BCRW’s Scholar & Feminist conference on Utopia featured a workshop with the activist and writer Reina Gossett, contributor to Captive Genders: Trans Embodiement & The Prison Industrial Complex whose work at New York’s Sylvia Rivera Law Project centers on providing services to low-income queer and transgender people. If the packed-to-the-brim classroom was any indication of the pertinence of the issue at hand, the workshop on Prison Abolition attempted to cover both issues and solutions to incarceration in the United States today. As it currently stands, the U.S. incarcerates more people than another other nation in the world. With the criminalization of poverty, police brutality, and spiking stop-and-frisk rates in neighborhoods just outside Morningside Heights, where Barnard is located, the incarcerated population is only continuing to grow.
As an activist, Reina is unafraid of proclaiming her conviction that prisons should be abolished. After a few group activities in which workshop participants identified what made them feel safe and what principles officials use when enforcing the law and punishing people, Reina directed our attention to a video featuring Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. From there, the discussion focused on specific problems that transgender and queer people face in prison.
Reina Gossett (left) high fives a workshop participant