In her chapter entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” Andrea Ritchie mentions a number of points regarding the injustices of the criminal justice system against the LGBTQIA community, people of color, and other marginalized communities. Although all of her ideas are worth discussing, the one perspective I found the most compelling was on page 144 when Ritchie said, “Justice for Duanna Johnson and countless other LGBT people requires that efforts to eradicate discrimination go beyond Fortune 500 companies to shelters, welfare offices, and drug treatment programs and ensure that public and private institutions are held accountable” (Ritchie, 144).
As I read the story of Duanna Johnson, I was outraged and frustrated knowing that once again, a trans woman was wrongly beaten and arrested by police with little to no systematic changes occurring after this hate crimes was committed. To make matters worse, after filing a lawsuit against the police department, she was shot execution-styled just days before she could even set foot in the courtroom. As Ritchie stated in her piece, LGBTQIA groups and policy makers couldn’t bring justice to Duanna Johnson, yet still believe that hate crime laws are still the solution to end this sort of violence. As Lanham says on page 143, hate crime laws “could be very helpful to someone like me…white, affluent, with resources at my disposal and connections. But how does having the law in place help someone who otherwise remains invisible?” Well, Lanham, they don’t. In order to ensure that marginalized communities get the help they need, we must actively fight discrimination and push for reforms in shelters, welfare offices, and drug treatment programs. As Ritchie suggests at the end of this chapter, there is no single/simple solution to end this discrimination, however I know that if people from different communities join forces and fight as one, we can dismantle the oppressive forces that stand in our way of equal treatment for all.
The Human Rights Campaign has long been known for being the largest national gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, and queer civil rights organization in the United States. Their mission is to create a world where members of the LBGTQIA community are guaranteed their basic human rights and can live a life of openness, honesty, and safety while at work, home, and in the community. The website created a list of trans folk whose lives were wrongly taken by homophobic predators around the country in 2017. After reviewing the list of 28 dead trans folk on https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2017, I noticed that majority victims are trans women of color, however I never read about of any of these women’s death on social media or heard their stories on television. As Ritchie discussed in this piece, the lack of attention this community receives in contemporary media has caused a great deal of sadness and frustration for civil rights activists, leaders and organizations alike. Why are the deaths of these women being swept under the rug while homophobic violence against white, gay, middle class men continues to flood the media? Not only that, but why are many mainstream LGBT groups reluctant to confronting the very systems that oppress/hurt those in their own community? Although the Human Rights Campaign offers no grand solution to stopping the problem of homophobic violence against trans people (Andrea Ritchie points out that there is not simply one solution), the organization recognizes that fatal violence disproportionately affects trans women of color and that the “that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities, barriers that make them vulnerable” (Human Rights Campaign) and includes a link readers can follow to learn how to fight transphobic violence.
Have we seen any long-term effects of programs and organizations such as Building a Queer Left, Desiring Change, and that Ritchie claims have brought people together to dismantle the current criminal justice system?
No comments:
Post a Comment