[Commentary] [USA] Toward the Impossible

[Stephanie Stevens]

Huffington Post, USA


Avi Cummings

Volunteer, Sylvia Rivera Law Project; Member, Resource Generation

Toward the Impossible

Posted: 05/20/2013 1:41 pm


Eight years ago, in December 2005, community members, organizers,
artists, friends and sweethearts poured through the doors of a small
gallery on the Lower East Side to join the Sylvia Rivera Law Project
<http://srlp.org/> at the first annual art auction benefit, Small
Works for Big Change <http://srlp.org/bigchange> . Forty artists
donated their art, helping SRLP raise $9,000 to support a movement for
gender self-determination centered in racial and economic justice, and
to celebrate the dynamic and visionary artists among us.

SRLP is a collective organization that works to guarantee that all
people are free to self-determine their gender identity and
expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing
harassment, discrimination or violence. SRLP roots its work in an
understanding that gender self-determination is inextricably
intertwined with racial, social and economic justice.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming communities, especially
communities of color, face persistent and severe discrimination and
violence in employment, housing, health care and education, leading to
disproportionate poverty. Because the state criminalizes trans
people's limited survival options, such as sex and drug work, and
low-income trans people and trans people of color are already commonly
profiled by the police, these factors lead to disproportionate
incarceration. In prison, trans people suffer additional harms,
including harassment, violence and denial of gender-affirming health
care. For trans immigrants, disproportionate targeting and its
consequences multiply exponentially. All these factors combine into an
interlocking system of oppression.

Recently, a young, homeless, trans Latina woman came to SRLP to get
her green card updated with her name and gender. Shortly after coming
to SRLP, she was arrested for sex work. Trans women of color face
disproportionate police profiling and arrest for simply "walking while
trans." Deeply aware of the dangers of incarceration for trans women,
SRLP staff attorneys successfully worked with our client's public
defender to ensure that she was not incarcerated or deported. SLRP
staff also supported her in safely accessing health care by helping
her apply for a replacement green card with her name and gender
changed, which allowed her to enroll in Medicaid.

In the past year, SRLP, the Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic
Justice and FIERCE collaborated to achieve three critical victories
for trans and gender-nonconforming people in prison, and for trans and
gender-nonconforming youth. These victories include winning the first
appellate case in New York to affirm the right of trans people in
prison to change their names without providing medical evidence;
pushing the Department of Justice to include meaningful protections
for incarcerated trans, gender-nonconforming and intersex people
within the final rule implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act;
and pushing the Department of Justice to create and adopt a gender
identity and expression nondiscrimination policy that includes
gender-affirming health care coverage for youth and individualized
assessments for placement. With allies and friends, SRLP is part of a
broader movement that is resisting, growing and thriving.

On a daily basis, SRLP provides direct legal services to meet
immediate needs; brings litigation and works on policy reform for
systemic change; and utilizes public education, leadership development
and community organizing for long-term sustainable impact. Our
community is fighting for crucial and life-affirming changes to
violent and oppressive systems, institutions and cultural practices.
The stakes are high.

Sometimes, in similar high-stakes situations, organizations suspend
their politics, sacrificing issues or members to attract donors,
attain resources and win short-term victories to continue their work.
They say it's temporary. They say they'll come back later for the
rest. Yet we've seen what happens. Those who are asked to wait are
always the most vulnerable, and there's no going back. Every choice we
make is a brick in the foundation our future. Our work to transform
this world and build the one we want needs to happen at every level,
from fundraising to movement building to structural change.

On Saturday, May 18, at the eighth Small Works for Big Change, we saw
again what it means to align grassroots fundraising with racial and
economic justice in order to challenge the race and class hierarchies
and histories of structural violence and oppression that typically
play out in fundraising. Every year at Small Works we see our
community and our community's support for SRLP grow because we put our
politics into practice. Modeling the politics and relationships we
want to see in the world is both possible and necessary for our
movements to remain accountable and sustainable. It's not the biggest
donors but the people who are most directly affected by SRLP's work
who have the most ownership, the most decision-making power and the
loudest voice.

We are told time and again that our politics, our visions, our
practices and our bodies are impossible. We're told that we're being
unrealistic, that it can't last, that our heads are in the clouds. I
say that that's fine. Down in the possible it's hard to breathe,
isolating and lonely. But trying to imagine other things, picturing
the impossible, I feel spacious, like there's room to fight and build,
to gather tools, to test out a structure, break it down and try
something new. There's room to reach out and touch another person, to
find community. Up in the impossible, I can see the world I want. Will
we get there in this lifetime? It doesn't matter. I don't want to work
for anything else, even if it takes 10 generations to arrive.

It takes a hell of a lot of creativity and imagination to keep
fighting at odds with what we are told is possible, at odds with the
options available in our given systems steeped in racisim, classism,
ableism, homophobia, transphobia and centuries of violence. By
celebrating the visionary and transformative artists in our
communities and centering the stories, experiences and desires of
low-income trans and queer artists and trans and queer artists of
color, Small Works for Big Change is a natural extension of the
politics and practice at the core of our work. Small Works gives us a
space to honor and learn from the artists who trace our histories,
express our desires, challenge us to transform and sustain us on the
long and winding path toward the impossible.


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