Dean Spade ’97
ABOUT
Dean Spade ‘97 is Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law where he teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, and Law and Social Movements. He founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in 2002, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to low-income transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming people. SRLP also engages in litigation, policy reform and public education on issues affecting these communities. He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (2011, Rev. Ed. 2015). In 2015, Spade was awarded a BCRW Activist Fellowship for his work on trans liberation, prison abolition, and the limits and tactical uses of legal strategies for left organizing. As an Activist Fellow, Spade co-produced a number of activist and educational videos on anti-violence activism and the impact and limits of the non-profit industrial complex on contemporary social movements. Spade is also the recipient of the 2016 Kessler Award from CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies and Gay Studies for his transformative impact on the field of LGBTQ Studies.
As an Activist-in-Residence, Spade will collaborate with Activist-in-Residence Tourmaline Gossett to develop videos and other activist-educational resources focusing on the critical intersections of disability justice, prison abolition, and queer and trans liberation in collaboration with Sins Invalid, a disability justice organization that centers the work of queer and trans artists of color, and the Trans Life and Liberation Art Series, which amplifies the struggles and resiliency of trans femmes of color. Spade will also collaborate with Activist-in-Residence Andrea J. Ritchie to produce a series of activist-educational videos on police violence targeting girls, women, and LGBTQ people of color.
RELATED PROJECTS
Queer Trans War Ban
In the spring/summer of 2018, Dean collaborated with queer and trans activists, anti-war activists including veterans, and cultural workers to amplify queer and trans anti-war resistance. Together they have developed a toolkit with frequently asked questions, articles for deeper reading, and resources for outreach in the streets, on campuses, and in communities during pride season and beyond. Watch the video from a town hall event, and visit the Queer Trans War Ban website for more info.
No New Youth Jail
Dean also worked on a collaboration with hundreds of activists, community members, and organizations in King County, Washington to oppose the construction of a $210 million new youth jail and family court buildings. The coalition includes teachers, artists, young people, public health workers, researchers, nurses, bus drivers, families, and people of faith who are fighting tirelessly to stop this jail building project and force the County to invest in human needs, not more cages.
Over the years, No New Youth Jail Coalition has worked to stop the tax levy for the new jail, and the City and County’s permits for building. The coalition won a lawsuit that shows that the tax levy was illegal, but the County continues to build, risking a significant budget shortage if they do not win an appeal to our lawsuit. In March, 2018, the coalition delivered a demand that the County Executive, Dow Constantine, put a moratorium on construction. When he failed to do so, the coalition initiated the People’s Moratorium, a wave of protest aimed at stopping construction. Learn more on the New New Youth Jail website.
Practicing New Social Relations, Even in Conflict
“Practicing New Social Relations, Even in Conflict” is an essay contribution to Toward an Ethics of Activism: A Community Investigation of Humility, Grace and Compassion in Movements for Justice, a book project edited by Frances Lee, with contributors Alicia Garza, Corinne Manning, Dean Spade, Erin Naomi Burrows, E.T. Russian, Frances Lee, and Maisha Manson. Read the full-length book here.
Survived and Punished: Video Series
Survived and Punished is among a network of groups organizing defense campaigns to free criminalized survivors of violence like Paris Knox, Bresha Meadows, Marissa Alexander, Cherelle Baldwin, and Alisha Walker, and support them upon their release. These campaigns lift up people’s right to defend their lives and survive without being punished. To learn more visit #SurvivedAndPunished: Survivor Defense and Abolitionist Praxis. Watch the series here.
No Body Is Disposable: Video Series
“No Body Is Disposable” is an activist-educational video series offering snapshots of a disability justice framework and tools for activists, educators, and students to bring to their communities. In these videos, disabled people of color, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people, including Patty Berne, Stacey Milbern, Eli Clare, Sebastian Margaret, Mia Mingus, and many others document the history of ableism in the U.S. as well as the work and limitations of the disability rights movement, and share critical resources toward a disability justice framework. Watch the series here.
Queer Dreams and Nonprofit Blues: Video Series
In 2013, BCRW and The Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia University co-convened a conference called Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues to examine the critiques emerging from queer and feminist activists and scholars about the impact of funding on social movement agendas and formations. Interviews from the conference were edited into 30 short videos that aim to bring these critical perspectives into an accessible format for use in activist spaces and classrooms. Watch the series here.
No One Is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition
In these videos Tourmaline Gossett and Dean Spade explore how to build societies where the process of creating justice is as important as the end—communities where no one is exiled. The series was released as part of the online discussion “No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition,” held on February 7, 2014. Watch the series here.
“I Use My Love to Guide Me”: Conversations with CeCe McDonald, Tourmaline Gossett, and Dean Spade
In 2014, CeCe McDonald joined prison abolition activists Tourmaline Gossett and Dean Spade in a conversation about her own experiences surviving trauma and impossible situations, and the importance of collective organizing for people facing systems of violence. This video series captures themes from that conversation. Watch the series here.
FEATURED VIDEOS
Queer Anti-Militarism Town Hall
Seattle Public Library
April 2, 2018
43rd Annual Scholar and Feminist Conference
Subverting Surveillance: Strategies to End State Violence
“they said in the name of self-defense”: Technologies of Surveillance and the Selling of the In/Security State
Featuring Rabab Abdulhadi, Dylan Rodríguez, Nandita Sharma, and Dean Spade, moderated by Craig Willse
February 16, 2018
Title quote from June Jordan, “Apologies to all the People in Lebanon,” Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983. From Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005).
CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Kessler Award Lecture
When We Win We Lose: Mainstreaming and the Redistribution of Respectability
Dean Spade
December 9, 2016
Queer Dreams and Nonprofit Blues
History of Queers Against Police
Dean Spade