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The sort of trajectory for, uh, this afternoon, Uh, is that I'm going to do a, uh, about a 40 minute presentation. I'm gonna try to keep it pretty tight. Um, just to give, uh, some some context and a place to jump off from for a conversation. Um, and so after the presentation, we'll do some discussion, moderate discussion, and then I guess we'll break and do some some afternoon tea for folks that are are [00:00:30] jonesing for a snack or for something to drink. Um, and then we'll move to even more casual. Let's just hang out and have a conversation. Um, So first, I'll just tell you, uh, a little bit about myself. Uh, And then I'll tell you about the collective, and we'll dive into the project. Uh, so, uh, again, my name is Ryan. Uh, I'm from Central Maine. Uh, which is in the States. Uh, it's, uh, in the northeast corner. Uh, pretty [00:01:00] rural. Uh, pretty poor. Um, does anyone know where it is? OK, some people shake their head. Yes. Cool. It's always fun to see who actually knows where my little hometown is. Most people don't. Uh So that's where I grew up. I've moved to Montreal. I'm working on a PhD in a sexuality studies programme. Uh, there. And I'm having a good time with that. Um, and, uh, the against the equality collective has sort of been a backbone. Um, of sort of my activist work, Um, and bridging [00:01:30] that with my my academic work. So that's just a little bit about me. I'm also I'm 32. I'm in a for people who want to know. Um, yeah, um, also, I'm gonna be raising my hand to do the next slide. Um, or maybe I Yeah, I'll raise my hand. Um, so we can go to the next slide. Um, great. OK, so against Equality is a small, all volunteer, anti capitalist collective based in North America that maintains an online archive of radical queer and [00:02:00] trans critiques of what we like to call the holy Trinity of mainstream gay and lesbian politics. Um, so quickly, just what this is here. And this is the collective website, um, where we manage, uh, an online archive, and I'll go into that in more detail soon. But next slide. Um, so this holy trinity of gay and lesbian politics mainstream gay and lesbian politics are sort of summed up in these three issues, right? Gay marriage, gays in the military and hate crime legislation. [00:02:30] Um, so these are the ongoing battles that have been happening in the West since the nineties largely, and are still present today in numerous different cultural contexts. And so in 2009, a very classist and urban centric gay marriage campaign was run in my relatively rural, poor home state of Maine. Um, which resulted in a referendum that, um, so gay marriage was passed legislatively, and then it was vetoed through a popular vote and so against equality actually began. Um, as [00:03:00] my own personal response, um, to, uh, this, uh, gay marriage campaign. So this is me, as from my blog, Um, and this is the the the yes and no campaign against gay marriage in 2009. Um, so against equality again, it began as my own personal blog, initially designed to air my frustrations. Um, my anger at the gay marriage campaign politics, Um, and through starting this blog, because, right, like when people are pissed off nowadays, you start like a tumblr or a blog or a Facebook post [00:03:30] right. So I was sort of using that. That same model, Um, so as this was originally designed to air frustrations and anger, um, through, uh, a lot of support I received through email, and also through face to face conversation, um, I started sensing a need to, uh, to record the sort of queer resistance that was happening to the mainstream. Uh, gay politics. So what? What started as a personal blog became, uh, what is today? Um uh, it sort of transformed version, [00:04:00] uh, of a digital archive next slide. And so how the, uh, archive works is, uh, the themes heading here. Uh, you can, um, do a drop down menu, which takes you to a digital archive of visual and written material of critiques of marriage, military inclusion and hate crimes legislation. And these materials aren't [00:04:30] just from the US context. There's also work from folks in Europe, folks in Australia, um, and hopefully folks in New Zealand some day, if people have things to submit to the archives, we're always open to taking new material. So as an anti capitalist collective, um, against equality is quite sceptical of the nonprofit models employed by multimillion dollar organisations in the US Um and these organisations are groups like the Human Rights Campaign, Um, and the National Gay and [00:05:00] Lesbian Task Force, which recently in the states changed its name to the task force. They're trying to be more inclusive by having a shorter name. Um but just to give a sense of what kind of money is at play here, um, I just gave some quick figures on the, uh the head of the human rights campaign basically makes half a million dollars a year. So, you know, he's, like, really in touch with the people raking in a half million dollars a year. And all these [00:05:30] people do is lobby. They don't actually do anything useful. They don't provide any service. They simply lobby the government. Um, and often times they, uh, actually advocate on behalf of conservative political candidates and on behalf of corporations that have gay inclusive policy, Right, So you can be a totally terrible corporation that employs slave labour. But, you know, as long as you accept domestic partner benefit benefits, you're like at a five [00:06:00] star rate rating on their chart or whatever. Um, so really fucked up people. Um, and just to note that the annual budget of this organisation is $40 million a year. They're the largest, um, in the US context, Um, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, operating at about $8.5 million budget. So that just gives you a sense of like, what these nonprofit models are, right? Like you're a nonprofit, but your CEO still makes $500,000 a year, so we say, Fuck that, right? Like we're not doing that. Um, so we actually function as not not [00:06:30] anti. Not nonprofit, but actually anti profitt. Um, so we try to strike a balance between valuing our own labour as well as making our work as financially accessible as possible. Um, so when I refer to our work, um, what I'm referencing is, um, that as a project, we've actually moved towards, uh, creating cultural objects and, uh, also publications that activate our archive. Right. We're thinking about how to activate the history and the knowledge that we have. Um, and so these things, uh, in terms of cultural objects, [00:07:00] we've done a few call for art projects, um, to, uh, have some postcards designed. We did pins. Uh, I have this tote bag here that I'm gonna show you all because I think it's hilarious. Um, but, uh, for for folks who know Nancy Reagan, um, she had her just say no to drugs campaign in the US. Um, so we did a play on that, And this is actually the trademarked, um, the green and white with this terrible font. Um, um, [00:07:30] so we've actually just replicated and added the the cost to marriage. And they're, um just sort of give a nod to the feminist critique of marriage for the last 100 years. Um, as well as, um, making the joke. That, like, right marriage is the opiate of the masses. In a way, um, so we've done that. We also, um, So you can see up there. There's the the equal sign situation. Um, we also have, uh our logo is a mathematical greater than sign. Um, right. So it's I'm glad you're laughing. Sometimes the audience [00:08:00] don't laugh. That's so funny. I'm like, I'm hilarious. Um, so, yeah, I mean, pointing out that right, Like, uh, like, equality means an equal stake in the status quo. And if the status quo is incredibly violent and deeply inequitable. Um, that's not a worthy goal. Um, so we're suggesting there's something better than greater than that we should be fighting for, um, so it's tongue in cheek, but it's also quite quite serious demand that we have a greater political imagination to dream up and [00:08:30] actually create the worlds that we think would be most just and equitable to all people. Um, so another one last thing I'll say about, um, functioning as, uh, this kind of anti profitt collective. And you can do the next slide. Um, in terms of this question of access, um, we actually provide all our books for free to, uh, prisoners. Um, so we work with a book to prisoners project in Madison, Wisconsin. Does anyone know where Madison Wisconsin is? [00:09:00] Yeah. Yeah, that was a good guess. Um, yeah. It's basically in the middle of the country, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Um, but there's this really rad, um, books to prisoners project that has been functioning out of there for over a decade now. Um, and so what we do is we actually buy books at cost from our publisher. Uh, send them books and then send them $500 every six months to a year to cover the postage and shipping. Um, and so what we do is we actually put out notices [00:09:30] in two of the big, uh, the books. Uh, the black and pink, uh, prisoner correspondence project and ultraviolet are sort of three major, um, newsletters in the US and Canada that have a large prison circulation. So we put out notices and those that if people write to the books to prison project, they can get our books for free. Um, so doing this costs a lot of money, right? And we don't have a budget. Um, so we've had to sort of, um, cheat, lie and steal our way out of the debt that we've [00:10:00] accrued. Um, but in in terms of not employing a nonprofit model, um, it's actually allowed us to focus a lot more on our work as opposed to board development, grant writing and things like that, and actually doing the work that we think is really important. Um, also in the in the context of the nonprofit model, oftentimes funders actually control the conversation, the discourse and what you actually physically can do as an organisation, and and karma in [00:10:30] one of the videos will dissect that in a lot of detail. Um, so this Make sure. Yeah. So, while against equality, members often write and make cultural work about our shared politics. Um, it's first and foremost that we're actually an archive and not an organisation. And we're also not a movement. Um, I, I think we we, uh, interchange these words quite easily a lot of times, but, um, against equality is not an organisation like we don't have an office. We don't have a phone. We don't [00:11:00] have an internship Volunteer coordinator, like we don't have a budget. Um, we we are primarily an archive, and every single member of the collective lives in a different place, and five of us have never been in the same place at the same time. So it means a lot of like Skype conference calls where everyone's holding up their cats in front of the camera. Um, of course, I'm like the one fag in the collective. So I hold up my dog. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of, like, um of work doing that digitally. [00:11:30] Um, but to be really clear. Yeah, we all have, like, other jobs. We all do other things. We all do local activism. And this project is just another thing that we do because we think it's really important. Um, but again, not an organisation, not a movement, but an archive, Um, so beyond the immediate purpose of building a larger and more critically engaged community of radical queer and trans folks, we see the relevance of this work, and this archive is [00:12:00] even more important today than ever before. So, for example, in the United States, we've seen the repeal of the Defence of Marriage Act in the summer of 2013, the end of don't ask, don't tell in autumn of 2011 and the passage of federal hate crimes law in the 2010 National Defence Authorization Act. For people that don't know what the National Defence Authorization Act is, that's how the US government passes a budget for the military. For those that don't know, the US military takes up more than 50% of the US S. Actual annual budget, um, [00:12:30] and protections for LGBT people were included as a caveat to the national defence authorization budget which means the tradeoff was like global war for gay rights. If that makes sense to people, it's bad. That's a bad thing. Um, so for us, we really want to make sure that the voices of resistance are not erased and written out of history, because there's sort of a singular narrative that's coming out of the United States that we're on this linear progress narrative, and this is all great. And then the US, as a colonial [00:13:00] project, exports the discourse and the politics through foreign policy, cultural imperialism. So today I'm here talking to you to sort of break that consensus that everyone in the United States thinks this is a great thing right and that there are actually voices of resistance and alternatives that are being demanded but aren't getting any airplay and surely aren't making it overseas. Um, so we see these pieces in our archive like bread crumbs, laying out different pathways to justice and [00:13:30] resistance for those that dare to imagine a more just world. When people look back at these desperately conservative gay times, we hope our collective voices can be an inspiration to those who come after us. Those that look to our queer histories, just like we did as sites of rejuvenation, excitement and hope. So these are again just historical examples of groups that, as a collective we've looked back to as sites of resistance that inspire and encourage us to keep continuing with our work. Um, and lastly, uh, I'll [00:14:00] say that all members of the against Equality Collective have some connection to academia. Uh, as a collective, we are in various configurations tenure track faculty, graduate students, adjunct faculty, researchers and people with academic degrees. And we rely upon academia in some very material ways, for example, to assign our working class or, uh, often how we've managed to get ourselves out of debt through book publishing is speaking at universities and charging exorbitant fees. [00:14:30] Um, we're also very critical of sort of the academic norms of publishing, which promote a publisher parish mentality. For those of you who are in academia, you're probably quite familiar with us. And this publisher perish mentality that often leads academics to regard activists and activist labour activism and activist labour as sites from which to pill for ideas, often without credit. And maybe some people in this room have that experience of academics, um, coming in and then reproducing their work intellectually without actually [00:15:00] crediting the activist work that's done. Uh, and we're very critical of this. Um, So, um, maybe I'll I'll just skip ahead a little bit. Um, I want to just talk really quickly about, um, the publication projects that we've done. Um, So what we did was we published a pocket sized book every year for three years, Um, one, covering each segment of the archives, the marriage book in 2010, the military book in 2011 [00:15:30] and the Book on Hate Crime legislation, The prison industrial complex in 2012. Um, and, uh, we self publish these. Right? Um, so, like the publisher is called a E press. It lists, like an address that no one lives at anymore. Um, and, uh, yeah, we just took out a bunch of credit cards. Um, because in America, you can apply for, like, 10 credit cards at once, and like you get them, um, which is ridiculous. Um, and so we printed a bunch of books and we were just moving the debt from credit card to credit card [00:16:00] because they give you like a 0% introductory rate for like, a year. So we just, like, move all the debt and then apply for another credit card and move all the debt. Um, so that's how we That's how we did this. Um, because none of us had, like, $8000 lying around to print a bunch of books. Um, and there's there's a couple of reasons we published, um, importantly, to know everything that are in the books, Um or maybe back up. Um, those three books were republished in this anthology here, which, um, is sort of what I'm touring to support, um, [00:16:30] is when a K press, uh, which is an, uh, worker own publisher, uh, based out of the San Francisco Bay area. Um asked us if we'd like to republish all three as one book. And for us, that was great, because they're gonna pay for everything up front. We don't have to scam credit cards anymore. Um, and, uh, keeping three books in print was actually really expensive. However, um, everything that's in all these books is in our archive. So you don't actually have to buy books to participate in the conversation that we're having. Um and so people are like, Well, why would you publish a bunch of stuff [00:17:00] that you can get for free on the Internet, right, like that Seems like a bad business plan. Um, and we're anarchist. Mostly. So bad Business plans seem to come in the territory. Um, however, um, there are a number of reasons to, uh, do this publishing project. And, um, one is again coming back to that question of access. Who has access to the conversations that are happening online? So we're thinking about people that don't have high speed Internet access, which might be hard for some people who have lived all their lives in cities. [00:17:30] To actually imagine that there are places where you can't get high speed Internet in Maine, where I'm from lots of places, it's not profitable to telecommunication companies to actually put up the fibre optic cables to provide high speed Internet. Um, so you're stuck with dial up? Um, and that seems like retro late nineties early two thousands. But it's actually a lot of people's realities. Um, so we want to make sure that we had, like, a tangible object that people could have access to, uh, we did a big books to books into libraries Project to make sure that people could get this stuff for free. [00:18:00] Um, and there's also something about the book of a book that, um, uh is tangible and shareable, um, that, uh, huddling around a computer screen doesn't provide a similar experience. Other groups of people that we're thinking about in terms of access are older folks that might not have engaged with computers in the same way as a lot of us do today and have no interest in learning and that being OK, so finding other ways to engage those folks. [00:18:30] And the other biggest group is people in prison. So in the US context, we have over 2 million people in prison. So that means leaving a lot of people out of conversation when it's only happening online. Um, so the last thing I'll say about publishing before, uh, we move on to two short, Uh um, just over 10 minute videos from Yasmin and karma. Uh, is this, uh, here, um, talking about self publication and seizing the means of production of knowledge. Um, So what we're really getting at here is that, um in university. [00:19:00] As some folks may know, um, creating a citation of someone's personal blog is not seen as a proper citation, right? It's not a formal knowledge. It's not peer reviewed. It's not published in a book, Um, which is a very un feminist? Uh, it it sort of removes the personal as the political. So we give a big feminist middle finger to this ideology of proper knowledge and knowledge production to when we self publish. Suddenly this becomes official [00:19:30] knowledge, right? Like all these things that have previously appeared on people's blogs suddenly become official knowledge because it's in a book. And again the book has some fake address and some fake publisher, but it's official knowledge. Um, so then students can suddenly cite this in a research paper, and it's like it's real, as opposed to, you know, activist knowledge or or, um, sort of personal knowledge. Um, it becomes real knowledge, Um, so that, I think is also a very important part of our project is to legitimise a chorus of voices instead of being a number of disparate [00:20:00] voices on the Internet. Um, sounding like the the the you know, the people that just are too radical or too crazy. Um, is actually, you know, we're all radical and crazy together, and there's lots of us. Um, so I'll stop there. Um, what we're gonna do? Um, the first video from Yasmin, uh, sort of, uh, takes apart the, uh Do do people know who Edith Windsor is? Anyone? Edith Windsor Windsor was the plaintiff in the case that overturned the defence of marriage act in the US. And I think this [00:20:30] case is really telling for how marriage campaigns have been run. So what Yasmine will do is she'll sort of deconstruct this case and make an argument against marriage equality. My talk today will, in essence, connect the dots between the rise of neoliberalism in the US and the rise of gay marriage. I define neoliberalism as the intense privatisation of everyday life and the formation of the state which increasingly places the burden of care as a unit as opposed to [00:21:00] the state. I will be situating gay marriage within an economic context with particular elements on Edith Windsor, the plaintiff at the heart of a recent DOMA, or Defence of Marriage act. The problem with gay marriage is not that it compels people to engage in forms of assimilation or that it cuts short sex lives or that it makes them less interesting. The problem with gay marriage in the United States is that it is part of the machinery of neoliberalism and that it functions [00:21:30] both to effectively end the state's interest in maintaining the well being of people and to increase the economic power of a wealthy elite. So first is that indicate in a little while, if we are to combat neoliberalism, we need to combat the institutions and enable it to make it stronger in the US. Unlike countries like Canada and Sweden, marriage is all that can guarantee a myriad of life saving benefits, including health care and immigration status. So an iron against [00:22:00] equality, or but against equality declares itself against equality and calls for an end to marriage. What we are doing is to insist that there is simply no beyond marriage. We have to dismantle the structure which builds marriage into essential benefits. Liberals, progressives and most leftists praise gay marriage or what they call marriage equality as a mark of civilised progress while they simultaneously scratch their heads trying to understand how and why this country is moving so inexorably [00:22:30] and so brutally towards an intensely privatised state where the most basic needs of people housing, food, health care and education are simply not being map. So the question then remains. How did liberals and leftists, alike or otherwise, constantly calling for a change in the economic structure of the US fail to see that gay marriage is a part of new liberalism? I now turn to Edith Windsor at the heart of the DOMA Defence of Marriage Act case. [00:23:00] Edith Windsor, who was not legally, was not legally married to her longtime partner upon the latter's death and was left consequently with a large estate tax amounting to over $263,000. Now it's very important bye that the issue was not ever that Edith Windsor was in was unable to pay that amount because of, say, poverty. It is not that she was incapable financially [00:23:30] of paying over $363,000. It is that she felt it was unfair that she should have to pay that amount. I want to now to switch a little bit and talk about a brief piece of a piece of memorabilia. Me manteau a moment from Chicago's Pride celebration this past summer. Right after the DOMA win, a friend sent me a photo of a T shirt with someone that apparently many of the people were wearing, [00:24:00] um, which reminded me of the ways in which gay marriage serves to include in a facade the ways in which it is wrapped up in neoliberalism. The T shirt in question featured Windsor's smiling face and the words, I am Edith Windsor. In other words, there are no people marching everywhere on marching and celebrating pride, but also just walking around comfortable in the idea that they are all somehow Edith Windsor. This particular phrase, of course, is not to be taken literally, but it does [00:24:30] speak to a a general and perative idea in the community that Windsor represents a grassroots impulse towards marriage and that she is, in fact every woman. It's important in the context of understanding gay marriage as a manifestation of neoliberalism to trace Windsor's actual history. The story of how she came to be at the centre of what will no doubt become one of the most famous legal cases in LGBT history has a lot to do with how the gay movement strategically [00:25:00] chose Windsor, having carefully picked her out of a bevvy of possible cases. As we now know, Windsor was chosen as a perfect candidate. We know all of this, incidentally, from the press coverage that was present a little before, but not much. But now there have been reviews. Rather, there have been profiles of The Guardian in The New Yorker and so on, which give us all these details. She was chosen as a perfect candidate, a grieving and very presentable widow with not an explosive in her [00:25:30] past life with exemplary social networks and connections. And for this, of course, as I said, we have mounting evidence that this was a deliberately strategically planned move. It's important to note that until some weeks after the actual decision, Windsor's actual financial situation was always never discussed, and she was often, in fact, implicitly and sometimes explicitly portrayed as a little as a stereotypical little old lady, [00:26:00] perhaps living somewhere in a darkened New York City apartment, they're able to keep her lights on as they flickered in the face of poverty. All of this, of course, was most palatable for an Arab person. Over the course of the publicity leading to the case. Lawyers for Windsor, the gay media, much of the liberal progressive, straight media and gay marriage activists as seriously worked at keeping Windsor's actual life out of view. [00:26:30] Even The New York Times, which otherwise takes so much pride in being able to reveal details about people's lives and providing comprehensive reports, never once discuss the actual value of Win State. The only publication to actually eventually to even actually declare Windsor wealthy was the for was Forbes magazine. Now I'm part of a group called Gender Trust and, of course, as well against equality. What distinguishes both groups for [00:27:00] many others is that we actually consider queerness as something that works within economic frameworks, not simply as a cultural or sexual identity. To that end, this summer, gender just began an ongoing research project, which involves finding out the actual amounts of money that have been poured into marriage campaigns across this country. We are doing this because as radical queer grassroots activists, many of us are involved in queer projects of various kinds, such as working with queers in the prison industrial complex, [00:27:30] harm reduction programmes around drug use. Working with LGBT Q, youth engaged in street trade and Enlight more work on drugs as well as somewhat more. Let let us say fashionable, well, more well known issues of LGBT, Q, housing and healthcare. Those agencies and organisations that work on these matters that I just listed are often not often always desperately scrambling for funds while marriage fundraisers raise [00:28:00] literally and I am not joking here. This is literally true hundreds of thousands of dollars in single nights or in a few weeks. To put it bluntly, no one has ever seen a kick start over a marriage campaign. Every marriage campaign ever launched in big and small cities and states has been well funded by organisations like Human Rights Campaign and the National Gas and Task Force and many other. What this means on the ground is that marriage, [00:28:30] which pushes a Neil agenda privatisation, is now at the forefront of um of this supposed battle for gay rights and that it has in fact has effectively swallowed up resources that could and should actually go to other organisations. So part of all of this is that the some result of our investigation will be discovered that by that Windsor and I only will speak for myself [00:29:00] at this point, Um is in fact, worth by a conservative estimate in the region of $7 million which is to say, very few people, and probably certainly not the people wearing that t-shirt can actually be Edith Windsor, now in New York City. A work a worth of 7 to 10 million may not ensure your place to the right of the billionaire ex mayor of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but I think we [00:29:30] can agree that it takes you quite far in both parts of the world. I emphasise this matter of Win's financial worth because she represents the ways in which the gay marriage fight has been understood and regurgitated as a grassroots struggle engaged upon by millions of love born gays and lesbians. When, in fact, as our ratio shows him against equality and gender, just it is a massively well coordinated campaign which has cost again overall, not just, [00:30:00] um and in terms of the larger campaign, across about the last 5 to 7 years, a few $100 million altogether. That's how much that campaign has been costing us so far. You might ask, Why does all of this matter? It matters because many of the central tenets on which gay marriage is being built as a movement towards equality are in fact benefits which only accrue to the wealthy few, like even Windsor. So one of the biggest arguments around Windsor [00:30:30] versus DOMA was that this would affect, uh, positively affect all those gays and lesbians faced with estate taxes. But in fact, very few of them will ever have to owe those kinds of estate taxes. That's 12 is that if you have that kind of an estate, you really should, in the interest of fairness to all, be paying a certain percentage of your estate, uh, of of taxes. And [00:31:00] it's things like estate taxes, after all, which also fund things like public school systems. Now this is, of course, this sort of argument that all gays will benefit, whereas in fact only a few wealthy gays will Benefit is also true. For instance, in the field of immigration, which is those who are in bi national gay gay bi national couples are also benefiting from DOMA because they can now sponsor [00:31:30] their, um, their partners for immigration. What that ignores again. One pretends that this is somehow beneficial to all gays and lesbians who might have partners who are not US citizens. What this ignores is that you still have to have a certain economic value in order to be able to sponsor your partner. They actually take very hard looks at your bank account. You have to have a certain level of [00:32:00] income. Not only do you have to have a certain level of income, you have to guarantee that you will have that level of income for a certain number of years. Um, so, of course. And of course, if you have, if your partner happens to be someone who had a minor infraction or DU I or worse or was or entered the country illegally, there's no hope for a spouse sponsor a sponsorship at all. So I leave the discussion about all of that for later. But let [00:32:30] me conclude by saying that the many benefits supposed benefits of gay marriage simply as I've tried to show, are primarily benefits that the wealthy enjoy the average gay and lesbian person, or the average per straight person, for that matter is not likely to accrue in this state worth as much as that left to Edith Windsor. As it stands today, marriage in the US is a significant structural component of the neoliberal machinery of the state. In the end [00:33:00] to position the key problem with gay marriage as in essence, somehow being only about one peop about people fucking differently or horrors not at all is to ignore the much more insidious and pervasive role that marriage plays in the neoliberal state. So the second video we'll see today is from karma Chavez, who will look at the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the US [00:33:30] military. Hi, my name is Karma Chavez. And I am, uh, against Equality Cops Member. And I'm gonna be doing the military portion of our presentation today. Um, I really glad that you have us here to speak, and I'm gonna be reading just to make sure, you know, we get everything right. So, um, if you see me looking down, I'm just looking at my script. So here we go. After the repeal of the US military's don't ask, don't tell policy in 2010 [00:34:00] and the roll out of its implementation. Most gays and lesbians in the United States praise the policy change. Their argument usually went something like this. We may not support militarism, but people should still be able to serve or given that it's mostly poor people and people of colour who serve in the military against military inclusion is like taking a stand against poor people or queer people of colour. Now we have always disagreed with these arguments, maintaining that we should not support US military imperialism and impunity under [00:34:30] any conditions, or allow gays and lesbians to be used as a foil for the alleged spread of freedom and democracy via expanded militarism. We also believe that we should not support the US military as the only unemployment and jobs programme for poor people and people of colour in the US. But we lost. So isn't this debate over well In July of 2013, the Palm centre from Policy and Research Centre focused on enhancing the quality of public dialogue and controversial issues, announced a new [00:35:00] multi year research initiative in order to assess the possibility for transgender inclusion in the US military. The key question for this initiative is whether it is possible to include transgender troops without undermining military readiness. The research will analyse other militaries who already have a transgender people, as well as assess transgender inclusion in police and fire departments, policies of prisons and athletic organisations and the like as legal scholar and activist as well as a E contributor, [00:35:30] Dean Spain has noted this call for new research and hence the naming of this issue as key to the transgender movement has emerged as a result of a large $1.35 million grant by the Tawa Foundation, founded by Jennifer Natalia Pritzker, an heir to the high fortune, a recently out Trans woman and a formal colonel in the National Guard, now speeds. Critics argue that the issue is not one being put on the agenda because of one wealthy donor, but that organisations have been fighting [00:36:00] this for over a decade. But nevertheless, the issue made headlines in July 2013 for the first time, drawing attention to it as a key concern for LGBT inclusion in an unprecedented way. Meanwhile, as Spade and others have repeatedly noted, trans and gender nonconforming people, especially the poor and people of colour remain among the most likely to suffer from discrimination, violence, homelessness and premature death, and how military inclusion addresses these concerns of the broader trans [00:36:30] community is unclear. But there are more reasons that this debate is not yet over. The pathway to inclusion reflected in the don't ask, don't tell. Repeal and implementation are also the same logic being adopted more broadly by the US military and security apparatuses. In June 2009, Barack Obama picked up the tradition of the Clinton administration during June LGBT Pride Month. After his 2012 declaration, institutions including the Department of Defence, the Department [00:37:00] of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Patrol began officially celebrating pride, recognising their LGBT employees groups and providing training for staff about the importance of LGBT inclusion to each institution's mission. That these events clearly coincide with the broader implementation of the repeal of D AD T. And to be sure, all people should be able to work in jobs where they are respected, treated with dignity and are safe. But it is important to interrogate [00:37:30] some of the ways in which this inclusionary rhetoric is being offered by these institutions, each tasked with perpetuating militarism and militarization. Well, let's begin with the Department of Defence, which celebrated pride for the first time in 2012, then DOD general counsel, now head of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson was the keynote speaker. During his speech, Johnson made it clear that he was not an activist on the matter of gay men and women in the United States, and in fact, [00:38:00] he entered into the sustained study of the Donas hotel repeal without any particular outcome in mind. After revisiting some of the now familiar results from the study, Johnson also noted that the following long quotation had a lot of impact on the ultimate recommendation that the risks of repeal would be low. And I'm gonna read a good chunk of this year, he said. This is a quote from the report. In the course of our assessment, it became apparent to us that aside from the moral and religious objections to homosexuality, much of the concern [00:38:30] about open service is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes. Repeatedly, we heard service members express the view that open homosexuality would lead to widespread and overt displays of feminine behaviour among men. Homosexual promiscuity, harassment and unwelcome advances within units, invasions of privacy and an overall erosion of standards of conduct, unit cohesion and morality. Based on our review, however, we conclude, these concerns about gay and lesbian service members are exaggerated [00:39:00] and not consistent with the reported experiences of many service members. In communications with gay and lesbian current and former service members, we repeatedly heard a patriotic desire to serve and defend the nation, subject to the same rules as everyone else. From then, we heard expressed many of the same values that we heard over and over again from service members at large love of country, honour, respect, integrity and service of herself. End quote. Johnson goes on. And [00:39:30] that's but not the least, was this noteworthy quote in the report, which seems to be a favourite of a lot of people. We have a guy in the U, a gay guy in the unit. He's big, he's mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay, and Johnson's remarks are incredibly telling about the risks and stakes of inclusion. First are the concerns that presumably straight service members had about what open service would mean gross displays of male femininity, increased sexual harassment, presumably from gay [00:40:00] men to straight men. Unwanted advances advances again, presumably from gay men to straight men and an overall decrease in morale. Johnson calls these stereotypes and misconceptions, and they may very well be that at the very same time that these concerns doubly function to codify the misogyny of the military as straight men clearly seem to worry both about the correlation between an increasingly feminine environment and diminishing morale at the same time that they worry about being put [00:40:30] in a feminised position as the victims, not perpetrators of harassment and unwanted advances. And there's no mention of sexual assault. But certainly that anxiety is present, too now. Johnson would not, of course, be expected to take this as an opportunity to critique the existing misogyny and sexism embedded in military culture. But instead he continues with the quotation, which unsurprisingly confronts the misperceptions with images of and words from good soldiers. Those who we imagine would share [00:41:00] their straight comrades with their straight comrades and discussed at an increasingly feminised military. In fact, these patriotic service members wanted to be subject to the same rules as everyone else and had no desire to advance a social agenda. Those are quotes. These Homo nationals then not only have no interest in changing business as usual, even if business as usual is violent toward them and others like them, they want to prove everyone wrong. Some will go to great lengths to do it. Appoint Truman by the [00:41:30] favourite quotation in the report. Again, we have a gay guy in the unit. He's big, he's mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay. Just like allowing women in combat doesn't make for a kinder and gentler military. Gays in the military do not lead to a more open and accepting environment. Instead, if we are to consider the logic that Johnson the spouse, is here, gays can be just as mean and murderous as straight service members. And when they are able to prove the possession [00:42:00] of such characteristics, the fact that their gayness is no concern at all, at least we presume for being bad guy killing gay men. But what about those bad guys? In 2013, the DOD upped the ante, celebrating its first ever pride in the Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, one of the bloodiest and deadliest regions of the entire duration of Operation Enduring Freedom, better known as the war in Afghanistan. The DOD put out a short, minute long video [00:42:30] to commemorate the event from the common heart. I don't want to be treated special. I just want to be treated equal. It's been a little under two years since President Obama signed a repeal of the don't ask, don't tell policy Service members were allowed to preserve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. People came to support people that they didn't even know. They just knew that they were part of the LGBT community and they want to come to support us. I think that right there shows how [00:43:00] the armed forces is getting ready to go. It makes my military service World war. I think that everything that I experienced, everything that I went through was worth it. In the end, if the men and women who are wearing a uniform now get to open and serve as gay, lesbian or bisexual, I think it was worth it. In the end, what does celebrating LGBT pride in Afghanistan mean to the United States. I think it's very important that [00:43:30] we are here representing the United States of America and we hope that when we leave here we have all positive qualities of what America is like and that we're an equal country. We treat all our citizens equally. Reporting from Kanar Airfield Afghanistan Now finding reports of the exact numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is very difficult and it's even more difficult to find accurate reports of locations of the deaths of the exact causes [00:44:00] of those deaths. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released a report on civilian deaths and injuries from January 1st to June 32,013, titled Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, The report concludes. Escalating deaths and injuries to Afghan Children, women and men led to a 23% resurgence in civilian casualties in the first six months of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012. The mission documented 1319 civilian [00:44:30] deaths and 2533 injuries from January to June 2013, marking a 14% increase in deaths, 28% increase in injuries and 23% increase in total civilian casualties, compared to the same period in 2012. The rise in civilian casualties in the first half of 2013 revises the decline reported in 2012. In March, she returned to the high numbers of civilian deaths and injuries documented in 2011. As the report simply [00:45:00] put it, Civilians again increasingly bore the brunt of the armed conflict in Afghanistan. In early 2013, civilians, particularly in conflict affected areas, experienced the grim reality of rising civilian deaths and injuries, coupled with pervasive violence which threaten lives, livelihood and well being of thousands of Afghans. Now, I'm not sure how we reconcile the image of a young general enlist, marine or soldier who doesn't want special treatment [00:45:30] but just wants to be treated equal with horrifying images such as the report's cover image of terrified people running literally for their lives are their lives and deaths. The price and equality, as so many inclusion champions suggest, is the carnage of the now inclusive war machine, just an example of how freedom isn't free. Or is this entire scenario something far more complex and perhaps sinister? How should L GB and soon [00:46:00] to be T. People respond to our inclusion. Thanks a lot. I'm just gonna quickly talk about the third section of our archive. I know this is, like, lots going on. Lots of information, lots of stuff. Um, but I'll try to go through this quickly so we can move to more, um, discussion oriented, uh, stuff. Um, so here we have, uh, the, uh, [00:46:30] actual piece of the bill, uh, around hate crime legislation in the US. So, uh, LGBT inclusive. Uh, federal hate crime law in the United States, which is also commonly referred to as the Matthew Shepherd Act, was enacted into law as part of the 2010 National Defence Authorization Act. For those who are not aware how hate crime laws work, they function by increasing penalties for acts of violence and intimidation that are already illegal. For example, harassment, assault, rape. All these things are already criminal offences. [00:47:00] But the way they work is that if it can be proven that the violence is carried out or motivated by anti LGBT sentiments, it becomes a hate crime. Hate crime law, hate crime legislation in the United States has its roots in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which protected victims of violence based on race, colour, religion or national origin. These protections were again expanded in 1994 to include gender based violence against women and, in 2009 as part of the 2010 National Defence Authorization Act to include perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender [00:47:30] identity or disability. So regardless of the effectiveness of such laws, which have already been called into question, here is one of many, many examples called into question by many feminists, people of colour and queer activists. As a collective, we, as prison abolitionists oppose any prison expansion, any expansion of the prison industrial complex, including the expansion of the policing, surveillance and prosecutorial powers of the CARCERAL state. Even when such expansions are supposedly enacted on our own behalf or for our own safety. [00:48:00] Historically, and I'm going to show a couple of examples here, we know that neither prisons nor the state have ever protected us from violence and in fact have been and continue to be, sites of violence for queer trans and gender nonconforming people, particularly those who are also of low income people of colour immigrants young people, sex workers and or drug users. So here's just an example that I think is interesting to look at because gay sex was illegal when I was in high school. So I was born in this one little red one in the sea of yellow. Um, [00:48:30] so that's where I was born. So gay sex was illegal until, like, 2002. Um, which is pretty wild, right? Um and so the ones that are even the deeper shade of red. Yeah, the the the the Supreme Court struck down the sodomy laws in 2003. This is just an example of how, um maybe we should be suspicious about our relationship to the judicial system. Um, and can you skip to the next slide? Um, and so this is also a piece of, uh, vigilante [00:49:00] justice work. Uh, Bosley wears a 1961 film made by a retired police officer in Southern California or retired police chief. Excuse me, Um, in which, uh, little Timmy here is hitchhiking home from baseball practise because that still happens. Um, and you know this this scary man with glasses and a and a thin moustache is waiting in the bushes to seduce him with candy and car rides. Um, but this is an example of right, the the historical [00:49:30] stereotype of stranger danger, right, that there's a scary man waiting in the bushes to get your Children, when in fact, most violence happens between people who know each other in places they are familiar with. So this is just another example of how, um, we might be suspicious of what our relationship is to police and corrections officers just to give some historical context. And so furthermore, as Chan Reddy points out in his 2011 book, Freedom of Violence, the Matthew Shepherd Act was passed [00:50:00] with specific penalties for young offenders. So with the already disproportionate surveillance, policing, arrests and convictions for people of colour in the US context, it's fair to assume that this expansion of hate crime legislation will actually have a disproportionate impact on the lives of young people of colour. Um, so this is just a quick, uh, infographic to give you a sense of how racialized, uh, the prison system is in the US context. Um, but what you will also notice is that indigenous people are not represented here it's a failure of the graphic that we're using. Um, but I [00:50:30] think it's also fair to say that the policy of almost total total genocide of indigenous people in the US, along with internment you can essentially say that, um, indigenous people are almost all incarcerated in giant open air prisons of the reservation system. Uh, so as a collective, we use this critique of hate crimes legislation to provide an opening to a broader queer critique of the prison industrial complex. [00:51:00] As previously noted, marriage, military service and hate crimes law serve as the holy trinity of mainstream gay and lesbian politics. Is through this critique of inclusion in the hetero status quo that we aim to have a broader political conversation about the prison industrial complex. Again, as Dean Spade has noted in our five myth busting facts about violence and criminalization, the introduction to our 2012 anthology Prisons will not protect you. Um, so I'm just gonna lay out those five quick facts, and that goes into much more detail [00:51:30] in the book. But I think it's a helpful place to start. So one jails, jails and prisons are not overflowing with violent and dangerous people, but with the poor, the disabled and people of colour two again, most violence doesn't happen on the street between strangers, but between people who know each other in places we are familiar with. Three. The most dangerous people, those who end and destroy the most lives are on the outside our banks, government courtrooms and wearing military and police uniforms. Four prisons aren't places to put serial rapists and murderers. They are in fact, themselves serial [00:52:00] rapists and murderers, and five increasing criminalization does not make us safer. It simply feeds the voracious law enforcement system that devours our communities, often for profit. Quick note about the profit. So in the US context there and increasingly more in Canada through a recent bill that was passed last year. Is there a public private partnership model for running our prisons? So essentially, the government will contract out the managing the building and managing of prisons to private corporations, [00:52:30] the largest one being the Corrections Corporation of America. And then they use their profits to form large lobby groups to increase mandatory minimums to increase penalties so that even things that were less criminalised years ago are now more criminalised. Why would they do this? Because there's a profit motive. The more beds you fill, the more money you charge the government for having full beds. Right? So then you're like shit. How do we get more people? How do we make more money? We get more people in beds, so we need to lobby for harsher criminalization of all sorts of things, [00:53:00] mandatory minimums. And so there's now this thing happened where private corporations are lobbying for tougher sentences. And then it's like, Oh, shit, the prisons are full. Now the government has to pay us to build a new prison, right? So there's a really troublesome logic capitalist logic in what is becoming a larger and larger percentage of our prisons. And at the moment, it's only as of 2013, it was. About 12% of the prisons were running on the public private partnership model. I'm sure it has continued to increase from there, and I'll also [00:53:30] make a quick note that the Australian government is actually contracting with the Corporation of America as part of their intervention in the Northern Territories. So it's a problem globally. I would, I would say, um so to continue. Uh, so hate crime law, um obscures sources of anti queer and anti trans sentiment and violence by making it personal, right? Bad people. They hate the gays. They do mean things to us while leaving structural forms of violence in place. So police officers, [00:54:00] the National Guard, the US military border, border guards, immigration and customs enforcement officers, immigration and custom enforce Immigration and Customs Enforcement, detention guards, prison guards, homeland security, private security firms, these people and the institutions they represent will never be charged with a hate crime for the violence they inflict instead. Actually, there's more and more cases that are springing up where laws that were intended to protect minorities are being used to prosecute them. Uh so, for example, [00:54:30] uh, in Boston in 2012, 3 lesbians were charged with an anti gay hate crime for assaulting a gay man, and hate crime charges have been brought against an African American teenager in Brooklyn for assaulting a white couple in October of 2014. This is what Paul Butler, the author of Let's Get Free, a Hip Hop Theory of Theory of Justice, points out in an interview as the use of hate crimes legislation to defend majority populations from minority populations. And worse yet are the hate crime charges brought against African [00:55:00] American youth in the aftermath of the 2001 Cincinnati race riots spurned by the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. So again, just an example. Um, interestingly enough, we've been in this sort of intense political moment, uh, with the shooting deaths of numerous other African American men and other trans and women. But the media has really focused on on men in particular. Um, so just flip to the next side. Um, So [00:55:30] in the aftermath of that movement, a man drove from Baltimore to New York and assassinated two police officers. And in the aftermath of that happening, um, the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the largest police union in the United States, sent this letter to, uh to Obama and for those that can't read the part that I have highlighted for you. It says the Fraternal Order of Police writes you to advise you that we are calling on Congress to expand the current federal hate crimes [00:56:00] law to include law enforcement officers. So essentially we've created a monster, right? We we we have passed this piece of legislation that we thought would work to protect minority populations from attacks. And it's actually being used to bolster the police and also for to prosecute minority populations. Right. So, um, we have to be really careful, [00:56:30] um, as prison abolitionist. Most of us are not opposed to all forms of reform, but, uh, because we need to meet the immediate needs of people who are actually in prison. Um, but we need to be really thoughtful about how we do reform the the the the laws in our country in every country, because laws, uh, the legal system doesn't take social and historical context into account when prosecuting people. Right? So the fact that, uh, civil rights legislation around hate crimes law were actually to prevent lynching of African Americans? Um, [00:57:00] the the law does not care and will prosecute African Americans who attack white people. Right. Um, so we have to be really cautious about investments in the legal system, um, as so being able to solve problems of harm and violence in our communities. So by using hate crime law as a way to open up a critical queer lens on the prison industrial complex. There becomes a number of other queer issues relating to its seeming unending expansion, for example. And some of these images represent some of these [00:57:30] things and the criminalization of self defence, as seen in the case of the New Jersey for CC McDonald. So these are people who defended themselves from home phobic violent Attackers. Um, and after the altercation were the ones that went to prison instead of the the Attackers. Um, we also see the the intense profiling of trans women, particularly trans women of colour. And they're always assumed to be sex workers. Right. So this is the Monica Jones case up there, and she was actually denied entry into Australia when she came to speak. Uh, in this area, [00:58:00] um, also the historic anti gay witch hunts against school teachers and daycare workers accused of child sex sexual abuse, like the case of the San Antonio Four and Bernard Bar. And those two cases are examined in length in our apology, Um, and excellent, uh, as well as the criminalization of HIV, nondisclosure and exposure, A disease again that disproportionately impacts gay and bisexual men, particularly men of colour in the US context in Canada. And this is just an image from a collective that was working against the [00:58:30] criminalization of nondisclosure in Montreal, And the group is called fuck laws. Um, and so again, uh, thinking about how criminalization is being used to address a public health crisis that disproportionately impacts queer and trans communities. Um, and we're also thinking about the legacy of brutal and ineffective laws organised around concepts of sexual deviancy. So these have resulted in things like sex offender registries as well as this thing called civil commitment. And I'm not sure what the context for civil commitment is here, but essentially, you serve your prison sentence, [00:59:00] and then you're taken to the mental institution across the street where you're held in a mental health prison essentially, and you serve a one day to life sentence. So basically, you never get out of prison. And so it renders all all any sex crime, uh, life sentence, Um, and to note that historically queer and gender nonconforming people have been disproportionately impacted by these these things. Um, so each of these issues are explored at some length in the book so I won't go into any more detail. Um, but our goal [00:59:30] here isn't to critique the criminal punishment system for the sake of problem it, um, but to ask questions that help forge a pathway towards a form of restorative justice that moves beyond the punitive model. A model which more often than not, compounds or hides problems rather than deals with them by restoring the dignity of all involved in repairing the harm done so as a collective as a movement. We point our fingers in disgust at both liberals and conservatives who use the perennial get tough on crime rhetoric to win elections. And [01:00:00] we look forward to a day when our spineless leaders are getting tough on the causes of crime. Right. So those would be things like poverty, inadequate, safe and affordable housing, inadequate healthy food and water, lack of resource and treatment for drug users, lack of meaningful education and employment opportunities, lack of access to health care, racist and exploitative immigration policies. And again, these are all problems that we associate with neoliberal capitalism. We look forward to a day when these become the focus of our spineless political leaders, but we know this [01:00:30] shift comes only through a combination of fierce critique and grassroots political action. And we believe that the collective work of against equality is an integral part of that process that envisions a future without prisons. I'm gonna stop there. Um, I think what would be useful or hopefully useful for [01:01:00] folks is to, um I mean, people can ask me questions specifically about the project and the work we've done, but it might be useful, I think, to also talk about, um the parallels and the divergence from, uh, the situation that we have in the US and Canada from the experiences here. Um, so I would I would open the floors. Your talk. You mentioned so many millions of dollars for [01:01:30] dollars or New Zealand dollars. Thank you. Yes, it ties everything by 1.2 with an exchanger that Yeah. So it's even more I gonna say, um, is the opposition um, talking about [01:02:00] in their But if I understand correctly, based mostly around the relationship between marriage and the institution and the wealthy state and the implications of that and also the methods on the main screen. Um is that easy? Um, or the group around that, Or is there a deep criticism around the knowledge? Yeah, because she mentioned that part of people fucking differently [01:02:30] or not at all, right? I mean, she's also she's not just suggesting that all this money is being wasted on this thing, but also that why do we give special rights to couples that fuck each other? Right. So that's part of the critique. Um, for sure in that, um, but I think that conversation is actually really difficult to have, at least in the US context. And also in the Australian context from being there for three weeks is that there's there's red around love and affect and emotion. And then there's red or brown like, Where are my rights? Thank you. [01:03:00] Yeah, that's great. Now you see everybody, um, So there's sort of these two competing discourses around, like, you know, I want access to, like, material things that I am given through marriage. And our critique is like, why are any of those things distributed through the institution of marriage? And, like, why can't we all, um, determine how we are family or whatever configuration we want to call it? Um, but also, like, um the difficult the difficulty is that that the affective [01:03:30] discourse raises the emotional level of the conversation that you actually can't have a conversation. So when our first book came out, we got death threats from other gay people, right? Like homophobes actually didn't care what we were doing, But gay people hated us. Um, so, yeah, I think those two competing discourses make it hard to actually have a conversation about, like, what is marriage? And it's actually a business contract between two people in the state. Right? Um, and the defence of Marriage Act laid out 1138 rights. Um, that federal [01:04:00] marriage gives people that are married, right? So that's actually the special rights that Ponti couples get. Um, but if you actually, um, I love to ask this question, and it wouldn't make sense here, right? As I ask, How many people have actually read the defence of marriage act because, like, gays talk about like, they know what the fuck they're talking about, right? And no one's actually read it. Um, the the biggest piece of the piece of legislation is actually from the General Accounting Office, so it's not like the department of, Like Love and Family. It's from the General Funding Accounting Office, right? It's like [01:04:30] we had to talk about. Like when this goes wrong, who gets what Those 1138 rights. Almost all of them are about the distribution of money and property. Um, and the other ones are about Children. But the only way they are framed is a piece of property. Um, so I It's really difficult to have that conversation when there's those sort of two competing or are are bleeding across, Um, discourse. Um, and what makes it really interesting in the Australian context is de facto marriage. [01:05:00] Um, although it's not 100% the same as gay as having gay marriage, um, actually gives people those rights. So it's almost entirely symbolic. Um, which to me is a very poor use of resources. Um, I mean, I think symbolic victories are largely a middle class victory, right? Like it doesn't actually do anything useful for the large part. I mean, I think SBA victories have their place, but it [01:05:30] doesn't put food on the table. It doesn't pay rent. It doesn't meet people's immediate needs. and I think that needs to be the centre of those conversations. And now Australia is just, like, batch it crazy that all these people are putting all this money into the equal love campaign. But they already have the thing that they need. Like, I'm I'm baffled. Um, but so much. Thanks so much for coming in and talking about this. I think you probably already been to Auckland. So you're probably aware what a timely moment that [01:06:00] it is in a at the moment. Um, and I think there absolutely so many parallels in terms of I mean, the thing is is that we exist under cap on capitalism. They will absolutely parallels with what we're talking about and how they intersect along, um, gender class, race, um, sexuality. So So, yeah, there's a lot that's going on there. I think one of the big differences is obviously that we're not fighting for marriage because that has been and gone, which, um, has been quite an interesting [01:06:30] thing and how it played out. And in some ways it's just good that it's done so that the rest of the issues can kind of come out, which is gonna be fantastic. It's kind of like cool down there. But I mean, there's definitely I think, um, there's a a large kind of, um, perspective that it was the final frontier, and therefore everything is fine. And it's only now that I'm having conversations with people that I would have been having at the time who were saying, Oh, actually, what does that really do for me? What? Is that really done? Um, yeah. Can we have a conversation about more of these issues that are happening? [01:07:00] And you've touched on a lot of them today? Um, I guess my other question, my question to you would be you have stated that you are purely an archive and not a movement organisation. And I'll be interested because, like, we were placed and, you know, we we we are a small population here, obviously in our country. And so it means that a lot of the time organise in slightly different ways, and maybe things will take, like, speed up in some ways and slow down in different areas. But a lot of that is geographical and and because [01:07:30] of our population, And so I'm interested in, um, what kinds of are there actually any movement or organisations that are working on the ground for this kind of stuff alongside with you? And I'd love to know a little bit more about that. Sure, sure. Um, thanks for all that. That's great. Um, I would say that. Can I just a quick note about the the I did it. We've already got a quality here, So, um because I, I think that really resonates with the Canadian context, right, Because marriage is actually passed in, like, 2003. Um, the great thing about marriage [01:08:00] and, uh, gay marriage in in Canada was it was passed because a lesbian couple broke up and one of them was like, Where's my stuff? Where's my money? Right. It was actually nothing to do with life obnoxious rhetoric in the states of like, Oh, we just want to be able to love blah, blah, blah like this one was like, Where's my money? And I think that's a really useful way to, like, bring it home to Americans in particular, and Australians as well, right? Marriage is actually about what happens when this ends. As opposed [01:08:30] to, um How do we publicly show our love, right, Because you can do that. You don't have to get married to do that. You can do that, or you could have a marriage and whatever. Um, but I think something that has come out of that context in Canada in particular, um, is that if you don't succeed, it's now your fault because we're all in equal playing field, right? Like that's the rhetoric is like, Oh, if you're failing at making it in society today, um and any of it has to do with, like, experiences of homophobia or discrimination Or, like [01:09:00] the hetero patriarchy, like it's your own problem because, like, we're we're all equal. Um, so it's actually more difficult to have these conversations in those contexts where all these things have passed. So even though it's really obnoxious in the US context to have this drawn out battle, um, it's actually I mean, through our work and the other groups where we've actually opened up space to have some sort of critical dialogue about, like, what is this thing we're doing? Um, but yeah, it it actually I mean, it's it is actually also neoliberal logic where you know, it individualises um failure, [01:09:30] right? Like if you're failing to succeed in today's society, it's because you made bad choices or you're an idiot or whatever. Um, when in reality like experiences of heterosexual still exist, right, Um, and where those things intersect with other identities and forms of oppression. Um, so that's I would maybe give a word of caution that that's the future, right? And it's going to be the future in the US, too. Like in June, the Supreme Court will rule on gay marriage in the US, and I am sure that it will become the law of the land. And I mean, in my lifetime, [01:10:00] I'll never see universal health care in the US. But I will see gay marriage and what does more for people. Um I mean, my life is kind of like in the half over stage, because I'm in my thirties now, so I'm like, OK, that won't happen while I'm alive. But gay marriage has go figure, um, questions about, um uh, groups and doing this work, um, all of us that are in the collect of art involved in actual groups. Um, doing activist work and movement building work, [01:10:30] um, as well as a lot of the contributors to our project. So the book project is an anthology, right? So lots of different people have have contributed work to us. Um, and one of the the really great organisations we look to is called queers for economic justice. And they were based out of New York City and have, through austerity, closed after being around for more than a decade. Um, but their website still exists. They did lots of work in the homeless shelters in New York City and did like big media [01:11:00] campaigns around access to, um, LGBT inclusive housing, homeless shelters, trans inclusive shelters. So there's folks like that, um in in my community in Maine where I come from, my primary work was around HIV and AIDS service provision and maintaining the one remaining queer and Trans youth drop in in the entire state. There used to be seven others one, and that's largely been through the work of of mostly like welfare dikes [01:11:30] from rural Maine, maintaining and making sure that those places kept their doors open while the inner city wants through the professionalisation of activism wouldn't do anything if they didn't get paid. So Yeah, I think there's lots of people doing lots of really great things. Like some of our contributors have been part of critical assistance. Um, which is the prison abolition organisation founded by Angel Davis. Um, there's other folks involved, um, in the Sylvio River Law project based out of New York to the Transgender Law Centre. Um, that's [01:12:00] actually also been doing really good work around health care and identification documents. Um, so there are like, even though I feel totally hopeless most of the time, there are actually, like, rad things going on that, um I mean, I feel like the against quality project has actually connected a lot of those dots for people because we, for example, like British for economic justice. We've republished one of their statements on military inclusion in the book with a project. We've included a statement from them on [01:12:30] Matthew Shepherd and Crime Hate Crime Act from them being critical of it. So I feel like as a project, we're trying to connect those dots for people and give people access to um I like to think of this as a gateway drug. Maybe, uh, you know, like, uh, that that book you find that gives you access to all sorts of other people doing other things in other places. Um, so, yeah, I would say even just flip through the the contributor section of the book and you'll see where people are working. Um, And again, I mentioned the prisoner correspondence project is a queer and trans, um, penpal [01:13:00] project that connects people inside and outside. Um, as long as as as well as also, um, like they they have just made tonnes of PDF S on their website that you can download and grant and send to your inside pen pals around farm production, safe sex in prison, how to clean needles in imprison and limited resources. There is black and pink, which does prisoner support projects. A lot of fundraising for people as they exit the prison system. Uh, and who was the other one? Uh uh [01:13:30] Uh uh Oh. Ultraviolent. Is this, like, radical middle aged lesbian collective that supports women prisoners in the US women lesbian prisoners in the US prison system. So I think there are lots of things, and I'm sure there's, like, other things to that. Maybe other people can speak to have cool things going here and maybe the the one last thing I'll share, Um, the petty and vindictive collective, which is the group of folks organising in Auckland that, um um, for folks. I'm [01:14:00] sure most people know it. I'll say it anyway. Um, they organised a contingent to confront, um, the uniform corrections officers that were marching in the Pride parade in Auckland. Uh, which resulted in private security attacking, um, three people and breaking, uh, indigenous Trans woman's arm. Her name is emy. And since that happened, there's also a number of a T MST M SI. I heard that happen here, too, Like ATM [01:14:30] S. But they were vandalised, and the banks actually framed it as an attack on their gay and lesbian, um, workers just like toy toy wild? Um, yeah. As if defacing a bank is attack on like someone who's a teller. Um, so yeah, So there were a number of actions that happened. Um, and Penny, a vindictive, is not responsible for all those things. I don't want to put them in harm's way, but they were the ones that organised the the the intervention to the Pride parade. [01:15:00] Saying what? What does it mean to include corrections officers and police officers in a parade. Like who does that then, Um, exclude, um, through including those people. So, yeah, there. There's I'm sure, like those are just like a handful of people in Auckland. So I'm sure there's other people who's doing cool stuff is really what I want to know. Thank you. Who wants to do cool stuff? That that's also part [01:15:30] of what people like? Yeah, a lot in the US about is a way to access social welfare type things. And I think we've got quite a different situation, non consensual recognition of factual relationship and, um, which obviously we manage and benefit from it. I mean, some of the things we've experienced into gaps. [01:16:00] You take care. The disability related issues like health care, all kind of sort it out. Yeah, that's great. Um, and there's there's also a parallel bit of difference in the in the US context because we don't have de facto. Um, but there is a situation where people, um, don't get married, because if you are on any form of state, um, benefits, like, uh, for us, it's like Section eight housing vouchers, food [01:16:30] stamps, Social Security income. If you get married, you become a double income family. Your benefits are reduced, right? So if you're if you're disabled or you're poor and subsisting off of some sort of state benefit, what few we have left? Um, yeah, you, You you lose those, or they're reduced because there's the privatising logic of marriage which says you should meet all your immediate needs to the family, which I imagine would be complicated here where people are suddenly in de facto, [01:17:00] even though they didn't consent to being in this de facto. Um, yeah, I can imagine that being a really serious issue, um, I'd say one other sort of similarity that's happening in the US context. Um, Arizona State University, which is a public university, sent out a letter to all its employees in December just after Christmas. That said, if you're not married by January 1st because gay marriage had just gone through a legal battle there and became legal, [01:17:30] it was, If you don't get married by January 1st, you no longer can access domestic partnership benefits. So, uh, similar, like, coercion to to to marriage. Um, that is quite dangerous, right? Um, because a lot of the rhetoric around like we should have the option to be able to choose to get married. And it's like, Well, if it's the only way to meet your material needs, it's not choice. That's coercion. I think that choice is like the the like key of of sort of the neoliberal logic, [01:18:00] right? Is that we saw choice around. Yeah. Um, sorry, I just Yeah. Yeah. As you have said, there's the frame of choice, but as someone who the course of my new life on, like the or the sort of, uh, cultural. And one of the things I took away from those kind of days was, Yeah, you can talk about choice, but choice really is the freedom when Frank wrote, [01:18:30] Yeah, I mean, it's It's certainly not freedom when you have to participate in an institution to access health care, for example, that's that's not freedom. Appreciate it to discuss. Maybe we can if there aren't any other direct questions we can shift to, like, more casual, you know, like the good conversations happen after the thing is over and you're just like hanging out. I always like [01:19:00] to make time for that So, um, maybe we can shift to people want peruse books, and we have some snacks and tea and stuff. Is is there any burning last question before we shift? Cool. Well, thank you so much for hosting me. Thanks for being such a great, receptive participants. And, um, yeah, I hope.
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