Damelo Todo partners with Silvia Rivera Law Project

Damelo Todo is super honored to announce its first official partnership - with NYC-based Silvia Rivera Law Project!!! that means future love-sessioning, resource-sharing, and more! stay tuned...

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) 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 is a collective organization founded on the understanding that gender self-determination is inextricably intertwined with racial, social and economic justice. Therefore, we seek to increase the political voice and visibility of low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming. SRLP works to improve access to respectful and affirming social, health, and legal services for our communities. We believe that in order to create meaningful political participation and leadership, we must have access to basic means of survival and safety from violence.

(photo: Sylvia speaking in front of the Stonewall Bar, 2002)

cobra thursdays

getting ready for an interview with SAUL SARABIA tomorrow morning for damelo todo... thrill!!! and then going out to the COBRA with mah girlfriends mariana and zackary. THURSDAYS AT THE COBRA you hear me. revisiting a really important touchstone article, "death on terminal island" published by LA Mag in 2008 - brilliant analysis of the transgender/immigrant rights debate... 

in my preparations i was struck by this basic question - "can you identify some of the major legal issues for the transgender community in LA?" and it made me kind of trip out wondering if anyone can. or realize that we all can. i mean no one is the singular authority voice. for so long i've had this belief that somewhere in LA there is this group of like other people who are the authorites on trans/legal/organizing. but lately it's all becoming demystified. like there are amazing people doing this work. but it's like all of us. and there is no central database or anything. but it is actually quantifiable - in a really cool way - cause that means it's expandable...

just to spout off a few in no particular order... there's Gender Justice LA... Bienestar... Bamby Salcedo at Children's Hospital... Jake Finney and Drian Juarez & Trans Economic Empowerment at LA Gay and Lesbian... Victoria Ortego and West Hollywood Royal Court... QTEAM... Alexis Rivera at TLC-LA... Incite LA... Sex Workers Outreach Program... Community Friends... B.A.A.R.T. Clinic... Transgender Service Provider Network... Transgender Taskforce... and that's just like some of LA - then we got all of OC etc. see? we are all so plugged in already! see no mystery. love it.

some of what i cared/concerned about today

(photos by ashley love n crew)

i might have already mentioned i disagree with boycotting... but wantin to keep track...

ASHLAND AND I ARE ON OUR WAY TO JALISCO 

TO DO AN ENERGY READ

OTHER PARTY STARTS APRIL 22

what we are up against (racist transphobic pro-gentrificatory capitalist media)

(angeleno magazine 2008)

hmmmm

my friendz are getting famous which is super fucking rad for them

READ

NEW YORK. SEE YOU APRIL 11-19. (CAN'T SAY WHY YET BUT WILL SOON)

RENEE GREEN KILLIN IT WITH LANGUAGE AND IDEAS TONIGHT AT DA MAK

 

more of the same... looks

LGL to sign letter to transgender roundtable and i got a new coat

in its first collective smoov move LGL has voted unanimously to ENDORSE THE COMMUNITY LETTER TO THE TRANSGENDER ROUND TABLE.

PRETTY COOL RIGHT.

what's that you ask?

the transgender roundtable is an annual meeting, first proposed 3 years ago by the gay and lesbian advocates and defenders (GLAD) to replace the "LGBT litigators roundtable" - which is a very exclusive, "lawyers only" elite meeting organized by lambda legal, GLAD, the national center for lesbian rights (NCLR) and the ACLU, where legal issues that are seen as particularly urgent (mostly marriage) are discussed. basically it's like a backroom members-only group - where lawyers set the policies for the national gay and lesbian agenda. and the transgender roundtable is trying to replicate this structure. so this year, silvia rivera law project (SRLP) and several other super rad community-based legal and direct services orgs are officially protesting - in the form of a letter that challenges the exclusivity of this processs and demands an alternative structure that is more accountable. i could go on about the fuckedupness of how this structure plays out in terms of squashing important voices of the actual community - but lets just say DRAMA IS DEEP.

here's a quote from the letter:

We are writing to you about an issue that we think is of great importance to the developing movement(s) for trans liberation.  We are writing because we are organizations and individuals concerned with ensuring that trans movements are developed in ways that center racial and economic justice and the leadership of poor people and people of color.  We come to this work with a critique of how as lesbian and gay rights has developed over the last 30 years, it has centered the experiences and leadership of white upper class people and its agenda has come to focus on narrow legal equality gains that have little to offer the people who face the worst consequences of homophobia.  We believe that part of why that has occurred is that the movement professionalized, and the agenda increasingly was produced in backroom meetings by executive directors, lawyers and funders, with communities facing the worst marginalization (POC, people with disabilities, poor people, immigrants, criminalized people) unrepresented in those discussions. We want to stop the replication of these mistakes in emerging trans activism.

basically by signing the letter LGL is coming out in solidarity with these demands. it was a pretty cool experience to put our first consensus decision into effect... because our core members comprise a diverse group who don't all neceassrily share "critiques" or even politics, part of our project is about working to all get on the same page together. therefore in signing to letter, we are committing to educating ourselves about the background of its contents - such as what is the lgbt roundtable and what does it have to do with the history of the lgbt movement? why don't we want only lawyers deciding on how the national trans movemet is shaped? etc. in other wordz so that not just saying our org is in solidarity - but that WE as individiuals moving towards more solidarity with each other.

I GOT A NEW COAT. GIFT FROM REN'YO <3 THE OTHER NIGHT AT DA CLUB. PERSONAL SHOPPING SPREADING WEALTH. IT MAKES MANY COOL SHAPES. AAAAND THE DESIGNER IS CALLED "TRASTEVERINE." get itt? TRANSVESTITE. yeauh.

catchin up

been wanting to address this "ticked off trannies with knives" (TOTWK) movie that is being shown at Tribecca this year. i'm actually trying to work right now with some folks to organize a public discussion here in LA - seeing as we're like the movie-making capital of the world or something - this directly concerns both the moviemaking and trans communites here.

for those of you who haven't been following any of the DRZAMA, basically the movie, directed by Dallas-based gay poc director Isreal Luna, was billed as a comedy/thriller/‘transploitation’ and programmed in a midnight cult section of big ballz Tribecca Film Festival. when news of it broke, the online trans community instantaneously reacted, infuraiated by the movie's blantant exploitation of violence against trans women. GLAAD released a statement officially demanding Tribecca pull it from the festival. all over facebook people are calling for a boycott. several fierce individuals including the amazing Ashley Love, are spearheading the campaign.

you can read about why the trans community on a whole has been grievously offended by this movie by following the above links, but also just watching the TRAILER on youtube will probably give you enough fodder to form your own opinion...

regardless of whether the movie SHOULD have been programmed, it's in the festival now. so what to do about it? because negative publicity is still publicity - and moreorless no different from any other publicity a self-proclaimed exploitation movie like this might get...

so...

i totally disagree that we should boycott this movie. it seems like REALLY a problem to argue that things that have fucked up politics that we don't agree with should be turned off, censored. if we don't agree with it, we should use it as an opportunity to hash out why, and enable more people to encounter this process. within such a mainstream context as Tribecca, i actually don't think transphobia needs to be a tragedy - it's like an opportunity to push consciousness. generally it seems that while rage is necessary and natural, that energy shouldn't be spent trying to limit other stuff.

i've also seen this movie classified as a "cinematic hate crime" - which troubles me on 2 fronts. 1, it collapses the difference between representations of violence and violent acts (obvz a dangerous road) and 2, it aligns our cause with crimininalization. again, the thing worth fighting for, to me, should not be the right to turn something into a crime. the criminal/prison industrial complex is not a friend to the trans community, particularly the for trans communities of color, or people of color and poor people in general. so it seems weird to wanna fight for that or use that as our battle cry or whatever.

now that it's out there TOTWK possibly raises some interesting issues. like SO MANY. the issue of movies made about trans stuff by non-trans directors- there is a lot of that going on now everywhere. particularly gay men depicting trans women, and the history of that old bone. trans directors making movies about non-trans stuff! trans actors playing trans and non-trans characters... trans folks inhabiting slasher genre or performing slasher characters... etc. exploitation. REPRESENTATION. of who by whom. positive vs. negative etc.

so at this point why not watch it and discuss? let people air their grievances. let more people develop personal transphobia critiques. let's obligate the broader moviemaking community in this discussion. at least that's what we're thinking over here in LA - can anyone get a hold of a screener?? i hear it's kinda hard to reach the director right now...

on a personal note, i'm also deeply inspired by all the powerful solidarity springing up. would love to harness it towards more creativity and away from reactionism...

ps. love that i PRETEND i have time to blog right now. secretly i'm editing damelo todo 24hrs around the clock (NEWZZZ SOOOON)

HOW ABOUT AN OL' CLUB LOOK

photo by the amazing japanese lezzie fashion photog yuri manabe!

ROUND 2

another report on CA prison overcrowding was just released - this one by the nytimes. most studies have focused on how prison overcrowding is suddenly an important issue because of the state's epic budget crisis. some more interesting facts: CA spends 11% of the state budget ($8 billion) on prison industrial complex. there are currently 167,000 prisoners in CA. to me, the most interesting part of this study revolves around CA's insanely high recidivism rate (that means being returned to prison after first time offense): 70 PERCENT. the highest in the nation. uh yea.

GET THIS

"California is the only state that places all prisoners on parole at release, no matter the offense ... usually for one to three years. If a parolee is arrested or fails a drug test or misses an appointment with a parole officer, the offender lands back in prison."

AND SO ON...

this debate is particularly relevant for the trans movement because a large portion of our community struggle daily with the interconnected forces of poverty, transphobia, criminalization of sex work, and so on. particularly so for undocumented folks. it's an endless chain or downward spiral however you wanna call it - and all the more within the context of CA recidivism rates...

as a side note - in Los Angeles, if you get picked up for solicitation and you have more than 4 condoms on you, it can be used against you as evidence that you are prostituting.

Alexis Giraldo's life story is a case and point. the first time Alexis went to jail was for stealing beer from a convenience store when she was a teenager. repeated brushes with the law over the years combined with the fact that she was constantly having to break the law because she is poor and trans, snowballed until one day she got arrested for a misdemeanor & parole violation. the judge sentenced her to federal prison and she ended up in Folsom State mens prison, where her cellmate repeatedly raped and abused her for 6 months. Alexis has been trying to sue the CDCR for several years, and currently her case is waiting to be heard in the 9th circuit of appeals. the state keeps postponing. in december she was arrested again for parole violation - so she's currently waiting out her time in jail. i'm having to gloss over a lot of detailz here, but in a nutshell the system is fucked. and i believe the trans movement shares a lot of demands with the prison abolition mvment. just sayin'

MEET ALEXIS

(ps google her she's like totally brilliant and famous hero etc!)

i think i posted this video on class b4 but without PIC critique so here it is again... keeps comin around

OH! and i guess they're trying to change the laws so that they don't send EVERYONE back on parole violations. that's the conclusion of the article. read it

LGL CLINIC EVERY LAST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH

g

LGL WELCOMES A NEW PARTICIPANT!

ALEXIS RIVERA!!!

(Transgender Law Center, TLC-LA)

<3 HEARTS <3

HOTNESS

WORK

next tues is LGL clinic #2!!! LAMELY i am still on the road (nyc for a week of editing Damelo Todo with Matt Wolf and Whitney Biennial opening) but also I must admit it feels a tiny bit strange and difficult to be working at Imprenta right now in light of the recent Silver Platter shakedown... especially martes. it super bums me out to feel this way because the conflict of a few individuals ought not to affect the community so much... and i know i know likely it doesn't for most people- things probably won't change much in terms of the actual scene at the bar, and therefore LGL will continue to have meaningful constituency. but i can't deny i feel suddenly (temporarily?) ungrounded from the place. when i interviewed Koky last week and he kept using the word inseguro, which translates to "insecure" but in context means more dramatically the feeling of having the floor drop out from underneath you. in my small way i feel the same.

for example it was surreal - to be at the estates/entrust lawyers office and see a copy of the Silver Platter's property lease. there it was, just a piece of paper with VANOWEN REALTY at the top. i mean, i have to same fucking lease for IMPRENTA... duh we are part of the same building. but it was kind of upsetting, like being a kid and finding out santa claus doesn't exist. i keep coming back to these parent/child metaphors. seeing the structure revealed in all its fragility. basically it's traumatic. it keeps returning me to the question of - what is the BAR??? a building? a business? the people? the block? the day of the week? the decade? are we ever really there? do we exist when we leave?? TRIP OUT.

CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTION FOR TRANS LEGAL ORG

(kalup linzy)

what could be more of a dream come true???

you buy da contemporary art

your money goes to a SUPREMELY RADICAL trans legal organization (Silvia Rivera Law Project)

think of it as getting to BE AN ART COLLECTOR FOR FREE - cause your money goes where you would want it to go anyway and at the same time you get ART. ya know?

i say put it on a credit card, bid over the phone, hop on a flight to new york. i might do all three. these artists are CONTEMPORARY folks - trust and BELIVE their value WILL appreciate mkaaay.

SMALL WORKS FOR BIG CHANGE  

FEB 18TH AT PARTICIPANT INC

FREE LEGAL SERVICES FOR THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY EVERY LAST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH @ IMPRENTA

R&R&R&R&R

so i'm in san francisco for the weekend, holed up at the inn on castro trying to decompress from the Damelo Todo shoot (finally living up to it's name) before i head to the wexner for 3 week of editing... have no thoughts in my brain at all, no needs, and not ready to do anything, so i thought i would just throw out whatever's been on my radar this week that didn't quite materialize cause i had to deprioritize everything to get through 17-hour shooting dayz... email inbox is about 10 times what it should be so i wil get to that too please thank you for your patience!

first of all

alexander mqueenish hips combined with the ultimate tranny-sucking spandex tights makes this the look of 2010 doncha think? (along with beyone's new cgi-enhanced dance moves in general) i would literally wear this look until it fell off my body

CALVES

what makes da calves work best is heels that match a skin tone of course

PRIVATIZATION OF PRISONS IN GENERAL

in his final annual address to the legislature last week schwarzenegger announced a plan to further cut public funding of prisons in favor of the private sector. he calls this "choosing universities over prisons" - yet another example of the slippery debate around california's insane incarceration crisis. according to the nytimes article, the CA system houses roughly 170,000 inmates in its 33 prisons and 12 community correctional facilities and has an annual budget of roughly $10.6 billion; the private prison industry is one of the few growth industries in CA's recession economy. checkout the statewide campaign called Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) which is a broad based of over 40 orgs seeking to reduce prison spending by reducing the number of people in prison and number of prisons in the state...

BOUTIQUE PRISON BUSINESS CONTINUES TO FIND NEW MARKETS

Italy to open first prison for transgender inmates

perhaps the first of it's kind in the world... italy is riviving an almost empty prison - i guess we are supposed to be excited that they are making it a trans prison rather than CLOSING it. so here is yet another example of how twisted the issue of incarceration is for the trans movement. you would think this is a good thing, right? except that remember from earlier discussions about hate crimes laws, the ultimate goal is not define rights in terms of the lives that are locked away. like we don't necessarily want to fight to put MORE people in jail, and feed an industrial complex that discriminates like 6-10 times more against people of color, poor people, and trans folks... AH ANYWAYZ... back to braindead. starting tomorrow i will be a human being again.

did you know there is an emoticon for "sisterhood is powerful"

today was spent doing some SERIOUS multi-tasking. organizing Damelo Todo production from sunrise to sunset (8 DAYZ AWAY FROM THE SHOOT!!!), and at the same time solo-journeying into the mystical world of adhoc legal adocacy. Damelo Todo tasks included: simultaneously email/skyping/chatting/phone-conferencing/photo-texting (those are all different modes) about shoot schedules, floor plans, casting calls, camera tests, post timelines, editor workflows, hiring crew, stage-blocking actors, previewing stack of old club films that inspire me... basically everything under the sun from burning dvds to designing/printing "extras" recruiting posters en español. that was today. intermittently i was also trying to help a trans women friend who was trapped in the jaws of the LA prison industrial complex, lost somewhere in an inmate detention center under a fake name awaiting placement to a mens jail. she got arrested on christmas eve for a minor offense, and of course hours later found herself sucked all the way inside... also she had just gotten a housing eviction notice the day before. it took several days to piece together the information, from the initial fragmentary midnight collect call on christmas eve to a website that gave me a booking number, and just now finally half an hour ago confirmed she is being placed permanently in Men's Central Jail with no visitor permissions. initially, having almost no information, no way to talk to her or assume the $20,000 bail, plus being radioactive and not a lawyer, i felt pretty powerless to do anything... but slowly i tried to think through what could be done. i asked for help, and a lot of people responded (dean spade to the rescue 4EVA riiight!) today i'm hopeful - which makes me a little heartened though still full of rage - that she is going to be ok(?), whatever that means... at least until her court date... which leads me to to my new idea that...

ANYONE CAN BE A LEGAL ADVOCATE!

IT'S FUN AND EASY

TOTALLY DOABLE WITHIN YOUR GLAMOROUS LIFESTYLE

YOU CAN HELP SOMEONE WITH JUST YA BRAIN AND YA CELLPHONE
AND YA LAPTOP AND YA SEXY BIZNESS FRONT

LETSGO LIBERATION!!!

LGL LGL LGL

here's what i did... SRSLY anyone can do it!!!

first i befriended her roomate and we figured out a way to 3-way call with her in jail (i guess you can only call landlines from jail which is why we initially couldn't reach each other) to get as much information as possible (such as her fake booking name, apt number where her stuff was stashed, etc). then i sent out an group email to LGL and available folks responded! Shayla Myers, a BOMB ASS lawyer and LGL collective member, led me to a website where i could then search her fake name and find her actual booking status. got the roomate to fax us the eviction notice (Shayla actually even rushed the courthouse), and put the smack down (ok a very little) with the landlord who was trying to front like they could change the locks. but even if they HAD, we already had a crew ready with SUV to grab and stash her belongings as a last minute resort (WOOORD April Saravia). this was today. but unfortunately it's just phase I.

the system is fucked. but today left me with a feeling of ok we can do this... as do so many other days when i commune with LGL folks. and integrate this stuff into my life.

I SUPPOSE UR ASKING ME WHAT THE BUTT IS LGL???
I MEAN IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT BUT WE UPGRADED TO A WAY HOTTER
COLLECTIVELY-CHOSEN ORGANIZATION NAME.

LETSGO LIBERATION (LGL)

oy we have lots to catch up on... let me catch my breath and get back to you. sisterhood is powerful.

BTW damelo todo narrative shoot crew is now 13 and counting!!!

SHOUT to ernesto foronda, archie hernandez, ashley hunt, michelle lawler, dani carrera, candi guterres, britt ringer, elsa valdez, suzanne mejean, miguel barragan, rhys ernst, and taisha paggett

WAAAAAT TO DO SATURDAY

IF YR IN LA...

and interested in the transsexual movement, this is an OBZ building opportunity...

"Already, the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. One out of every thirty-two people in the U.S. live under criminal punishment system supervision. African-American people are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white people; Latin people are twice as likely to be incarcerated as white people.  LGBTS and queer people, transgender people, and poor people are also at greatly increased risk for interaction with the criminal justice system.  It is clear that this monstrous system of laws and enforcement specifically targets marginalized communities, particularly people of color." - SRLP

AND DEN...

NACHO'S NEW PARTY W NGUZUNGUZU

WEAVE WEAVE WEAVE WEAVE

mmmmmkay?

thinking more about hate crimes laws - LA building more ICE detention centers

this image kinda totally freaks me out and it's like from the government's website...
published by the Center for Investigative Reporting (11/12/09):

ICE moving forward with Los Angeles-area immigration center lock-up

The federal agency that oversees immigration detention will solicit bids next month for a new 2,200-bed detention center in the Los Angeles area. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, posted an online notice this week stating that it intends to open bids on Dec. 15 for a contractor to own and operate a low-custody detention facility for men. The facility would be one of the largest immigration lock-ups in the country.

Continuing a policy pushed under the Bush administration, the Obama team has moved to deport more criminal aliens, which has also driven a need for more bed space. Los Angeles County is one of the first counties in California to participate in ICE’s Secure Communities program, which screens the immigration status of all booked inmates. Several dozen counties, mostly along the Southwest border, participate in the program, which will be rolled out nationwide over the next few years.

ICE announced today that its Secure Communities initiative identified more than 111,000 criminal aliens in local custody during its first year. From the press release:

Since its inception in October 2008, Secure Communities has identified more than 11,000 aliens charged or convicted with Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping—1,900 of which have already been removed from the United States—and more than 100,000 aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes.

read more

more about Secure Communities (gov website)

thinking along the lines of criminal deportation initaitives, i remember that i wanted to call attention to the fact that recently Silvia Rivera Law Project came out in opposition to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. you can read ALL ABOUT THAT HERE. i mention this in relation to the above image/news beacuse i'm thinking about how intensely interlocked criminal/incarceration and immigration/deportation issues are in Los Angeles. so i just wanted to put them side by side to see how they talk to each other. i know it's controversial and upsetting for most of us gay and trans folks to imagine opposing hate crimes laws. however as an organization SRLP works to "understand mass imprisonment as a primary vector of violence in the lives of our constituents" and they "belive that hate crimes legislation is a counterproductive response to the violence faced by LGBT people." here are some of their very compelling reasons:

Already, the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. ONE OUT OF EVERY 32 PEOPLE [my emphasis] in the U.S. live under criminal punishment system supervision. African-American people are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white people; Latin people are twice as likely to be incarcerated as white people.  LGBTS and queer people, transgender people, and poor people are also at greatly increased risk for interaction with the criminal justice system.  It is clear that this monstrous system of laws and enforcement specifically targets marginalized communities, particularly people of color.

What hate crimes laws do is expand and increase the power of the same unjust and corrupt criminal punishment system. Evidence demonstrates that hate crimes legislation, like other criminal punishment legislation, is used unequally and improperly against communities that are already marginalized in our society...

The evidence also shows that hate crime laws and other “get tough on crime” measures do not deter or prevent violence.  Increased incarceration does not deter others from committing violent acts motivated by hate, does not it rehabilitate those who have committed past acts of hate, and does not make anyone safer. As we see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained, caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence in prisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a main perpetrator of violence against our communities.

umm what can i say i hear you.

just thinking about all this stuff after having just participated in LA's Transgender Day of Rememberance, which was BEAUTFUL BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL. (omg separate post about the BEAUTY, people) but also feeling bittersweet about the valence of our gesture of marching through the center of west hollywood, with all the pomp and circumstance of city officials and cops shepherding the way - and wondering how these activities sync up with potentially radical trans politics. or really WAY MORE importantly, whether these actions really help us to grieve - because healthy grieving for us needs to create a space for RAGE... repressive greiving leads only to melancholia...

i want to think more about our emotions in these types of officiated spaces (thinkin bout the LAPD forum in trans violence and the paulina ibarra press conference) so more on that soon.

Sandra de la Loza

i was at Otis today installing for a show organized by Robbie Herbst, and i ran into Sandra de la Loza, an amazing LA-based artist... we had a brief chat about her project, which is part of a larger series of "Declared Invisible Monuments" by the collectively-run Pocho Research Society. today she was hanging documentation of recent monuments to old Latin gay bars in east LA, whose communities have been usurped by gentrification. we talked about Wildness (apparently she's a fan!) and the fragile nature of creative scenes that involve cultural/economic mixing. having grown up in LA Sandra is veteran to the sadly familiar "dive bar turned hipster" story. (for example in my inbox this week: popular lesbian club's new location described as an "old east Hollywood tranny bar that is being converted into pure chic-ery") obviously i think about this stuff every day because Silver Platter/Wildness sometimes gets labeled as such. in fact when we do get mainstream publicity, which is kinda rare, cause we don't actively promote and officially don't talk to press, there's usually a cynical take on who "we" (wildness) are and who "they" (bar) are. the most painful characterization that comes to mind is the LA Weekly's "best tranny bar" article that came out last year, which began with (it's burned in my mind): "Finally! A crossroads convergence of self-involved, art-damaged 20-something kids and Third World gender illusionists at a water hole whose geography transcends the expanse of Silver Lake proper..." and went on to be way crazier than that.

oh btdubs you can read our response to that article when in came out here. it's kind of a huge saga that i can't get into right here and now, but at some point i will cause it has a really magical ending called the journalist actually APOLOGIZED and the LA Weekly pulled the article offline.

i guess right now, i just want to address this this idea of actually who "we" are and who "they" are, just to get the ball rolling...

we (wildness) are myself, ashland mines (aka total freedom), daniel pineda & asma maroof (aka NGUZUNGUZU). as a collective body we are 100% people of color (hapa/asian, african american, puerto rican/dominican, and east indian), 50%+ queer and trans, 75% first generation immigrant, 25%+ low income, 50% with degrees in higher education, and all under the age of 29... to try to start a useful(?) list. and the silver platter, our collaborators Koky Corral (owner), Javier Vargas, and Nicol dela Rocha, they are also 100% p.o.c. (mexican), 100% queer and trans, 2/3rds low income, and all under the age of 50... is this helpfully complicated? it's kinda making my brain spin but at the same time, i think important to try to lay out whatever factors contribute to our understanding of oppression. also to try to break apart this consolidating category of hipster. while i obviously agree that hipster is a real force of urban development, i think it's problematic to equate it with all that's cool/popular/trendy. that's one of the things that inspires me most about living in los angeles, is that there are multiple MULTIPLE accessible hott amazing social spaces that are run by and for queer people of color. and i like to imagine that wildness is one of them. just because our space looks a little more arty than some doesn't mean that we aren't people of color, and it also doesn't mean that people of color aren't entitled to be arty experimental etc. i think the bottom line is that there IS difference between us and silver platter, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact i'd say it's a really a good thing, and it is a real live actual exchange, that isn't utopian, that is full of tensions and challenges, but like it IS happening in a sustaining way, that gets mutually supported by both sides. solidarity, i believe yes. OH OH i could say so much more, but for now... how about some more...

CLUB LOOKZ YAYY

ps. sandra's installation was lookin totally cute awesome nearby to mine which is a kind of janky neon sign that says CONVIVENCIA/COEXISTENCE... i don't have any pics yet but this was the idea and i reeeeallly don't know if it works but anyway you can pretend it looks exactly as good as da mockup

multi-use space

IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT MONTHLY CORE MEETINGS

ARE EVERY 2ND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

(705 s. rampart 90057)

open to the public, free dinner!

we are also working on having a $50 stipend for anyone who self-identifies as low income

starting with 10 of the 20 seats. more on that soooooooon......

photos by Riku Matsuda.

we know this story

i gave a talk at UCLA Law School on Tuesday, in Saul Sarabia's seminar "Latinos and the Law" - about my film, and it's relationship to IMPRENTA organizing and the legal clinic. we were discussing a bunch of amazing shared references: this book called Seeking Community in a Gobal City, which is about Central American immigrant experiences in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles in the 80s. we also looked at the case of Victoria Arellano, a 23 year-old undocumented transwoman who died in a detention center in 2007, because authorities refused to administer her HIV meds. There is a nice well-written article on the subject by Ben Ehrenreich, who is a friend of Saul's:

...No matter how heated the larger debate on immigration becomes, it is safe to predict that Victoria Arellano will not be a poster child for either side. HIV-positive, transgender, with a history of drug addiction, she falls far outside the image of the ideal immigrant. Her death was too cruel, too humiliating to be of use to even the angriest extremists of the nativist right. She has become something of a martyr in the small community of transgender advocates, but Arellano’s fame stops there. Not only her death but her life—the very fact of her existence—makes too many people too uncomfortable.
Until 1996, immigration law used a telling term to refer to noncitizens who can be legally denied residency in the United States. They were not only excluded, although they were that, too; they were “excludable.” The idea still prevails. They provide an opportunity for exclusion, for the nation to define itself by what it is not. Victoria Arellano was almost perfectly unwanted: not just a Latina, but an immigrant; not just an immigrant, but illegal; not just gay, but transgender; not just transgender, but infected with HIV—and an addict to boot. She did not merely slip through the cracks of the system. The system, cracks and all, was built with her in mind...

READ IT

this is story really powerful source material for the film because it ties together a major schism between the immigrant rights and transgender movement. i want the film to focus on this schism because i think framing the Silver Platter in terms of gender over-simplifies it, kinda misses the point. on the other hand within the immigration debate, gender becomes a complication that really challenges people. that's how we arrived at Raquel's story... or rather, how I keep returning to it. coincidentally, Victoria's favorite singer was GLORIA TREVI, who is featured in the the film. i can't say more about that yet but i'm soooooo excited to real SOON.

realradicalwildness.com

Ashland Mines: SHUT THE F UP ABOUT PROP 8 - IMMEDIATELY - OMG - THAT DOOR IS CLOSED AND I AM SO OVR YR GAY CLASSIST BULL - WHY AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT THIS??? - NO REALLY, WHY? - LETS REALLY DO SOMETHING ACTUALLY COOL AND ABOLISH MARRIAGE FOREVER - MAKE MARRIAGE ILLEGAL FOR EVERYONE NOW!!!!

not even a jk at all


in other wordz...


i guess this all makes me think about what i think about all the time, which is way simple consciousness that these "equality" fights are not going to change our lives AT ALL. especially for like almost ALL OF US. legal rights for marriage and gay sex is really a fight for private property and privacy. job discrimination legislation HUH IMAGINES that it would fix the extreme economic disadvantages plaguing most of us- like the economy is otherwise ok without discrimination, um no we know better. and actually most of the violence we suffer is not at the hands of pathological haters, but at the hands of cops, prison guards, administrative bureaucrats etc

or really just INDULGE YEHSELF in Dean Spade's ideas. it's really fun and easy go for it.

being a teenager is so cool

this is Kye AKA Pandora Prestige performing at Wildness yesterday. THE GIRL IS 19!!!!!!

bless US.

she's part of tranny rockstars, based out of the CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL trans youth program organized by Bamby Salcedo - another magical human/institutional combo. i cannot even begin to tell you how hot and amazing this situtaion is. these kids are 10-25 years old (!!!!!) and their shit is way more together than mine will ever be. ps. way more glamourous too. look at their photo album you will DIIIEEEEE of inspiration.

THIS IS BAMBY. i will go wherever you go.

when a cop asked her what M.F. stands for she "my friends."

thank you.

more about Bamby soon. she obviously deserves her own post.

seriously crunching numbers

IMPRENTA is an art project. IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT (ITLP) is a law project. we are fiscally intertwined in a really cool way. basically IMPRENTA the art space is getting 501c3 (non-profit) status, in order to fiscally sponsor the legal clinic. the amazing thing about this arrangement is that by making IMPRENTA a relatively straightforward arts org, it enables ITLP to operate autonomously in a really radical way. for starters, then ITLP doesn't have to have a Board, which traditionally creates all kinds of hierarchical, funder-driven issues that prevent us from maintaining "by and forness" within the community. also our mission statement isn't beholden to the government. there are many ways in which this enables us to be super stealth and do things we could never do if we are a traditional non-profit service org. at the same time, i think that for IMPRENTA the arts org to wear the cloak makes it also a really inventive project, because it manipulates the institutional frame of art... ya know what i mean?

so yesterday was spent all day seriously crunching numbers, working with 2 rad awesome young GAY lawyers (Shayla Meyers and Gina Nicholls), trying to get the books straight into one massive ledger. i was like SO TURNED ON. i looooove math and balancing check books and shit. i really can't help but admit that it's true.

if this is interesting check out INCITE women of color against violence: they published a whole book about why non-profits are so damaging to social movements.

ITLP is modeling after of course the omgsupersoimportant org Silvia Rivera Law Project.

a compilation of critiques on hate crime legislation

Trans people, people of color, and other marginalized groups are disproportionately incarcerated to an overwhelming degree. Trans and gender non-conforming people, particularly trans women of color, are regularly profiled and falsely arrested for doing nothing more than walking down the street.
If we are incarcerating those who commit violence against marginalized individuals/communities we then place them behind walls where they can continue to target these same people. It is not in the best interest of marginalized communities to depend on a system that already commits such great violence to then protect them. 

Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities’ side while continuing to discriminate against us. Liberal politicians and institutions can claim “anti-oppression” legitimacy and win points with communities affected by prejudice, while simultaneously using “sentencing enhancement” to justify building more prisons to lock us up in.
Hate crimes legislation is a liberal way of being “tough on crime” while building the power of the police, prosecutors, and prison guards. Rather than address systems of violence like health care disparities, economic exploitation, housing crisis, or police brutality, these politicians use hate-crimes legislation as their stamp of approval on “social issues”.

if this interests you read more at BLACKANDPINK.ORG

there will be many times i want to talk about this, but part of IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT's mission is to shift the focus of queer/trans legal advocacy from issues of formal equality (such as hate crimes, discrimination, marriage, sodomy repeal etc) to issues that more directly affect the majority of the trans population, the most vulnerable members of our community, ie low income trans people of color. most of us do not suffer directly at the hands of hate perpetrators, although these incidents are grievous, but rather we fall, to varying degrees, within a matrix of race/class/economic oppression which is doubly impossible because of our non-conforming genders. SOO things like access to social services, housing, foster-care, incarceration, immigration etc. these areas need a LOT of work and critique, as opposed to some of these more mainstream causes, organized by the professionalized segment of the LGBT movement, which have more symbolic significance than daily affect. sure these policies are important, but sadly moreso in that they give us more recourse to put people in jail the next time we are killed and beaten. Hate crimes laws basically define "human" in terms of whether you life is worth putting some one else's else in jail.

i could go on but this website is way more consise and organized... so GO.