Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
Speaker 2: about things falling apart and how to put them back together.
Speaker 2: I'm your guest host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this is an
Speaker 2: episode about both of those things. Not Margaret and Killjoy,
Speaker 2: but about things falling apart and putting them back together.
Speaker 2: If you live in the US, you might have noticed
Speaker 2: that things are falling apart in the onslaught of new
Speaker 2: federal changes over the past few weeks. There is one
Speaker 2: that is both astoundingly important and also likely to disappear
Speaker 2: below people's radars because it affects prisoners. Trans prisoners. Prison
Speaker 2: is the place that society puts people to forget that
Speaker 2: they exist. It shouldn't be that way, while prisons ought
Speaker 2: not to be how we solve problems as a society
Speaker 2: at all, but it is the way that things currently are.
Speaker 2: Things that affect prisoners are routinely ignored, even though we
Speaker 2: live in a society built on the idea of incarceration.
Speaker 2: It's been in the news that US trans people somehow
Speaker 2: just sort of don't exist anymore, that everyone is either
Speaker 2: male or female, dictated at birth and immutable. Obviously, this
Speaker 2: flies in the face of biological and social reality, and
Speaker 2: it's going to impact us trans people quite a bit.
Speaker 2: One group of people that it's going to impact very immediately,
Speaker 2: very dramatically, and very dangerously is trans prisoners. According to
Speaker 2: Bureau of Prison Statistics, there are currently one thousand, five
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty nine trans women and seven hundred and
Speaker 2: forty four trans men held in federal prisons, and not
Speaker 2: all of them are being held in gender appropriate prisons already.
Speaker 2: As we're going to talk about with our guests in
Speaker 2: a bit, prisoners have to go through an incredible amount
Speaker 2: of dehumanization in order to have a chance of being
Speaker 2: placed in the right facility. But now that isn't an option,
Speaker 2: and women are being moved into men's prisons. Does the
Speaker 2: idea of being a woman in a men's prison scare you?
Speaker 3: It should.
Speaker 2: It's terrifying. It's worse than what you might imagine. One
Speaker 2: trans woman prisoner who's using a pseudonym for her lawsuit
Speaker 2: going by Maria Moe, has already filed a lawsuit in
Speaker 2: federal court to stop this new regulation. She is challenging
Speaker 2: it on both procedural and constitutional grounds. The government didn't
Speaker 2: go about this in the legal manner, and to house
Speaker 2: trans women with men goes against the Eighth Amendment, which
Speaker 2: prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, as well as the Fifth
Speaker 2: Amendments do process clause. I simply can't imagine putting a
Speaker 2: woman into men's prison as anything other than cruel and
Speaker 2: unusual punishment. The state can pretend that trans women aren't women,
Speaker 2: but the men in prison will not treat her like
Speaker 2: how they treat assists men. On January twenty first, the
Speaker 2: woman suing the prison system was told that she was
Speaker 2: going to be moved to men's prison after all of
Speaker 2: her records were suddenly changed to mark her male. Federal
Speaker 2: data says that trans prisoners are sexually assaulted at ten
Speaker 2: times the rate of other prisoners, and that's the state's
Speaker 2: own reporting on the issue. But you know who doesn't
Speaker 2: know how to effortlessly transition to ads after saying something
Speaker 2: as serious as that, it's me, I don't know how
Speaker 2: to effortlessly transitions ads. After giving you a statistic like that,
Speaker 2: When we come back, we're going to talk about how
Speaker 2: serious the situation is, but also provide just an absolute
Speaker 2: incredible number of things that you can do at various
Speaker 2: levels of risk to support the people whose lives are about.
Speaker 4: To be ruined by this policy change.
Speaker 2: Okay, and we're back. So to talk about how trans
Speaker 2: people fair in prison, I have brought on my friend
Speaker 2: with the most experience in prison, the former political prisoner
Speaker 2: Eric King. Eric served just shy of ten years in
Speaker 2: prison for throwing a molotov into an empty federal building
Speaker 2: one night in response to the Ferguson uprising of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Those were a protests that were anti police protests that
Speaker 2: started in the wake of the police killing of eighteen
Speaker 2: year old black man Michael Brown. Eric is also the
Speaker 2: co editor of a book called Rattling the Cages, Oral
Speaker 2: Histories of North American Political Prisoners, which has a forward
Speaker 2: by none other than Angela Davis and is worth checking out.
Speaker 2: Eric was released from the eighty X Supermax in December
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. He walked out of prison wearing a
Speaker 2: support trans kid shirt and has been vocal about his
Speaker 2: support for us as soon as he walked out the door. So, Eric,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming on. It could happen here.
Speaker 3: How are you. I'm doing really well, glad to be back.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you reached out to me about this. What
Speaker 2: would you call it, like a policy change?
Speaker 3: Yeah, executive order?
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, you know, And basically we talked about
Speaker 2: like how do we try and make sure that people
Speaker 2: know about what's happening. And I wanted to ask you, So,
Speaker 2: you're a SIS man and you didn't have an easy
Speaker 2: time in prison, right as far as I as far
Speaker 2: as I understand now, I think no one gets to
Speaker 2: have an easy time in prison is one of the things,
Speaker 2: especially in a supermax, So.
Speaker 3: Not that easier than others.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, you were not among the people who
Speaker 2: had it easier. And as I would follow your journey
Speaker 2: through the federal prison system, it seems like you had
Speaker 2: to defend yourself against both other prisoners and also prison staff.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair way to put it mildly?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, that was what was going on.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a bit about the experience of
Speaker 2: trans people in prison, because when you look at this
Speaker 2: executive order, it sort of implies like all trans women
Speaker 2: are in women's prison and all trans men. Actually, I
Speaker 2: literally have no idea or transmit are held. I would
Speaker 2: rather if I was a transmit, I'd probably rather be
Speaker 2: in women's prison. I just Anyway, I don't know what
Speaker 2: was the situation like before this executive order.
Speaker 5: So I want to start with saying, like, the reason
Speaker 5: I hit you up is because there's so much like
Speaker 5: horror happening this first week of like Trump's new presidency,
Speaker 5: and I didn't want this issue to get swept under
Speaker 5: the rug. Yeah, a lot of times, the bigger, more
Speaker 5: mainstream issues will get the most attention. And I still
Speaker 5: remember our trans family inside, and so that's what scared
Speaker 5: me enough to be like, dude, I need to talk
Speaker 5: to you about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So when I was.
Speaker 5: Inside, there was not very many trans people, and they're like,
Speaker 5: correct prison, Like a trans woman should be in a
Speaker 5: women's prison, Yeah, a trans man should be in a
Speaker 5: man's prison.
Speaker 3: And that wasn't happening on the level that it should have.
Speaker 5: And there was a rare case like Marius Mason who
Speaker 5: had enough support, enough publicity where they were able to
Speaker 5: Most people were stuck at their gender at birth. And
Speaker 5: so over the last couple of years, people started getting
Speaker 5: a lot more access to safe prisons. That's why I'll
Speaker 5: call them my prisons where they feel safest. So I
Speaker 5: trans women were starting to go to women's prisons, and
Speaker 5: it wasn't very many.
Speaker 3: It's not like there's tens of thousands, but handfuls.
Speaker 5: Because it is it's very hard in the federal system
Speaker 5: to get recognized as a transgender person. You have to
Speaker 5: go through years of degrading and humiliating therapy with the
Speaker 5: prison psychologist. You have to get just horribly treated by
Speaker 5: doctors who ignore you, gasight, you diminish, you try to
Speaker 5: push Christianity on you, and then if you make it
Speaker 5: through their brutality, then you were one of the lucky ones.
Speaker 3: You got to say, like, I am this person, this
Speaker 3: is who I am.
Speaker 5: And if you're even more lucky, you got to be
Speaker 5: transferred to a prison that would make you feel the safest,
Speaker 5: the most whole is a human and that's the goal, Like,
Speaker 5: that's the safety goal. Basically, that's where we wanted things
Speaker 5: to be pushed. That people would be recognized for who
Speaker 5: they are, they would get treated for for who they were,
Speaker 5: and they would be sent to a prison that was
Speaker 5: congruent with who they were. And that's what's all being
Speaker 5: taken away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you talk about the safety, I don't
Speaker 2: want to like necessarily go on at great length about
Speaker 2: how trans women suffer invents prisons, but it's probably worth
Speaker 2: talking about, like because you've described it as there's like
Speaker 2: literal sexual slavery happening in the prisons. Is that a
Speaker 2: fair way to put it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred and ten percent yes, yes, And I
Speaker 5: only speak for federal prisons. I know in some states
Speaker 5: it's different. Like in some states people are able to
Speaker 5: use like their femininity as like a power play as
Speaker 5: a tool to keep themselves safe. And so if that,
Speaker 5: if that's an option, then great. But what eye witness
Speaker 5: in the federal prison was the exact opposite of that.
Speaker 5: People are getting destroyed. And if you go into a
Speaker 5: men's prison presenting as female in any way or soft anywhere,
Speaker 5: or as any type of one or any type of
Speaker 5: nonsense straight male, you are an automatic target. And it's
Speaker 5: not like hyperbole to say that if you walked onto
Speaker 5: a penitentiary yard and you had makeup, if you had
Speaker 5: your hair long, if you had breast, if you had
Speaker 5: anything presenting as female, you will get butchered within an hour.
Speaker 5: You won't survive that, or you'll get by some group and.
Speaker 3: You will be a site like you will be property.
Speaker 5: And at the lower custody levels it's a lot safer
Speaker 5: if you're at a low security like FCI Englewood.
Speaker 3: You're not in danger there.
Speaker 5: You're a danger of humiliation and being degraded by staff,
Speaker 5: but you're not going to get stabbed there. But God
Speaker 5: forbid you go to Victorville Medium, Florence Medium, or any
Speaker 5: PENITENTI tree, like, that's a death sentence for real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you want to talk about the worst things
Speaker 2: I've ever happened to you? Do you want to talk
Speaker 2: about you and I? We did another episode on my
Speaker 2: other podcast, Live like the World is Dying and talking
Speaker 2: about how to survive prison, and in it you talked
Speaker 2: a little bit about what was necessary to kind of
Speaker 2: stand up for trans prisoners. Do you want to talk
Speaker 2: about that a little bit?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, like everyone needs to have like consequence awareness
Speaker 5: and they need to work on the lines that make
Speaker 5: them feel most comfortable. Of course, but for me, I
Speaker 5: was not comfortable at all watching trans or gay prisoners
Speaker 5: get brutalized. And so there were times where we have
Speaker 5: to raise money to buy a prisoner.
Speaker 3: Out of sex slavery.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we just have to buy them and then basically
Speaker 5: free them or pay off whatever debt they owed.
Speaker 3: So that they no longer have to be in that situation.
Speaker 5: And there was other times that you you have to
Speaker 5: knife up or you have to show up physically. And
Speaker 5: I'm not a big guy, of course, but like I
Speaker 5: don't tolerate like anti trams bullshit in my life anywhere,
Speaker 5: and that includes in prison, and so like there are
Speaker 5: times you have to step to people and say, like
Speaker 5: I am not gonna let this person have this happen
Speaker 5: to them, and if you want to continue doing this,
Speaker 5: then like we're going to take it to the next level.
Speaker 5: And I wish to god there was more prison allies
Speaker 5: that would be willing to do that inside, because once
Speaker 5: someone is shown to have like support, it makes them
Speaker 5: less easy to be a victim. If people see that
Speaker 5: like this person's trams or like other people are riding
Speaker 5: with them, they're less likely to go after them because
Speaker 5: they'll be consequences. But if they're all alone, then they're
Speaker 5: just a sitting duck. And so like we need that,
Speaker 5: we need CIS men to show up and be like
Speaker 5: this is not happening. I don't care what race you are,
Speaker 5: I don't care what gang you in you're in, You're
Speaker 5: not going to hurt this person, and that's stuff that
Speaker 5: we had to do. Sometimes it's scariest shit because you
Speaker 5: don't know what's gonna up.
Speaker 3: But you have to, like, you have to live your ethics.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons that I wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: you about it and have you on this show is because, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: I mean, prison is kind of a concentration of the
Speaker 2: worst parts of society. I do not want to say
Speaker 2: the worst people in society. I believe it has much
Speaker 2: more to do with the incarceration and the way that
Speaker 2: people are forced to be right when they're incarcerated. There's
Speaker 2: a tangent. But have you heard the whole thing where
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as an alpha male wolf in
Speaker 2: the wild.
Speaker 3: I've only heard from you, and I loved it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I probably said this exact same thing last time
Speaker 2: we time in captivity. Yeah, And so it's like it
Speaker 2: obviously is going to bring out the worst in people.
Speaker 2: That One of the reasons I want to have you
Speaker 2: want to talk about this is because I think that
Speaker 2: the experiences that you're talking about, they're much more real
Speaker 2: and intense than most people on the outside are like
Speaker 2: really thinking, you know, they're like, oh, that sounds bad.
Speaker 2: But then their brain kind of turns off and they
Speaker 2: stop imagining what bad looks like. And I think that
Speaker 2: this idea that we're going to have to stand up
Speaker 2: for fa regardless of the risk and cost to ourselves
Speaker 2: sometimes is what it takes to create a society that
Speaker 2: is resistant to fascism. I think it's the same energy
Speaker 2: that people are going to have to do with, like no,
Speaker 2: you can't take my neighbors right in the era of ice.
Speaker 5: I think that's really well said too. I think the
Speaker 5: way I used to wear inside is like we can't
Speaker 5: take steps backwards. We can't relinquish any progress we've made,
Speaker 5: not a single pinch of it. Like everything has to
Speaker 5: move forward, and whatever you're capable of doing, Like not
Speaker 5: everyone's capable of like physically stepping to someone and saying
Speaker 5: like no, right, But everyone's capable of something, whether that's
Speaker 5: doing calling campaigns, organizing protests outside of prison, whether it's
Speaker 5: contacting region, contacting this person, raising money, doing whatever it takes.
Speaker 5: Everyone can do something to keep people safe. And it's
Speaker 5: the same in the free world, Like it's not different.
Speaker 5: Everyone has something to offer. But it can't be apathy,
Speaker 5: it can't be this nihilism that like what does it matter,
Speaker 5: Like they're going to do it anyway? Do that like
Speaker 5: we're just forfeiting the future and we're letting our family
Speaker 5: get butchered.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really like that way of phrasing it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we can't forfeit the future. How can people support transprisoners
Speaker 2: with what's going on right now? I don't know how
Speaker 2: in touch you are with people on the inside and
Speaker 2: things like that. How are people feeling, like what's the vibe?
Speaker 3: What can be done?
Speaker 5: So I assume, like when you're asking what can people
Speaker 5: do to support transprisoners, I assume you're asking what can
Speaker 5: free world people do to support those inside?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean you actually kind of have said what people
Speaker 2: on the inside can do, all right, which is necessary
Speaker 2: and important, but people on the outside, what can people do?
Speaker 5: Visibility is safety, Like I saw that in my bid,
Speaker 5: and I've seen that in other people's bids. And if
Speaker 5: you look at someone like Marius Mason, if you look
Speaker 5: at people like Jennifer Rose keeping people visible and letting
Speaker 5: the prison know that like we're not turning a blind
Speaker 5: eye to this person, like you're not going to get
Speaker 5: a free one on them.
Speaker 3: That cups people alive, Okay.
Speaker 5: And so the more the staff and the administration knows that,
Speaker 5: like this person is looked after, the more they are
Speaker 5: likely to look after them because they don't want to
Speaker 5: be held accountable. Okay, So things like getting books into people,
Speaker 5: things like getting pin pals of people, raising money so
Speaker 5: that they don't have to go into debt, Like that's real,
Speaker 5: Like this debt stuff is serious. So making sure they
Speaker 5: have money on their books, Like I don't care what
Speaker 5: they spend it on.
Speaker 3: I don't care if they spend it on drugs. I
Speaker 3: don't care if they spend it on twenty bags of coffee.
Speaker 5: Are gambling as long as it keeps them out of
Speaker 5: slavery or out of that knife, like that's what matters.
Speaker 5: And then Patsy names around like it's almost as if
Speaker 5: we concentrate like all of our prisons supporting like five
Speaker 5: or six people and then we forget that there's like
Speaker 5: fifteen thousand trans people in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so.
Speaker 5: Organizations like Black and Pink do a really amazing job,
Speaker 5: but like there's there's not enough. Like we need visibility,
Speaker 5: like we need to keep people present in our lives
Speaker 5: that we don't know and we might not like their charges.
Speaker 5: They might not be nice people, like, they might not
Speaker 5: be cool, but we need to get keep them alive.
Speaker 3: Like that's what abolition is. So visibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. I sort of know the answer
Speaker 2: to this, but I'm gonna pretend like I don't know
Speaker 2: it at all. What's Black and Pink. Black and Pink
Speaker 2: is an organization. I know it used to be an
Speaker 2: anarchist organization.
Speaker 5: It might be something else now, but it's an organization
Speaker 5: that's focused strictly on supporting trans and queer prisoners.
Speaker 3: That's all they do.
Speaker 5: Social prisoners, political prisoners, it doesn't matter. We're gonna find
Speaker 5: you a pin pal and we're gonna get people to
Speaker 5: write you. And they do a really amazing job. Like
Speaker 5: I honor them for putting in that work because it's hard.
Speaker 2: And so someone who's listening, who's never considered being pen
Speaker 2: pals of the prisoner could get in touch with Black
Speaker 2: and Pink and be hooked up with someone to write to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you like.
Speaker 5: Even just like right now, someone googled Black and Pink
Speaker 5: pin pal m, black and Pink prison pinpal, Like it'll
Speaker 5: pop up the website. You just click on flying a
Speaker 5: pin pal and you can find someone in your city,
Speaker 5: find someone in your state, find someone back to relate to,
Speaker 5: like to have a little biography, and you can find
Speaker 5: someone like to connect with and potentially save their life
Speaker 5: or save your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can make you better too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so writing helps when you talk about putting
Speaker 2: money on people's books, like who does that? Is that
Speaker 2: something you also could go through Black and Pink. Should
Speaker 2: people be doing their own fundraisers and then like working
Speaker 2: with prisoners that they've already made connections with, Like how
Speaker 2: should people either plug in or start things?
Speaker 5: So each prison is different, like state and federal, but
Speaker 5: to put money on someone's books, she can do that yourself.
Speaker 5: You go you find out wherever prison that person's at,
Speaker 5: and you can just go to the BOP website or
Speaker 5: that prison's website. BOP is Bureau Prisons. It's for federal
Speaker 5: people and it will just walk you through how to
Speaker 5: do it, how to send the money ground from Walmart,
Speaker 5: or how to do the JPay and put it on
Speaker 5: through your credit card, and you can do it, like
Speaker 5: if there's an ABC in America's Black Cross.
Speaker 3: Community near you, you can fundraise with them.
Speaker 5: If there's any like books through bars or ablitions groups
Speaker 5: near you, like you can and should fundraise with them
Speaker 5: to raise awareness, but you don't have to. But everyone
Speaker 5: can do this on your own, Like this is a
Speaker 5: a single person job, but it's better if we do
Speaker 5: it as a community.
Speaker 2: Well, the way that I fund raised is that I
Speaker 2: have advertisers that interrupt me talking about anti capitalist things.
Speaker 2: And here's one of those interruptions. And I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: ahead and donate my pay for this episode to exactly
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. And here's ads they are not donating.
Speaker 2: You can think of whatever you want about these ads,
Speaker 2: and we're back, okay with this new executive order. Like,
Speaker 2: how are people feeling either inside or people who are
Speaker 2: doing prison abolition work, or like how crisis does this feel?
Speaker 3: Like? What's going on?
Speaker 5: I can't like speak for it should keel like a
Speaker 5: ten out of ten? Yeah, like this is a carceral genocide. Yeah, real,
Speaker 5: this isn't a rature of an entire people. So like,
Speaker 5: if you're not at a ten for this, like you
Speaker 5: either do not care or you're not understanding how serious
Speaker 5: the prison system is. I've talked to a couple homies inside.
Speaker 5: I have to be really delicate because I'm still on probation.
Speaker 5: But those people understand that, like the mood is turning dark. Okay,
Speaker 5: they see inside that like when fascists come into power,
Speaker 5: it empowers everyone else below them to be brutal because
Speaker 5: they can get away with it now. And so these
Speaker 5: people that were already monsters under the most liberal of
Speaker 5: prison director are now getting told by the president that
Speaker 5: they do not have to respect this person's entire life.
Speaker 5: And so it's a very serious situation. We've got a
Speaker 5: non binary person about to go in name Casey Goonan,
Speaker 5: and they got sentenced for allegedly firebombing some cop cars
Speaker 5: and support with Palestine, and I talk with them on
Speaker 5: a weekly basis, just trying to prepare them because like
Speaker 5: right now, where they're at is a jail and they
Speaker 5: haven't really experienced the prison yet, and so it's all
Speaker 5: about like getting them ready for like here are potentials,
Speaker 5: like here's what they could do, but it's dark in there,
Speaker 5: like the Nazis are are celebrating, and that includes the
Speaker 5: ones with badges especially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. What kind of support felt the
Speaker 2: most useful to you in other prisoners? He talked about
Speaker 2: this a little bit, But I'm I'm like curious about
Speaker 2: like you talked about, like visibility, are protests outside of jails?
Speaker 2: Do they do they make people feel like good and
Speaker 2: welcome or does it make the guards cracked down on everyone?
Speaker 2: Like I know that there's this you know, habit of
Speaker 2: noise demonstrations every New Years, and what kind of stuff
Speaker 2: felt good, and what kind of stuff felt good but scary,
Speaker 2: and what kind of stuff was just annoying? Like I
Speaker 2: don't know, I'm just trying to find more stuff that
Speaker 2: people can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the noise demos are cool, but they're performative. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's more for the people that are doing them than
Speaker 3: the people inside. M hm.
Speaker 5: But like, let's say you're a trans person out of
Speaker 5: jail and there's thirty five people outside waving your banner.
Speaker 5: That will get your respect inside, get people to say,
Speaker 5: oh right, what the hell is going on with them?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like that is that's serious to where you can
Speaker 5: build up a rep if someone's already in prison, that's
Speaker 5: you'll probably get them fucked up and put in the shoe.
Speaker 3: That's what happened to me.
Speaker 2: If there's a noise demonstration with your name, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: be delicate.
Speaker 3: How you do it? Yeah, because that's what put me
Speaker 3: in ad X.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, so that's a real that's a real double
Speaker 2: edged sword, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: They use that as the as the thing saying I
Speaker 5: was the leader of Antifa because I got people to
Speaker 5: come out and protest for me.
Speaker 3: So I got Pulley Bell, Chapo.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't tell everyone that you we have to keep
Speaker 2: it on the DL that you're the leader of Antifa.
Speaker 3: For real. We dropped the ball. I know.
Speaker 2: Wait, I've been told I'm the leader of Antifa.
Speaker 3: You're my leader?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm more regional leader.
Speaker 5: The things that help the most, like in a real
Speaker 5: life situation, are the things that provide mental safety and
Speaker 5: something to do. Okay, so books, magazines that gives you
Speaker 5: something to do, like empower yourself and pass the time
Speaker 5: and stay out of the way. Money helps because then
Speaker 5: you can do crafts, you can paint, you can do art,
Speaker 5: you can sell things, you can do crochet. That stuff helps.
Speaker 5: And then letters on this like that gives you someone
Speaker 5: to talk to it. People are actually putting thought into
Speaker 5: the letters. And I always encourage and I always will
Speaker 5: for as many people as possible to on a daily
Speaker 5: or weekly basis, call that prison, call the prison, no
Speaker 5: matter what prison, state, federal, county, and demand to speak
Speaker 5: with the warden, the captain, the warden's secretary, the lieutenant,
Speaker 5: the head of psychology, and demand to know how is
Speaker 5: this person doing? What are you doing to keep them safe?
Speaker 5: We're hearing this in this what is going to happen
Speaker 5: to our family? That makes a difference. Okay, if you
Speaker 5: know a lawyer, pay the one hundred and twenty dollars
Speaker 5: an hour to have them do a legal call. That way,
Speaker 5: the prison sees this person as a lawyer protecting them.
Speaker 5: They don't need to know that it's just a one
Speaker 5: time call. Yeah, but that legal call, just the wellness
Speaker 5: check is what they call it. Let's that person get
Speaker 5: word out about what dangerous stuff is happening. But it
Speaker 5: also forces the prison to recognize that they might be
Speaker 5: protected by legal system.
Speaker 3: Okay, so these things help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the master plan here for how we're going
Speaker 2: to respond to this executive order? Because obviously we're not
Speaker 2: necessarily in a position to immediately reverse this order and
Speaker 2: get women put into women's prison, which is a crazy
Speaker 2: thing to have to say. We're not gonna be able
Speaker 2: to get women put into women's prisons. But is organizing
Speaker 2: with a local group. You create a group and you
Speaker 2: basically like figure out who the local trans prisoners are
Speaker 2: in your area and make sure that you're communicating with
Speaker 2: them and that they're getting wellness calls from lawyers and
Speaker 2: basically like just making sure that the prison knows that
Speaker 2: people are paying attention to the fact that there's now
Speaker 2: women in the men's prison.
Speaker 3: Is that that's a soft version of what we should do, Yeah,
Speaker 3: fair enough.
Speaker 2: There's other versions that are yeah, okay.
Speaker 5: There's the other version that I wish people would do. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there's a version where we do BDS but for every
Speaker 5: single company that's benefiting from prison labor. Yeah, and say,
Speaker 5: as long as you let this transgender hate go on,
Speaker 5: we're not going to support your business. There's boycotting. There's
Speaker 5: putting people on the road so that the cops can't
Speaker 5: show up to their jobs.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 5: There's protesting outside wardens houses. There's protesting outside governor's houses
Speaker 5: if it's for a state prison. There is tangibly putting
Speaker 5: your body on the line. There is sabotaging cop cars
Speaker 5: that go into the prison, there is barricading the entrances.
Speaker 5: There's a thousand things we can do to say, if
Speaker 5: you heard our people were hurting you, whether it's in
Speaker 5: your pocket, whether it's in your car, whether it's in
Speaker 5: your daily life, whether it's annoying you. We can find
Speaker 5: things to do if we care enough. And we saw
Speaker 5: people do it for Palestine. And I don't think transgender
Speaker 5: lives are less important than Palestinian lives. Yeah, it has
Speaker 5: to be an equal thing in my mind. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: the subu side's really great too. That's like that's daily stuff.
Speaker 2: No, No, but you're right, and it's like it's funny
Speaker 2: because it's like, in my mind, it's so hard to
Speaker 2: ring the alarm bells when all of the alarm bells
Speaker 2: are ringing, and everyone's kind of ignoring alarm bells right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the answer is that we talk
Speaker 2: about it like this, but like, how do we make
Speaker 2: sure that people actually listen to the alarm bells that
Speaker 2: are happening right now? And I think part of it
Speaker 2: is being really unfortunately brutally honest about what it's like
Speaker 2: to be a woman in men's prison.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think people understand it all. And
Speaker 5: there's all this misinformation too, Like you'll hear these like
Speaker 5: fascist talking points coming out of liberals' mouths to where
Speaker 5: like well, I don't want my tax dollars going to
Speaker 5: like pay for their surgery, or I don't want some
Speaker 5: man just sneaking into a woman's prison saying these transgenders
Speaker 5: we can rape everyone. And these are like the same
Speaker 5: scare tactics and like misinformation that's used for every single,
Speaker 5: like every single repression you've ever seen. And it's our
Speaker 5: job to confront those head on and call them out.
Speaker 5: His Lives show show the real information, and it's our
Speaker 5: job to continue to just force people to recognize that
Speaker 5: this is a dangerous and real situation. We can't let
Speaker 5: this entire group of people be destroyed, because like, if
Speaker 5: you're going to turn your blind eye to transgender people,
Speaker 5: you're going to do it to gain people, You're going
Speaker 5: to do it to women, You're going to do it
Speaker 5: to black people, and then it's just you, and then
Speaker 5: no one's going to protect your stupid ass. We have to,
Speaker 5: as or as I have to as assist man, we
Speaker 5: have to keep bringing this bell.
Speaker 3: We have to make people listen.
Speaker 2: I mean as a as a not currently in prison
Speaker 2: trans woman, Like like one of the reasons I think
Speaker 2: this almost happens. I mean it happens because the cruelty
Speaker 2: is the point, but like it's terrifying. You've actually experienced
Speaker 2: the thing that's terrifying. It is terrifying the idea of
Speaker 2: going into prison in the United States, especially maximum security prison,
Speaker 2: potentially especially men's prison, both as a man or a
Speaker 2: trans woman. I wouldn't want to be in men's prison.
Speaker 5: And I don't even want to compare it, by the way, Okay,
Speaker 5: it's not comparable. Okay, Like if I didn't have antique
Speaker 5: attachment on my face, I could walk into any prison
Speaker 5: in a country and be like, oh.
Speaker 3: There's just a white guy, there's just a white roll. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have no problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a transgender person, there's a single place except for
Speaker 5: a protective custody yard, where they can walk in and
Speaker 5: immediately feel safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the exact opposite. Everywhere they go is fight
Speaker 3: or flight.
Speaker 5: The scariest moment you've ever had your entire life, point
Speaker 5: four to seven, all day, every day. Yeah, picture someone
Speaker 5: breaking into your home in the middle of the night.
Speaker 5: In that terror you get. They have to walk into
Speaker 5: a new prison every single time and face that terror
Speaker 5: every single day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not comparable at all. It's scary as shit.
Speaker 2: No, that's fair. Like to be honest, like I think
Speaker 2: about and this is like maybe more honest than I'm
Speaker 2: usually I am on this podcast. Like, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't do as much frontline activism as I did. And
Speaker 2: part of that's like, oh, I'm like aging and I
Speaker 2: have other work that I do, And part of it
Speaker 2: is like I came out as trans, you know, part
Speaker 2: of it is like I never liked the idea of
Speaker 2: like because I always was trans and the idea of
Speaker 2: like being surrounded by only men was just viscerally terrifying.
Speaker 2: But now in particular, like it's just such a it's
Speaker 2: a mind fuck. It's terrifying, And you know, I feel
Speaker 2: like one of my main roles is to try and
Speaker 2: help people be like, look, we're in this together enough
Speaker 2: that you should be scared, but you should get through
Speaker 2: the fear. But it's like, the fear of prison is
Speaker 2: like such a I mean, it's part of the reason
Speaker 2: that people say, like, no one is free till everyone
Speaker 2: is free, as long as there is a single person
Speaker 2: in prison, you were not free because your freedom can
Speaker 2: be taken away from you at any point, and that
Speaker 2: fear of prison it's funny, Okay, I'm almost doing. You know,
Speaker 2: people have kind of like figured out at this point
Speaker 2: that like certain branches of Christianity will use the fear
Speaker 2: of hell to force people to be good by their
Speaker 2: definition of good right. And it's a scare tactic. It's terrorism.
Speaker 2: It is like a you know, you better behave or
Speaker 2: infinite suffering awaits you. But then even the people who
Speaker 2: are critical of that haven't necessarily wrapped their head around that.
Speaker 2: The existence of prisons, especially the existence of punitive prisons,
Speaker 2: like the sort of theoretical perfect model of the Norwegian
Speaker 2: prisoner or whatever, where you're just sort of separated from society,
Speaker 2: which I suspect is not actually I suspect Norwegian prison
Speaker 2: actually kind of sucks. But the American prison system is
Speaker 2: a prison system that exists to make you on the
Speaker 2: outside not feel free, like because it can be taken
Speaker 2: away from you and you can be thrown in prison.
Speaker 3: That's my rant.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean you're absolutely right, like that is
Speaker 5: the entire goal is to make sure that the community
Speaker 5: walks the government line, because if you don't, this is
Speaker 5: what will happen to you. And when people pull like
Speaker 5: the nonsense stuff like well, if you're not committing crimes,
Speaker 5: you shouldn't worry about it, Like they are not looking
Speaker 5: at how like arbitrary crimes are. They're not looking at
Speaker 5: how quickly something can become a crime, or how quickly
Speaker 5: something that wasn't a crime can be portrayed as one.
Speaker 5: And the trans struggle, like trans people should not have
Speaker 5: to be on the front line, Like at no point
Speaker 5: should you or any of our trans family ever have
Speaker 5: to like put their freedom on the line, Like that
Speaker 5: is that's a privileged role, Like that's our role, my role,
Speaker 5: and my boss shouldn't have to get arrested for transliberation.
Speaker 5: Like they should be safe, Like they should be able
Speaker 5: to feel comfort and warmth. You should be able to
Speaker 5: feel that safe and warmth and love. Like black people
Speaker 5: shouldn't be flighting the black liberation pipe. That's that's white
Speaker 5: people's flight. Trans people should not have to put their
Speaker 5: vulnerable lives on the line for this struggle if we
Speaker 5: really believe in in the liberation struggle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's hard because you also want to like
Speaker 2: while also not wanting to like lead that struggle, right,
Speaker 2: Like I think that like white people putting them ourselves
Speaker 2: on the line for black liberation is like super important.
Speaker 2: But then obviously you can get into.
Speaker 3: There's the hero shit and trying to take a leadership. Yeah,
Speaker 3: do the David Gilbert role.
Speaker 5: Be a soldier how they need you, and help and
Speaker 5: fight how people actually need you, not how you think
Speaker 5: it should be done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Well, any last words for our audience around
Speaker 2: this particular issue.
Speaker 5: Yeah, here in Denver, Brenn Rose's Legal Center, that's who
Speaker 5: I work for. It's a transgender ran civil rights law firm.
Speaker 5: We're about to put forward the trans Bill rights here
Speaker 5: in Colorado to guarantee safety. And I bring that up
Speaker 5: to say that not only is there direct action and
Speaker 5: protest we can do, we can also try to weasel
Speaker 5: into the legal system.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a thousand ways we can fight these motherfuckers,
Speaker 3: and we got to use every single one of them. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I have nothing but love and solidarity for every
Speaker 5: transgender person alive anywhere, And I'm with you, and we're
Speaker 5: going to get through this.
Speaker 2: I hope we are going to get through it. Because
Speaker 2: even as inndivid well we might not, right, But that's
Speaker 2: that's true about being alive, right, Literally, none of us
Speaker 2: are going to get through being alive alive, right at
Speaker 2: some point that's going to stop working for us, and
Speaker 2: they can't get rid of us. We have always been here,
Speaker 2: we will always be here as long as there are
Speaker 2: humans that are going to be trans people, they are
Speaker 2: going to be queer people, they're going to be All
Speaker 2: of the identities that they're trying to destroy cannot be destroyed,
Speaker 2: even if us as individuals might. But again, we weren't
Speaker 2: going to get out of life alive anyway. That's what
Speaker 2: I hold on to. I don't know about everyone who's listening,
Speaker 2: but the thing that I hold onto is just literally
Speaker 2: I was like, well I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I'm not immortal, you know, it's got a time limit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And all we.
Speaker 2: Can do is to say, go back to one of
Speaker 2: the first things that you said, we just kind of
Speaker 2: can't compromise our ethics, you know, like there's like balancing
Speaker 2: acts right where you have to think like, well, I
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't do something where I like while out and
Speaker 2: get myself killed and accomplished nothing like to win, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: And some of fighting to win is knowing and not
Speaker 2: to fight and things like that, right, but not in
Speaker 2: a secretly you're just actually doing it at a cowardice way.
Speaker 2: You actually have to be strategically being like where and
Speaker 2: when should I engage in what ways? And there are
Speaker 2: so many different ways that people can engage. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on, And do you want to talk about
Speaker 2: your book?
Speaker 5: So rather than the cages out right now, it's with
Speaker 5: ak Press and it is a oral history of the
Speaker 5: political prisoner movement hold from the mouths of those prisoners.
Speaker 5: It covers like fifty or so prisoners from every movement,
Speaker 5: Black trans Our Elders are more recent anti fascists, and
Speaker 5: it is a beautiful way not just to hear about
Speaker 5: like oh I fought for this, but what was my
Speaker 5: life like inside? What did I experience? What gave me joy,
Speaker 5: what gave me hope, what gave me sadness? And it's
Speaker 5: a way to see the vulnerability and humanity of those inside.
Speaker 5: And I think that's really valuable right now. And here
Speaker 5: soon my ad X book is coming out on the Impress.
Speaker 5: Oh cool, So I'll be.
Speaker 3: Hounding you for that here soon for that coverage.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, wait, well what's that book called or about
Speaker 5: it's gonna be called a clean Hell, and it's gonna
Speaker 5: be about how I want it trial because no one
Speaker 5: does that in the Feds. Yeah, zero point zero eight
Speaker 5: percent of people win in federal trial. And then how
Speaker 5: I got sent to the federal supermax and there's no
Speaker 5: books out about the supermax there's none. Well, and so
Speaker 5: one of your homies as the inside scoop.
Speaker 2: Yeah I got Yeah, you were just an undercover journalist,
Speaker 2: just a real undercover solitary confinement.
Speaker 3: So had Josh Davidson is helping me edit it.
Speaker 5: Josh Davidson from rather than the Cages who who did
Speaker 5: also certain days.
Speaker 3: So it seemed to be a really great project. Calso awesome.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, people should check out both of those
Speaker 2: things and take care of people inside. And I hope
Speaker 2: that we'll have you on again soon.
Speaker 3: Yay, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It happened here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can now find sources for it could happen here,
Speaker 1: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,