I’ve been working on this new tool about how to respond to escalating repression without falling into classic anti-solidarity traps with Community Justice Exchange, Jocelyn Simonson, PIlar Weiss, Atara Rich-Shea and Zohra Ahmed since last year, and we’re excited to share it! You can find the entire tool at bit.ly/cultivatesolidarity. Check out the video from our launch event below.
Recent Events: Recordings to Watch!
Check out these three videos of recent panel events I was part of.
This panel at NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality was a truly interesting conversation. And there was accidental outfit coordination between panelists.
This event at San Francisco State was a showstopper, featuring so many brilliant thinkers talking about queer justice, colonialism, war, and pinkwashing.
I was honored to be the keynote trainer at Movement Law Lab’s final session in their Build Power, Fight Power online course, in which thousands of lawyers and law students participated over several months. In this talk, I provide a basic rundown of the limits of law and lawyers to social movements, and the potential for us to participate in ethical, transformative ways.
Finally, this event with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project about queer and trans abolition politics is not to be missed!
My Latest Writing on Pinkwashing: The Right Wing Is Leveraging Trans Issues to Promote Militarism
I wrote this article on the dangerous ways the right is using trans people to promote right-wing security and military agendas alongside its violent backlash against trans people. Among these tactics is the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” campaign developed over a decade ago to promote a positive public image of Israel, foment anti-Muslim racism, and distract from Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine and apartheid regime.
Excerpt: “[T]he use of a thin LGBT inclusion politics to make the Israeli or US military appear progressive is becoming a losing strategy. Resistance to pinkwashing is rising, and each controversy exposes new communities to the critique of this propaganda. A growing number of Jews in the US, especially young people, are becoming critical of Israel. The Movement for Black Lives has made its solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation clear, helping many people in the US see the connections between US and Israeli racism and state violence. Cross-movement organizing between Indigenous people in North America, including Water Protectors, and Palestine liberation activists is helping people see the links between US and Israel as settler-colonialism.”
Resist Pinkwashing in Seattle NOW!
Interview about Pinkwashing on the Treyf Podcast
Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back
Interview: On Normal Life
Here is an interview I did with Natalie Oswin on Normal Life for Society and Space.
New Syllabus, Review, Blogpost and Translation
I’m co-teaching a class this semester with Prof. Katherine Franke about the law of occupation and colonialism. The class looks at the occupation of Palestine, US colonialism in Guam, Puerto Rico, North America, Hawaii and the Marshall Islands, the US occupation of Iraq, and more. You can see the syllabus here.
I also wanted to share a new review of Normal Life by Ro Velasquez Guzman in Shameless magazine, and a new blogpost I wrote for SRLP’s blog about how recent debates about gun control and mental health relate to trans politics and criminalization. Finally, HUGE THANKS to Morgan Ztardust for translating “For Lovers and Fighters” in Spanish. The translation is here.
Blog Post for Upcoming Conference
This coming Friday and Saturday I’m heading to Los Angeles for a conference that marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the 10th anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas. In advance of the conference, speakers were asked to write blog posts related to the themes of the conference panels we are participating in. These were posted to the Balkinization blog. I thought I’d re-post what I wrote here as well:
Sexual freedom, legal equality and settler colonialism
New Videos and a New Syllabus
I am teaching a January Term class at Seattle U for the first time, starting in a few weeks. It will be a four day intensive about imprisonment. I just posted the syllabus in case it is of interest.
I also wanted to share some new videos. GritTV recently posted an interview that Laura Flanders did with me.
http://blip.tv/grittv/dean-spade-the-most-imprisoning-nation-in-the-world-part-1-of-2-6482091
Also, I recently attended the World Social Forum: Free Palestine! in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I was part of a Queer Visions contingent that put on two public panels, this one and this one. Here’s the talk I gave about marriage and the military and pinkwashing: