: I went to law school in 1998. So, yeah, I mean...I had a lot of the same\nmisunderstandings as other people about why I went to law school. I think I went to law school\nbecause, you know, the kinds of actions I was engaged in as a grassroots activist involved a lot\nof like, we were tying ourselves to the front of the Human Resources Administration to protest\nthey were housing people with AIDS, or we were laying down in the middle of this parade or\nwhatever, so there were a lot of interactions with police and getting arrested, and I saw some\nof what lawyers did, a little bit, and I knew that we sometimes needed lawyers, and I think I\njust...I wanted to fight, and I thought that that was one way you could do that, and I also am\nfrom a very working-class background, and I...I had some friends who were going on to, PhD\nprograms, but I didn't think I could do that, because it's like, I needed a trade, and it seemed\nlike you could only do that if you had parental support or like, didn't really, really need a job.\nAnd I didn't even really believe in myself as like, as intellectual as those people, I had a lot of\ncatch-up from growing up in a context of school where I never really needed to read a book or\ndo any homework to pass. So yeah, I think I went to law school with a lot of the same\nmisunderstandings, and had no idea it was gonna be a super conservative pedagogy, in a really\nhorrible environment to be in, in the ways that law school is a kind of...you think this one way,\nand asking other kinds of questions means you're not smart...it was a shocker, and just being\ntaught by a lot of old white men who literally teach things like, that marital rape shouldn't be\nillegal, and other kinds of terrible doctrines that are just part the- ask anybody who's been to\nlaw school, it's shockingly uncritical for the most part, maybe you have an exceptional class or\ntwo, if you're lucky and went to the right place. So yeah, I went to law school shortly after that\ntime, but already very identified with a more radical queer and trans tradition, and had a really\nhard time there, and really butted up against the norms, and was, you know, bullied in the\nschool newspaper by the frat boys, they called me a \"feminazi bitch\" in the school newspaper,\nthings like that. And I also went to UCLA [University of California Los Angeles], where there was\na whole little group of critical race theorist professors, I didn't know what critical race theory\nwas before I went there, and it was like, Cheryl Harris, and Kim Crenshaw, and Devon Carbado,\nand Laura Gómez, and also some of these really influential people doing poverty work, like Gary\nBlasi. I did get some access to critical legal thinking that really helped me form a clearer critique\nof what was wrong with the white, gay legal agenda of recognition, because critical race theory\nPage 4 of 23\nhas a whole critique of why that didn't deliver material equality for people of color once civil\nrights legislation was passed, and so that was a useful, very useful thing for me in law school,\neven though it was a tiny part of the whole law school curriculum and the general law school\ncurriculum was, you know, unpleasant and full of lies, and mostly about rich people's property,\nso it did...I think I probably would have kept finding fun, critical ideas no matter where I went,\nbecause that's what I wanted to find, you know...but I was lucky to...I just went there because\nthey gave me a scholarship, but I didn't know who any of those people were when I went, and\nthen it was like, Thank God, I'm with people...there are some people here who can teach me\nthings I want to know.\nBEAM: I want to come back to that later, but would you take us forward a little bit into how,\nhow did SRLP [Sylvia Rivera Law Project] come to be, period, question mark.\nSPADE: Yeah, great question. So, when I finished law school...when I was in law school and\nfinishing, you know...there's a lot of, like, \"You're never going to get a public interest law job, or\na law job doing social justice work, it's so hard,\" there's a lot of fear and scarcity around that,\nand there's a lot of pressure when you're in law school to go and do corporate work: \"Do\ncorporate work first. And then later, you can go...\", you know, all these things that are just\nreally about demobilizing people and putting people into tracks for being prosecutors or\ncorporate lawyers. And I didn't fall into those traps, but I was scared about this, because I had\nno, you know, parents, no safety net, and I had some debt from law school and from\nundergrad, and there was this thing that was like, you should apply for judicial clerkships,\nbecause it's this short term job, and then you, you learn all this stuff from working with a judge,\nand then it looks really good and it'll help you get your public interest job, and it's really short,\nit's not like the fantasy that you work for corporate law for five years, when really you'll do that\nfor the rest of your life. So I applied, thinking I wouldn't get any of these things, and I got the\nclerkship working for the only out lesbian in the federal judiciary, a Black woman named\nDeborah Batts in the Southern District of New York, so back in New York City, where I wanted to\nlive, and so I took this job, and that was a terrible idea, because it's a job in law enforcement,\nwhich is what I'm against. And also, the second week of the job...the job is in Lower Manhattan,\nlike really close to the World Trade Center, and in the second week of the job, the World Trade\nCenter was destroyed. So it's also like, I'm doing this job in the context of a federal court, where\nthere's prayer meetings happening on the first floor, and all the Islamophobia, and narration\nabout terrorism and stuff, it was all happening inside my job, and...it was really, really awful\nand not what I believed in. And then I worked there, I was working there, and meanwhile I was\nmeeting all these trans people online through listservs like FTMInfo, and things like that, it's\nwhere I met Chris Hansman, and Aren Aizura, and other people who were my first trans friends,\nwho lived far away, who I didn't know in person for a long time, and who were like...other trans\nPage 5 of 23\npeople who were queer, who were...like, I was finally finding trans people who I could connect\nto, and who were part of radical politics, and lefty and stuff, and I was, in some ways, coming\ninto certain aspects of myself by actually finally finding some company there, because I had\nactually experienced a lot of transphobia in my radical queer scene, and friend circles in New\nYork. You know, it was very early on, very...now a lot more people identify as trans than then.\nSo this is all happening, I hate this job, I feel like I'm helping people get put in prison, or\ndeported, or deciding which of two really wealthy parties gets money, and I'm just like, This is\nso wrong, how'd I end up here, and I'm like, having these really fun, stimulating, radicalizing\nconversations with these other trans people finally, and I am also still doing activist stuff that I\nreally care about in New York, and the World Economic Forum comes to New York in February\nof 2002. And I go with my friends, we're protesting all day, this was a period where there was a\nlot of that kind of protesting at these huge international summits, protesting against what\npeople called \"globalization\" then, but like, neoliberal economic reforms, and the idea of these\nfew rich people in countries deciding what's going to happen to the entire world, and, you\nknow, exploiting and destroying us, which has led us to the situation we're in here today, in\n2019, where we're on the verge of climate collapse, and...my friends and I were out all day, and\nwe were at the protest, and then we went to Grand Central afterwards to go to the food court\nthere, and it was cold, it was February, and warm up and eat something and use the\nbathrooms. I went into the men's bathroom with my best friend Craig, and I was waiting for a\nstall, and this cop came in after me, and there was so much police presence because 9/11 had\njust happened, New York City was in a total police state, all the cops had like huge guns, it was\njust really wild, there was a lot of military everywhere, and we're in Grand Central, which is one\nof these places that are full of people with these huge military guns and stuff. And he was like,\nthe cop challenged me about being in the bathroom there, and then I was like, \"I'm in the right\nplace, I'm a trans person, I'm just gonna use the bathroom,\" whatever, and he slammed me\nagainst the wall and kind of beat me up a bit, and arrested me, and then Craig tried to advocate\nfor me and he arrested Craig, and then our other friend Ananda tried to advocate for us, and\nthen he arrested Ananda...So this whole thing happened, and then that story ended up on\nIndymedia, which was one of the, at the time, that was a place that lefty people were looking,\nso there was kind of a lot of, only if you were looking at Indymedia, but people found out about\nthis, about this trans person being arrested in the bathroom. And then I received like, one\nmillion bajillion e-mails from people about how that had happened to them, some of them\nwere like, \"That happened to me in the '50s,\" some of them were like, \"That happened to me\nrecently,\" so many other trans and gender nonconforming people telling me about the violence\nthat they are experiencing, and it was really wild. And we, in New York, we formed a group;\npeople kind of met up before I had my court dates, and there was kind of a level of...there was\na level of energy around it, and people were like...I met a lot more trans people all of the\nsudden who shared my concerns, and who were different from me in lots of ways, and a lot of\nPage 6 of 23\npeople wanted to come together around this, and were pissed, and saw this as relevant to\nbroader things they saw happening. And so there was this energy building, in me, around like,\nthis is the kind of thing I want to be working on. And I had had an idea for a while of\ndoing...sometimes when you leave law school, people get fellowships, and so they can start a\nproject that sometimes becomes a nonprofit, or it's a project inside a nonprofit, on some\nproblem that's not being addressed. And I had thought I might do that, and I was working with\nsome people around doing that around parolees, and the ways that parolees...like, their parole\ncan be revoked really easily, they can be given any conditions of parole, so I was working with\nsome people who were parolees and who were working in the parole system, to talk about\ndoing a project like that, and maybe propose something like that, and instead I was like, I think I\nneed to do something about this. Like, there is no legal services for trans people, and trans\npeople get turned away from all these social services, I'm hearing all this stuff, and the entire\nworld of social services is gender-segregated, so you can't enter a shelter because you'll be put\nin the men's shelter if you're a trans woman, and all of this stuff. And I also was just like, Life is\ntoo fucking short, I can't do this two-year fellowship. This two-year clerkship. And it's like, the\nstory in the law world is like, if you quit these clerkships you'll never work again. You're not\neven supposed to ever say no to a federal judge, so if you apply for multiple clerkships you have\nto accept the first one you get, is often the advice, just because you should never say no to a\nfederal judge, I mean, they're lifetime appointees, there's like a whole power dynamic around\nit. And I was just like...I was feeling very liberated by the radicalism of all the people around me,\nand the urgency we all felt, and I was just like...I don't know how long I'm gonna live, I can't\nwork in law enforcement for another minute. So I quit this job knowing that I might never work\nagain as a lawyer, because that's what people were telling me, and I'm like, 23 or something,\nyou know, how do I know if that's true? I don't know anyone who's tried quitting this job, or\neven had this job, you know? And so I didn't have any job, and I was like, kind of working on the\nidea of applying for money to start SRLP, and I was living on people's couches, which is all very\nscary for me as a person who was in foster care, and was really poor, and like has to now...I just\nreally, part of me really wanted security, and to like, have a solid place to live, like, it's very\ntriggering, honestly, to have any of that stuff stirred, but that's the risk I had to take if I was\ngoing to get off of what felt like the wrong path. So, I did that, and it worked out. I got\nfellowship money to start SRLP, and I started it as a project inside the Urban Justice Center,\nwhich is a larger poverty law organization that has a bunch of projects inside it. So I was\nbasically renting a desk from them, and also there were people there who could potentially like\nmentor me in different things, like, I'm going to housing court, what is that? Or, do you know\nanyone who's ever done this thing, in the Bronx? Or, you know, whatever it was that I needed\nto do, because, I mean, I didn't know how to do any lawyering, you don't learn that in law\nschool, nor when you're working in a federal court, which is not where I was gonna be\npracticing. And so, when I was in the process of applying for money I did this needs assessment\nPage 7 of 23\nthing where I made a survey for people I knew who worked at needle exchanges and soup\nkitchens and various social service organizations, to be like, do you see trans people? What\nkinds of problems do they have? Where do you send them if they have a legal problem? Do\nthey tell you that they got help? Just like, what's going on for trans poor people? And of course\nthe answer was like, There's nowhere to send people, or, I sent them here and they got told to\nfind Jesus and they didn't get any help, so just basically, people are not getting any support, and\nthey're much more likely to be homeless, much more likely to be without medical care or have\nuntreated conditions, much more likely to have all these things never getting addressed at all,\nbecause this stuff is all transphobic. So, it was clear to me what kinds of things I needed to work\non, and then eventually when I started it, in August of 2002, I had a phone number people\ncould call, and started seeing just this huge range of people with a huge range of different\nproblems, none of which I knew the answers to, and which I just tried to advocate for them,\nand tried to figure out what I could realistically do, or what I needed to get someone else to do.\nI also started doing a lot of training of other social service and legal service providers, because I\nwas like, I know I can't learn how to do this or that thing well, like, you can't practice every kind\nof law, nobody can, and so...How am I going to at least find people in different orgs who I can\ncomfortably send somebody to to get help, and then also have enough of a relation that I can\nkeep track of it and be like, \"Did you really help this person?\" I was doing a lot of training for\nothers, a lot of training for city agencies, sometimes because they would kind of get caught\nbeing really, really explicitly transphobic and then we could, you know, have some leverage to\nget them to accept training, whether or not it actually changed their lives I don't know. And at\nthe same time, there was so much energy around SRLP, a lot of people wanted to do something\nwith this, and wanted to be a part of it, and so the idea of it being a one-person fellowship\nproject where I just like, helped as many people as I could, which wouldn't be that many as one\nperson...it didn't make sense to me, and so that's where, people I was working with, we got this\nidea of trying to create a collective, create a model for doing this work that would mean a lot of\npeople could work there as volunteers, and could have meaningful governance roles, and could\nbe like, owning the organization, and it wouldn't just be limited to however many staff we had.\nYeah, so pretty much right away we started working on building a collective model, researching\nother collectives that did poverty services, especially, we learned a lot from Manavi, which was\na South Asian domestic violence organization in the New York area that operated as a\ncollective, and a group that was called Media Jumpstart was later called May 1st that was like,\nthey did IT for radical groups, and they operated as a collective and had a really clear model,\nanother domestic violence organization in San Francisco that had a really good model for being\ncollective, so we tried to figure out, How do you create a governance structure that works for\ndoing this kind of work, where some people are paid, and have to be there all day, and be at\nthe places like housing court or welfare hearings that happen during the day, and where a lot of\npeople are unpaid and are wanting to make the work happen.\nPage 8 of 23\nBEAM: So first, who were some of the people who were in that initial group of folks, and then\nhow did it grow in the year or two after?\nSPADE: God, I'm so scared about who I might forget...I wish I had a thing here with me that was\nwritten down. Some people who were in the initial collective were Daniel McGee, who is an\namazing person and still- he then later, years later, he worked at SRLP doing some of our\ninstitutional fundraising, but also was just a rock, who was the kind of person who can really\nhold...keeping systems working, he's amazing, and now he works at the National Lawyers Guild.\nBali White, who I think is now an HIV/AIDS researcher, Black trans woman, really brilliant...Kerry\nDavis, who's a trans woman who, at the time, was working at the LGBT Center in New York who\nkind of ran all their trans mental health programming...so many people, who else are in\nthere...Ryder Diaz, who later became a science journalist, Eli Deuker, who became a scientist,\nwho I believe studies fog and, like, pollutants...Sonja Sivesind, who became an acupuncturist-and\nall these people are still, you know, amazing radical activists, but they all have these\ninteresting different lives- Rickke Mananzala, who was also at the time working at FIERCE!, an\nanti-gentrification like, queer and trans youth of color organizing project that had a really\nradical framing, and Rickke is a brilliant organizer who really built the base of their membership\nand really knew how to turn people into skilled leaders, and have there be a real system for\nentering and getting really deep and like, becoming somebody who makes other people into\nleaders...he taught us a lot about organizing theory and framings. God, who else was there at\nthe very beginning? Can I just follow up on that for a second? Talk about how the sort of legal\nhelp framework, where you are a person who needs something and you go to a professional\nwho can do that, is really different than an organizing framework, and one of the cool things\nabout SRLP is that it has tried and succeeded to sort of bridge that a little bit, but how did that\ncome to be? So, a typical legal services framework is designed to never get to the root causes,\nand it's because it was designed to do that, right, it's not because the lawyers inside those\norganizations want it to be that way. But basically legal services is like, I've got 50 people,\nthey're all being evicted, I find the one who's got the winning case, that I've got enough time to\ntake, and has got the best facts, and has their back rent, or their lease really says their name on\nit, or whatever, and then that's the person who I represent, the other 49 of you, too bad. That's\nkind of the problem with legal services, is that there's not enough lawyers for everyone to have\none, and they take cases that are winning, in the laws against people who are more vulnerable,\nso often it's like the least vulnerable people inside the group of people affected who can even\nget any help, right? Like, most people don't have a path to immigration who live in the United\nStates and are undocumented, you know, most people can't prove the discrimination they\nexperience, right? And legal services is like social services, it's often in a charity framework\nwhere it's like, we help the deserving poor, the ones with the good cases, the ones who\nPage 9 of 23\nfollowed the rules, and it's not really gonna stop the existence of poverty and wealth, it's just\ngoing to have a few people get maybe some temporary relief, and then they're just gonna cut\noff your welfare benefits again, illegally, or then they're just going to, again, put you in\nsegregation in the prison or whatever, but it's not going to change the facts that make certain\npeople poor, evictable, imprisoned, whatever. So, we were operating on a different theory of\nchange than just the idea of, \"We'll help a few trans people get some legal help, and some of\nthem will win their cases, and then that'll be better,\" which feels very unsatisfying, especially if\nyou do it for any period of time, you're like, This is really unsatisfying! We lose a lot! Poor\npeople lose in court all the time, and that's the few who have any advocacy. Instead, our\nframework was that, there's a long, long history in social movements, of...social movements\nwant to mobilize a lot of people to fight back against the conditions they're facing, and to do\nthat collectively. And one way to bring people into social movement organizations, and into\norganizing, is to offer direct support about what's actually threatening their lives. So this is a\nway that people are attracted to social movement organizations, and the example that we\nalways talked about at the time was the Black Panther programs, free breakfast programs,\nbecause the Black Panthers, they have these deep, deep, deep visions for what Black liberation\nwould look like, that are very anti-US, and very internationalist, and all these things, and they're\ndoing this thing, they're providing breakfast to kids, like, what's that about? And it was about\npeople being able to come together and talk together about, \"Why are we so poor? What's\ngoing on in our communities?,\" build a shared analysis, hear the Black Panthers' ideas, think\nabout whether they wanted to get involved, de-stigmatize their own poverty and not feel like\nit's because there's something wrong with them that they can't feed their kids, but instead that\nthere's something wrong with the system. So, we wanted SRLP to be like that. We worked very\nclosely in relationship with groups like FIERCE!, and the Audre Lorde Project, and also a lot of\nother groups doing immigration stuff, you know, it's the beginning of the War on Terror...we\nwanted you to come into SRLP because you wanted help with what happened to you at the\nshelter, with the police, or in the jail, or in the public school, and then we wanted to say, \"Let's\nhelp you with that immediately, and do you want to get involved here? Do you want to hang\nout here and do other stuff with us and help other people? You're really pissed about what\nhappened to you, with this stuff around your migration, and we're also part of this coalition\nthat are all standing up against the REAL ID Act, will you join us, will you come with me to this\nother meeting,\" like, can we cultivate and build trans leadership in other movements? Could we\nintegrate trans liberation ideas with all the other liberation ideas that we all cared about? Could\nwe be an engine of growing resistance, that's rooted in racial and economic justice, that has\ntrans people in it, in the broader left movements? So that was our framing; it was not services\nfor services' sake, it was services because we need to survive so we can participate in the\nmovement.\nPage 10 of 23\nBEAM: Was prison abortion always a key framework, and was there consensus around it? How\ndid those conversations grow?\nSPADE: I wish I could think about the timing exactly...a lot of things are happening simultaneous\nto this that are maybe of interest, like, we're building this whole collective, and then 2004, I\nthink, is when INCITE has its conference, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, that later becomes\nthe book, \"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,\" and we sent Daniel McGee from the org to that\nconference, and maybe another person, and they reported back, and then later we got the CDs\nof the recordings and I sat and typed them all out, and it was just like, \"They're talking about\nwhat we care about, and they've got really good ideas about it that are adding so much, all\nthese people are adding so much to our attempt to understand this thing.\" And abolition was\nlike that. I had already met Alex Lee, I think we met also on FTMInfo, or we maybe were in law\nschool around the same time together, or slightly different times, but I remember\ncorresponding with him, and he was one of the people who was founding TIP...does that just\nstand for Trans in Prison? I'm not sure, something like that, but that was with Miss Major and\nother people in the San Francisco area, they were doing organizing around trans people in\nprison, they were going to visit trans prisoners, they were working with people coming out of\nprison, and this is what becomes the organization TGIJP [Transgender Gender-variant and\nIntersex Justice Project], later on. So we were having conversations, and Alex was explicitly\nabolitionist, and I remember reading something he wrote, maybe in a TIP newsletter or\nsomething, and he specifically was writing about how, when prisons reform, they expand, and\nhe was writing about how specifically women's prisons didn't exist, and then they were\ninvented because people were like, \"It's not good that women are in prison with men,\" but\nthen it just meant that more women were sent to prison, because judges were like, \"Well, now\nit's a less outrageous thing to send women to prison,\" and then children's prisons were\ninvented, and you know, just that reform is growth for the prison system, and that was really\nmind blowing for me. I remember being also at...was it another Critical Resistance gathering? I\njust remember being in a variety of spaces where I was engaging with, like...I remember going\nto a workshop run by kai barrow, who's part of Critical Resistance, and having conversations\nwith Emily Thuma, and...I went in 2004 or something to Seattle, because they were doing an\nabolitionist film screening series, and I gave a talk...it was just like, I was talking to all these\nabolitionists, and it immediately felt like the right thing to me, and in the organization, in SRLP,\nwe were all talking about it, and we did come to a point, at some point in those early days, of\njust, \"Yeah, we're an abolitionist org, which doesn't mean that everybody who walks in the door\nhas to be an abolitionist, but we feel clear, right now, that when we're in conversations about\ntrans people in prison, we're not trying to look for a new trans prison to be added, or any new\nwings, or any new cells, we're looking to get trans people out of prison. Also, I think this\nconversation emerged with Alex Lee and other trans abolitionists around the country, that what\nPage 11 of 23\nwe were fighting for was not overarching policies that would supposedly save trans people in\nprison, because those tended to be reforms that would expand, but instead, the focus should\nbe more on individual advocacy, and getting people out, and getting people what they say they\nneed in their setting, because it would be the kind of thing where like, this person is trying to\nget out of segregation because it's the most dangerous place in her prison, and this other\nperson actually is trying to get into the medical wing. No single policy is going to be right for all\nthese different people in all these different, incredibly dangerous situations, and we believe in\ntheir assessment of what makes them safe. So that was a major abolitionist principle and\npractice that we adopted.\nBEAM: Were there moments where that was a difficult...I imagine that SRLP was asked a lot,\nand still is and maybe more in recent years, to help create a policy.\nSPADE: Yeah.\nBEAM: Was that ever a difficult line to draw?\nSPADE: All the time. It's always hard. When PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act passed, and\nthen we were testifying at the Prison Rape Elimination Commission hearings...now, I look back\non that and I didn't know at the time how thoroughly right-wing that legislation was, and how\nthoroughly harmful it would be to queer and trans people. I don't know necessarily what I\nwould have done differently, because I can't have known what it would turn into and do, but\nthere's all kinds of things. We were always trying to figure out like, \"What is the abolitionist line\nhere?\" When they decided to close the gay section at Rikers we had all kinds of conversations\nabout that, because some of our clients felt like it was a more dangerous place for them, some\nof them felt that it was a less dangerous place, so, what's the trans-radical-abolitionist, and also\nmeet-people's-immediate-needs answer to these policy questions, where we don't actually\nknow what the next thing is gonna look like, and where obviously we want to get the best\ninformation possible from people who've been inside those specific places, and they are all in\nagreement...so yeah, this is an unending...you know, some things are really easy: we're against\nthe REAL ID Act, we're against the building of any new jail or prison, but there's a lot of things\ninside the policies that are much, much harder, and that's still the case.\nBEAM: When did you step back from SRLP?\nSPADE: So, our idea of leadership meant that it was actually pretty important to not have a\nwhite founder stay forever in a staff role, so I stopped being on staff in fall of 2006, and just was\na member of the collective from then on, just being on teams, doing the things that people do\nPage 12 of 23\nwho are not on staff, so still doing a lot of my work, but...I needed a job to pay me still, so I got\nthis law teaching fellowship that made me live in LA, and then in Boston over the course of two\nyears, so I obviously couldn't do legal services because that's a local thing where you have to be\nthere, but I did a lot more research for SRLP, and we published various publications, or, you\nknow, collective development work, helping plan events and retreats, or being a part of a\ncoalition on behalf of SRLP, or supporting periods when we were dealing with conflict in the\norg, or being on hiring processes, or doing staff evaluations, you know, all this other stuff. A lot\nof fundraising.\nBEAM: Yeah, talk about that a little bit. How does SRLP approach fundraising? How has that\nchanged? How has it changed as the scene of funders has changed?\nSPADE: SRLP has always had a combination of grassroots fundraising and institutional\nfundraising. I would consider the fellowship I started it with to be institutional fundraising, it's\nlike a big chunk of money coming from a foundation. And then, it's been really important to us\nto build a really robust grassroots fundraising program, because we believe...people might\nknow this, but part of what led INCITE to do the The Revolution Will Not Be Funded book and\nconference, the conference first and then the book, is that they got a big grant from the Ford\nFoundation to do conferences and some events, and then somebody at the Ford Foundation\nsaw something that was a statement in solidarity with Palestinian women on their website, and\nthey took the money back. And it was just like this huge lesson for all of us, which we learn\nagain and again, which is just the problem of having rich people support work that's about\nliberation, is that they can just come and go as they please, so it's very unstable to have your\nliberation plan based on their whims. So we were like, We want to build lots of grassroots\nfundraising, also that's a way that people can feel like they own the work in a different way, and\nespecially to have grassroots fundraising events that center people from our communities, that\nare fun to go to for people who are low-income trans people of color in New York, like actually\ndoing that. So we always had that combination and put more work, I think, into grassroots\nfundraising than a lot of small orgs do, and then also, when we started, funders were just like,\n\"How many of those people can there really be?\" I mean, we had to apply a zillion times to ever\nget anywhere, because we were the first time they were funding something trans. All the\ncriminal justice foundations were like, \"There's just not enough of those kind of people,\" and\nwe have no stats, there's no way to prove that there's tons of trans people being criminalized,\nand all the gay orgs, all they cared about was marriage, so it was a really, really, really hard\nthing, it was so much extra work to get the smallest amounts of money. I think that obviously\nsome of that has shifted after gay marriage, but it's shifted in really weird ways; like, after gay\nmarriage was like sort of resolved, all those mainstream gay orgs that have never cared about\npeople in prison, or homeless people, or really cared about queer youth in a meaningful way, or\nPage 13 of 23\ntrans people, all had to rebrand they could keep existing. So then they took all of what we were\nall doing and they said they're going to do it, and they get paid to do it, even though they have\nno expertise, and don't really have a politics around abolition or anything, so it didn't make it\nnecessarily a lot easier, I think, to fund SRLP, it didn't change SRLP's size or anything. As trans\nideas mainstreamed, SRLP didn't suddenly get a ton of more support, we've stayed pretty much\nthe same size. So we still do a lot of grassroots fundraising, and still do institutional fundraising,\nit's kind of the same deal. Some things I think were interesting, like, I remember in the early\nyears, when we first started, we really tried to have a solidarity strategy with other orgs, in\nsome ways...some foundations were kind of turned on by the idea of legal services as compared\nto organizing, like organizing's what nobody wants to fund, and so we saw that we could be\npitted against the Audre Lorde Project or FIERCE!, and we all made plans together about how\nnot to do that, and how to lift each other up and not let them divide us, and that was a\nmeaningful thing to be in those deep conversations. And I think we did a lot of like, funder\neducation...we taught funders that trans people were poor and unhoused and criminalized, and\nthey had no reason to know that; the amount they knew about trans people was just like, some\njoke from TV, literally. And we taught poverty- and criminalization-related funders about trans\npeople, and the explicit vulnerabilities of trans people. And you know, SRLP, we pay everybody\nthe same whether you went to college or law school or not, we've tried to have economic\njustice be part of how we do our fundraising, and then also how we spend our money, and have\nit all be transparent, and have all the people in the collective make those decisions together; all\nof that to me has been a very meaningful way to intervene on the nonprofit norms, in which\nthe white lawyer who founded it gets the most money and makes all the decisions and\nultimately guides the program, and people of color work underneath that person and all of\nthat, which is the way the whole poverty law scene looked in New York City, and that's part of\nwhy I didn't want to work at SRLP forever, because I needed people to stop thinking of it as, me\nbeing on staff meant that I was the ED [Executive Director,] even though that's not how we ran,\nand the only way to undo that was to not work there as a staff member and be just a part of the\ncollective.\nBEAM: How did mutual aid come to be a framework that you were thinking and writing about?\nDid it come in those conversations, or did it come later?\nSPADE: Well, that whole conversation that I mentioned before about the Black Panter Party\nand their breakfast programs, that is the conversation I'm usually at, like, why do social\nmovements always also meet people where they're at and provide what people immediately\nneed as part of a framework and a program for trying to get so that nobody's in that need?\nThat's what I would consider a framework of mutual aid, and that's always what I've been\nwriting about and doing, but, since Trump was elected in 2016 I have felt a stronger desire to\nPage 14 of 23\nmake a 101 visible about that, because what I'm noticing, especially in the age of social media\nand internet, I noticed there are a lot of people who are mobilizable right now, a lot of people\nare really angry and scared about all the really intense things that are happening, and a lot of\npeople who weren't mobilizable before, so there's already a lot of us who are already in social\nmovements, wonderful, and there's actually a lot of people what we haven't reached who are\nreally suffering under these conditions, and who are newly scared and pissed. So, what I\nnoticed was that those people are being systematically demobilized by the nonprofit industrial\ncomplex, so like, the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] is going to post like, \"You should sign\nour pledge that you'll protect the Constitution.\" And it's like, that's one of the things they did\nafter Trump was elected, and that's telling people that they've done something when they've\ndone nothing. Like, what does that mean? A, all of this stuff happens under our Constitution all\nthe time; the Constitution, it turns out, has not saved us yet, and will not, and it's helping\npeople deify the US legal system, again, which you can't access and do anything about. It just\nmeans all you can do is click. And then there also is just like, the only thing you're supposed to\ndo is give money to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, and those groups don't have a plan that\nwill actually undermine Trump; we can see this, I think most obviously, from the Muslim ban,\nit's like, legal fight against Trump's Muslim ban, until he figures out a way to write it and it gets\nthrough! The idea of, \"We'll will win in court,\" and the ACLU had this picture of Trump and it\nsaid \"See you in court,\" it was like, this was the kind of thing people were saying after the\nelection, and I just am like, there's no place for ordinary people to participate in saving each\nother's lives in that framework. Part of it is that, in the United States, we have a story about\nsocial change that's like...a big lawsuit was won, a single charismatic leader came to the surface\nand then we passed a piece of legislation, like, people think that's how social change happens,\nor vote. And none of that has any room for actual participation, which is really what's\nthreatening to the system, is if we all actually help each other survive, and refuse authority and\nsay, \"We won't live this way,\" and help hide each other, or whatever we need to do, and that's\nwhat mutual aid is, and that's the part of social movement work that is so prevalent throughout\nall social movements, that is invisible in the story about social change. And now you've got\nsuddenly a million people going, \"How do we get change?\" and they're getting these bad\nanswers, that are like, click, give, click, give, vote, click, give, vote, like that's it, and maybe go to\nthe Women's March once a year. Very limited levels of public protest that are surrounded by\npolice and with messages that are not necessarily at odds with the status quo. So I wanted to\nstart talking about mutual aid more; a few weeks after the election I made this website called\nBig Door Brigade, that's just a mutual aid toolkit, like, what are all these different mutual aid\nprojects that you could model in case you want to start one in your neighborhood or town?\nLike, do you want to start a prison transportation project where you drive people's families to\nvisit their families in prison? Do you want to have a childcare thing where you take your\npeople's kids when they go to court or go to school? Do you want to give away food in your\nPage 15 of 23\nneighborhood? Do you want to do disaster preparedness with the people on your block\nbecause there's a lot of storms and floods and fires coming to everywhere we live? For me it's a\nquestion of mobilization: people want to help with something immediately, and then once you\nget into doing work on conditions, you find out more about the conditions than you knew, and\nyou grow new solidarities. So, you get there and you still are holding on to racist or xenophobic\nideas, and then you find out that, If I care about people being evicted, this also relates to these\nother politics around migration, around anti-racism, or, I think I care about the whales, but then\nit turns out that I have to find out about indigenous resistance, becaue that's who's taking care\nof whales. You get there and you learn from your fellow participants about more and bigger\nways to be in solidarity, and then theoretically we get a lot of mobilized people who are\nmobilizable for whatever we need to rise up against, and when I look at the 60s and 70s period,\nyou know, in every community people are starting different radical health clinics, because\nwomen aren't getting the care they need, Black people aren't getting the care they need, gay\npeople aren't getting the care they need...everyone was just starting stuff all the time to meet\nother's needs, and that made people really mobilizable and really threatening to fight against\nthe war, or to fight against whatever was was unfolding, and so, for me mutual aid is like the\nmissing piece of the conversation about how social change works, that also I think academics\nreally, really under-theorize. They just look at what's happening, often what the media reported\nabout a thing, or what the elites who wrote something down said about it, instead of what lots\nand lots of ordinary people were doing, and...the way I think about it is like, our opposition has\nall the money and the guns. The only thing we have is people power. The literal only thing that\nwe have is people power, and that is enough to win, 100 percent, that is the most threatening\npower, because there are so many more of us than there are of them, but we have to be\norganized. So, if you can keep people at home, behind their screens, or only giving occasionally\nto the ACLU, or believing that the answer's gonna come through the next election or the next\nlawsuit, then you have kept everybody under control. And people want to help each other.\nThey see suffering, they're like, I suffered that, I want to help, or, I'm suffering that now and I\nwant us to help each other, or, I care about their suffering...that you know that is so deeply\nbeautiful, human, radical, and anti-capitalist and anti-isolationist, and we kill that with these\ndemobilizing frameworks that are like, \"Let the experts at the ACLU take care of it, and you\nsend them your 10 dollars.\" I think that's numbing and harmful, and there's something so\nhealing and beautiful about finding out that we can do stuff together. So that's what I'm talking\nabout when I'm trying to push this mutual aid thing, and I made this animated video with this\nwonderful artist that's trying to describe what mutual aid is, and we maintain this website, and\nI'm teaching a class on mutual aid, and I'm just trying to, like, have that conversation in my very\nsmall way.\nPage 16 of 23\nBEAM: Okay, I want to ask a set of big picture questions. The first one is, how do you feel like\ntrans movements have changed over the period that you have been in them, since the mid 90s?\nSPADE: So, in the mid 90s, people were kind of meeting each other online, that was a big\nchange that was happening then, so there were more people who were more isolated\ngeographically or for other reasons that could find somebody else trans to know, which was\namazing, and share some information about any aspect of that, and support. And there were\ntrans support groups at some HIV orgs, or there were...very minimal social service frameworks,\nnot a lot of seeing trans people as political agents, or not a lot of people organizing, really,\nhardly at all. And the level of explicit transphobia that was totally fine inside gay stuff, that's\nchanged some, in the sense that you're not supposed to- I mean, I think those people mostly\nstill believe that stuff, but right around that period in the early 2000s is when all those orgs\nchanged their mission statements and put trans into it, and they didn't hire trans people for a\nlong time and they still like to have, like, one, but...the kinds of like conversations that were\nhappening, the explicitness of transphobia being totally normal was shifting. I think that there's\nway more people who identify as trans now, which is awesome...there's also something\nhappening which I think of as mainstreaming, the problem with mainstreaming is that an idea\nbecomes more visible, like you see more trans characters on TV and there's like a few trans\npeople put into a lead position somewhere about something, and we tell ourselves things have\ngotten so much better and changed so much, and a lot of people tell themselves, \"I don't hate\nthat group anymore, and I never did,\" you know? And I think about this a lot, like, with the\nmainstreaming of anti-racism in the United States, if you go to apartheid US, you know, 1940s,\n1950s, white people would explicitly tell you, \"I don't my children around Black people,\" \"I don't\nbelieve in interracial dating,\" or whatever, and then you jump forward to 2019 and you ask all\nof those people's equivalents, and they would all be like, \" I hate anti-Black racism,\" \"I love\nBlack people,\" and then, meanwhile, Black people's lives have actually gotten worse. The racial\nwealth divide is worse, there's this giant apparatus of criminalization that targets Black\npeople...mainstreaming is when we tell ourselves things got better, and we tell ourselves we no\nlonger hate the group, but it often has very little bearing on the material conditions of the\ngroup, so that's what's happening I think to trans people. It's like, there are some more trans\norganizations, and there's a movement which your work has documented very well, like, the\nkind of move from people doing a kind of volunteer-based, scrappy, holding each other\ntogether a little bit, like, trans women putting each other up in their houses, or trans people\nknowing which needle exchanges places you can hang out in during the day to get away from\nthe cops or whatever, to some funded trans organizations that are backed by philanthropy, that\nare supposed to articulate a \"formal legal equality agenda,\" that's a term used in critical race\ntheory, an agenda that says, Let's get recognized by law as equals, even though probably it\nwon't change anything about what happens to people on the day to day, so like, let's have\nPage 17 of 23\npolicies here and there that say you can't discriminate against trans people, even though that\ndoesn't change trans people's likelihood to be poor, or experience violence, because the\nobstacles are so many, and that thing is unenforced, and nobody knows it's there, and the\ncourts don't care, you don't have a lawyer...you know, the reality that the civil rights legislation\ndoesn't really work to resolve systemic harm against hated groups. It hasn't for any of the hated\ngroups that are supposedly covered; conditions continue to worsen for all of those groups.\nBecause civil rights is about legal recognition, it's not about changing material conditions, and\nmaterial conditions are heavily worsening during our lifetimes, you know, rents are higher,\npollution is worse, schools are worse, people work more hours for less money and don't have\nbenefits, all of those things, all of that is true, and it's concentratedly true for hated groups, and\nso that's all worsening, meanwhile there's a policy at the police department in your town that\nsays they're not supposed to, like, destroy you, yet the police are still acting like the police and\ntargeting trans people and targeting people of color and homeless people, so the trans\nmovement has changed a lot, there's a lot more visibility, there's a lot more organizations.\nThey're real mix of things; there are some groups and people that are actually doing stuff that\nhelps people, which is great, I think usually those are the smallest things that you haven't heard\nof that are actually doing that, and there's, of course, a more vivid debate about what trans\npolitics should be, but in some ways, because the funding is always with the kind of liberal\nequality agenda, that debate is pretty invisiblized. I think that something surprising that\nhappened in our time is that trans...one, the early trans organizations like TJIGP and SRLP and\nALP had a lot of trans work and centralized trans leadership...a lot of these groups were also\nabolitionists, and took criminalization to be a central matter, and so then as trans stuff\nmainstreamed, criminalization stayed in the picture, and you saw figures like Laverne Cox and\nJanet Mock and other people, as central figures in the mainstream dialogue, and who had a\nmessage about criminalization and imprisonment of trans people, and that message sometimes\neven included something that felt like abolitionist, and that is a cool, radical win that could have\nnot gotten that way; it could have all been about like, trans librarians, or just about trans\npeople in the military, like those are the easier figures for a liberal agenda, and the fact that a\nconcern with trans people's imprisonment is in the mainstream story at all is interesting. That\nconcern is very weird and twisted, like, most people in the United States think that trans\nwomen are in women's prisons, because that's the way it is on TV, when of course trans women\nare in men's prisons all across the United States, things like that. So I'm not sure that it like,\nshook out to produce any greater freedom for trans people in prison, or any less violence, but it\nis surprising how the threads of our work still float in the mainstream, but most of what goes on\nthe mainstream does not change the material conditions for trans people, and I think some\npeople would argue that in many instances, trans mainstreaming makes trans people more\nrecognizable and more vulnerable, like, I've heard countless stories about a trans training\nhappening at a police department, and then the police in that department more easily\nPage 18 of 23\nidentifying trans people to harass, or having more words to do that, or seeing them more. So I\nthink that people being more aware of us actually might make our lives more dangerous,\nbecause...people being more aware of us didn't provide us with, like, a bodyguard, or a group of\nfriends, or whatever it is that we might have needed to be safer going through our lives. So\nyeah, things have changed a lot, and will continue to change. I would say that more people\nidentify as trans, one dilemma with mainstreaming also is like, that you get a story about who\nthe deserving people are from that group, and so you could start to identify as trans but not\nhave any left politics, kind of like with the gay marriage stuff, like, you can imagine a life for\nyourself as a gay person in which you just only care about protecting your property, and your\nown little babies, and your own little marriage, you get a story of being part of that hated group\nthat divests you from solidarity, whereas when you had to get your membership in that group\nby spending a lot of time in multi-class, multi-racial spaces that are underground, you might\nhave more chance to grow more solidarity, so, there's also a new handful of trans elites, you\nknow, we have millionaires coming out as trans who are Republicans with terrible pro-military\npolitics, like, that doesn't feel like progress to me. And I'm happy that anyone does whatever\nthey want to do in terms of their gender, but it's not moving us towards the liberation and\nfreedom of more trans people.\nBEAM: Will you talk about that final piece just a little bit, like, what do you think the world is\nthat the cohort of trans movement folks that you've described imagines as the future?\nSPADE: Which one? Which cohort?\nBEAM: The like SRLP, Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE!, TGIJP, what is the different world that folks\nare fighting for, what does it look like, what does it feel like to be in?\nSPADE: I think there are some differences among all those people, but I think some things that\na lot of us have in common...obviously, you know, what it means to imagine prison abolition is\nto imagine a world in which we don't put anybody in a cage, which is a really different world\nthan this one, where we live in the country that puts the most people in cages ever in the\nhistory of the world, so, it means imagining...a lot of people in that world are very deeply\ninvolved with the transformative justice framework, like an idea of figuring out ways to\nacknowledge that people do harm to each other, and then to resolve harm that doesn't throw\nanybody away, this is a very radical idea, and there's very, very deep practice around this; it\nmeans that when there's harm in our community, we come together and we work with the\nperson who did the harm to be like, What would you need to never do this again? Is it like, do\nyou need to deal with your alcohol issues, that you need to have different ideas about gender,\nis it that you need support because you're homeless and you're stressed out and you're acting\nPage 19 of 23\nout your traumas as a child, have you never actually dealt with the ways you've been hurt, like,\nwhat's going on for you, and the person who's been harmed, like, what do you need to like be\nback in our community, and not be afraid to come to the party or to the school or whatever it\nwas where this thing happened to you? Like, what do you need to feel supported now and to\nheal as much as possible, and then as a group we can all come together and say like, how do we\ncreate a community where it's easy for this stuff to happen? Do we set up our parties or our\nschools or our teams or whatever in a way that like...there's a lot of hierarchy, and so no one\ntells that this person keeps hurting people because everyone thinks that person's cool or wants\na job from them, or do we have ways we think and talk about sexuality as a whole community\nthat make this thing shameful, and so then people have to act it out in this way? What have we\nall done, that we could all do differently, just even like, offering each other rides, or...what do\nwe all have to do to make this less likely to happen to anybody? That whole thing is a totally\ndifferent way of thinking about the world, in which we're all very connected and processing\neach other's existence, instead of isolated. Capitalism and white supremacy want us really\nisolated, with our screens, buying things to feel better, numbing out, not caring what happens\nto others, not feeling a lot of empathy. So I think that's one big difference in the worldview, also\nwe're all border abolitionists, so we...I mean, if you're a prison abolitionist and border\nabolitionist, you're imagining a world in which we don't have countries in the way we currently\nhave countries, because our country is based on prisons and borders. So, I think there's a lot of\npolitical difference among those groups, these are not groups that organize around people\nbeing like, \"We're socialists,\" or \"We're anarchists,\" or \"We're this kind of Marxist,\" or\nwhatever, that's not something people in those groups came together through ,and so there\nare like some really interesting political differences in those groups, but I'm an anarchist, and\nmany people who have influenced me in these groups are anarchists, and I think that being an\nabolitionist means you are fundamentally questioning the way we have government. I think\nalso people in these groups really imagine a massive redistribution of wealth, like we just don't\nthink that anybody needs to be extremely wealthy or extremely poor, and so there's different\nways people think about that, some people have bigger imaginations of doing redistribution\nthrough taxation and things like that, and others have more imagining of, you know, like the\nwhole history of movements in the world where people organize together and just take back\nstuff, and are like, \"Actually, we're redistributing the land, the foreign agricultural business can't\nown all of the land here and actually all the peasants are going to have the land and live off of it\nthe way that we always did before capitalism imperialism created the situation,\" so, there's\ndifferent ways to imagine how redistribution would happen, but redistribution is fundamental,\nthe idea that a few people own everything and control everybody is the thing we're against.\nAnd I think a lot of these groups, you see that played out in our efforts to create more\nhorizontalism inside our organizations, like, we don't believe in bosses, and landlords, and\nsomebody else telling you what to do. These groups vary...SRLP is the only one of the groups\nPage 20 of 23\nyou mentioned that has a collective structure and doesn't have an ED, so, a lot of these groups\nskew more towards a traditional nonprofit structure that's hierarchical, but many also do other\nthings that disrupt that in various ways, and that's varied, depending on who's in leadership and\nstuff, as you can imagine. And I think all of these groups, at least at times, or certain people\nwithin them, and definitely SRLP very consistently are, you know, anti-US militarism, anti-war,\nand trying to have an internationalist perspective, not trying to separate US politics from the\nreality of what the US is in the world, and what does it look like to have solidarity, as people\nliving in the US, with people all over experiencing US military imperialism, and that includes\nlooking at the relationship between the US and all of the nations within it, both indigenous\npeoples, Puerto Rico, all of these conversations. One of the first things we did in SRLP when we\nstarted was we all watched the ¡Palante Siempre Palante! documentary together, because\nSylvia Rivera was part of the Young Lords, and SRLP is in New York City, and there's like a huge\nPuerto Rican community and a lot of Puerto Rican resistance, and we wanted to understand the\nYoung Lords: they were doing mutual aid strategies, they were providing health services, and\ndoing trash pickup and all these things, and they were also imagining big ideas of\ndecolonization and anti-racism and feminism, so we, for us, connecting the struggle for Puerto\nRican independence is part of SRLP's politics, even if it's not on the surface with every staff\nmember all the time, you know, actually just feeling connected to those things, and I think a lot\nof those groups have that. You know, I think it was around 2003, Audre Lorde Project convened\na meeting that was really meaningful to me about LGBT people and the War on Terror, and in\nthat meeting we came up with some shared understandings of the specific ways in which the\nhorrible things that were happening, like the disappearances of Muslim people, the increased\npolicing, the transition of resources towards things like the Department of Homeland Security,\nthe increased immigration enforcement, how all of this was affecting queer and trans people.\nThat's very, very visionary, in my opinion, to in 2003 convene that gathering and bring together\npeople who are all working directly with low-income, marginalized queer and trans people and\nbe like, How do we articulate our opposition to the War on Terror? That's a shared vision about,\nnot just what we want, but also how we fight.\nBEAM: Yeah, I was actually gonna say, one of the things that's interesting to me about the way\nyou describe the future is that it doesn't actually specifically name trans or queer people. And\nI'm interested to hear you talk a little bit about the relationship between redistribution of\nwealth, the abolition of prisons and borders, and the experiences of life for gender-fabulous\npeople.\nSPADE: Yeah, I guess I should be more explicit about this: all of those systems of violence, like\nthe system of having border violence, or having prisons and police, or having people be poor\nand homeless...those systems, a central part of all of them, is enforcing rigid, brutal, violent\nPage 21 of 23\ngender norms. Whether that's making a trans woman go into the men's shelter, a.k.a. making\nthem sleep in the street, or whether that's the kinds of systemic rape and sexual assault that\nare part of all prisons, immigration prisons or criminal punishment system prisons, or whether\nthat's like, having to not dress as yourself because you've got to go to this job and they will fire\nyou if you come in as your full femme self, or come in your masculine self, or don't wear their\nuniform in the gender they've given it to you. So to me, all of these systems- or if we're talking\nabout systemic rape as a part of war- gender violence is central to all of these systems, and if\nwhat we want is gender liberation, if we want everyone to be able to inhabit gender however\nthey want to, then we have to get rid of the coercive norms that make gender into a system of\nviolence, and that also punish you for being gender nonconforming in whatever ways.And so\nthat's why it's connected for me, like, we will never have any kind of gender liberation if we still\nhave prisons, policing, poverty, war, borders.\nBEAM: The place I'd like to close, then, is could you talk a little bit about what issues or aspects\nor areas of left movement work are most exciting for you right now, and what are areas that\nyou feel sort of concerned about?\nSPADE: So, I feel like I'm in a process of working on my own climate change denial, and I'm\ninterested in studying how I think we are facing a likelihood that our economic systems are\ngoing to collapse, and our food systems are going to collapse, in ways that are unpredictable,\nand that also people are going to experience more really extreme fires, floods, storms, etcetera,\nand we know already from the ones we're seeing that the government won't save people,\nespecially vulnerable, marginalized people like the poorer people, or the people who are\nitinerant, or whatever. So I'm really interested in the very smart, creative ways that people are\ndoing disaster preparedness and disaster response from a non-governmental, like, since the\ngovernment's not coming, or it's only coming to save the rich landowners, or the fire\ndepartment's only gonna protect the houses of the people who bought the extra insurance, or\nwhatever the case, what are we going to do, and how can we...and people are just being very\nbold and thoughtful and creative, so I'm following that closely as a source of inspiration, that is\nmutual aid work that is highly relevant to all of us. And I also, because we're going to see these\nforms of collapse, it feels more important to me than ever to do work specifically with people\nwho are inside prisons of all kinds, because those are people who are left to die in fires and\nfloods and storms, and because I think that the more deeply we are relating with people inside,\nthe more likely that they might get out, or that we can get them out in those situations, and so\nthat feels really vital, and then the other thing that feels really vital is, I'm kind of refocusing my\nwork a lot because of my concerns around these things, is that when things are falling apart,\nwhat people really need to do is know how to be together, deal with scarce resources and share\nthem, care about one another's concerns, so I'm spending a lot more time working within\nPage 22 of 23\ngrassroots organizations on facilitation, on building decision-making structures, on building\nskills for being together so that we all might, if we get stuck when that storm or fire or flood\ncomes, be really deep, good facilitators of whatever group of people we end up with, which we\ndon't get to choose. So like, what does it mean to foster qualities that are not present in our\ncontemporary culture, like, I'm interested in what you're going to say, even if you're gonna\ndisagree with me, because I want to come to a decision that we both really are behind, that's\nvery different than, I'm here to force you to do what I say, I want to either dominate you or I\nguess I'll have to cede and let you dominate me. That's how we do work now, you know, that's\nhow capitalism has us do like, school, and jobs, so, skill building around conflict resolution and\nsharing and coordinating ourselves and organizing without the cops and the government, and\nalso potentially against them, because another element of the coming collapse is that the\ngovernment is really intensely building up its capacity to control and corral and contain people,\nso we need to be bold and clear about our thoughts about that, and about, ideally, strategies\nfor resisting that. And yeah, what am I concerned about? I guess it's been really, really painful\nfor me to realize that the pace of climate change is faster than the pace of any of the\nmovements I've been participating in for 20 years. We're not going to like, \"win,\" before it\nchanges everything. So, it changes how I am in it, you know, one way I think about it is like, I\ndon't wanna put my time and energy into institutions that I'm pretty sure aren't going to be\nthere soon, so like, anything I'm doing that pretends that things are going to last the way they\nare is not what I should be doing, what I want to do is be doing things that make things better\nnow and then, right? So it's a divestment for me from a lot of more institutional, like, doing a\nslow burn to try to endlessly knock on the door of some big institution that maybe could be\ndifferent, full of elites, like, no, I want to be doing work that's about more people being more\nskilled up from the bottom up, which is where we save each other's lives usually.\nBEAM: Does it change how you engage with left organizations or liberal organizations, like\nmainstream organizations, that you maybe perhaps once hoped would shift?\nSPADE: Yeah, I've totally stopped, like...I don't go to Creating Change, or try to get...it's been\nyears now, this is before the climate stuff, but I've really pulled out of, I used to be part of all\nthis kind of national trans policy work, and I just pulled out of it. A, there's more people doing it\nnow, and some of them I think have good left politics, though it's a mixed bag, and also I'm just\nlike, I just don't think the answers are there. How long are you gonna butt your head against\nthe same wall to get these people to take maybe one trans prisoner case now, and then they're\ngoing to argue it in a really fucked up way that's bad for other trans prisoners, and they won't\ncollaborate with other groups that actually know about imprisonment, and they don't listen to\nprisoners, yeah, I've definitely pulled out of a lot of that work. And it also matters when I'm\ndealing with further left organizations, because I see a lot of climate change denial in their\nPage 23 of 23\nstrategizing. So I'm having a lot more conversations with people who I really care about, who do\nthings that I think are really important, to be like, Wouldn't we do this differently if we thought\nthat this thing was happening that's happening? Just because I think we need to change our\nstrategies, and a lot of people, because of the way that nonprofitization is like, siloed work,\npeople who \"don't do climate\"...their work is happening as if there isn't a climate that's\nchanging rapidly. Yeah, I don't even know what that looks like. Strategizing that is really, really,\nreally hard, because we have no idea how this is going to unfold in each region, and at what\npace, but I am concerned that so many people's strategies just don't even include it.\nBEAM: Me too.\nSPADE: One thing I think about a lot is like...CAAV, the lefty radical Asian-American organization\nin New York City, they do tons and tons of local organizing in Chinatown, and when Hurricane\nSandy hit and so many people were living in buildings where their elevators didn't work\nanymore, CAAV knew who were elders living on top floors that they needed to find and bring\nwater to. And they only knew that because they'd already been working with all those people,\nlike, that's the thing that's going to determine whether or not we can be there for each other,\nespecially for the people who have greater vulnerability, which should be our top concern,\nis...what we've already done to build those relationships. Like, it's been my life, trying to change\nNGLTF [the National LGBTQ Task Force], I still engage with people around the pinkwashing stuff,\nI still try to make all these organizations not be backing Israel...okay, I sometimes still engage\nwith those organizations, but differently than I used to, or, I choose different things. Yeah,\ntrying to change those big orgs, or spending time building strategies and practices where, we\nreally know the people inside that immigration detention center, and we really know who their\nfamilies are, and we're really connected to each other, and we know who lives on our block,\nand we know who has medical devices that need charging when the lights go out, and we also\nare all building skills for how we would facilitate the meeting in our block, or in our\nneighborhood, or wherever we are when this shit goes down, and we're building organizations\nthat are responsive, where people know how to make decisions together, that feels like an\nintervention I can make that actually...is less symbolic and more like material.\nBEAM: Okay, let's pause there. Thank you.\nSPADE: Yeah.\nPage 24 of 23", "_version_": 1710339103148474368, "type": "Moving Image", "collection": "p16022coll97", "is_compound": false, "parent_id": "196", "thumb_url": "https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1369852/thumbnail/entry_id/0_iddxdfsl", "thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/a94d9f9b05e32abf5075e9363c15582b9679f658.png", "children": [ ] }