Jonece Starr Dunigan
Aug 21, 2024
Read the full Reckon article here.
For decades, hunger strikes, workers strikes, uprisings and other forms of disruption behind bars have helped incarcerated people fight for their rights. But what about the art of oral storytelling?
It is in alignment with the spirit of Black August to serve as witness to incarcerated individuals who are challenging oppressive jail conditions. The annual, month-long observance of Black resistance started in California prisons following the death of Black power activist George Jackson. In 1961, Jackson received a one-year-to-life sentence for a $70 robbery despite evidence of his innocence. Jackson and two other incarcerated men were falsely accused of killing a white prison worker before Jackson was killed by a guard at San Quentin State Prison on Aug 21, 1971. Author of “Soledad Brother” and “Blood In My Eye,” Jackson used his voice to stir liberation within incarcerated individuals from the west coast to the east coast. A few weeks after his death, imprisoned men at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York started an uprising and issued a manifesto detailing more than a dozen demands that included better living conditions, legal representation at parole hearings and the end of free prison labor – issues current and formerly incarcerated individuals are addressing to this day.
But the experiences highlighted during Black August typically feature cisgender men. Jamie Grace Alexander is one of the leaders of the Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition, an organization lobbying for policies improving the well-being of trans and gender expansive people in Maryland. She said there is a reason – and a consequence – for the absence of LGBTQ+ voices in the Black August space. She’s coordinating an oral history project about formerly incarcerated trans people. Their stories will help end the dehumanization of trans people in jail.
“Trans people are being held in solitary confinement because they don’t fit into a cisgender binary,” Alexander said. “Because it’s centered like this, violence against trans people is happening.”
A February report from the Vera Institute of Justice exposes the disproportionate amounts of harm transgender people endure while in state prisons. Out of the 280 trans people who were imprisoned at the time of the survey, 89 percent of them have experienced solitary confinement, putting them at risk of permanent, psychological damage. Nearly 60 percent reported a deterioration of their physical health and 50 percent said their mental health declined while in jail. Receiving gender-affirming care, such as transitioning medication, was inconsistent and discriminatory for the majority of the respondents. More than half experienced sexual assault during their prison sentence.
People have these fictions of what they believe an incarcerated trans person to be. The department of corrections and legislators all have a ‘scary trans woman boogeyman’ who is actually a man and she’s pretending to be a woman. These anecdotes become a justification for violence.
— Jamie Grace Alexander
The coalition’s track record of getting bills that support trans individuals to the governor’s desk is impressive. TRAC was created following the 2022 legislative session in Maryland, when a gender-affirming healthcare bill stalled during the sessions’ final days. After galvanizing a larger, trans-led effort in 2023, TRAC played a pivotal role in the passage of the Trans Health Equity Act, which required gender-affirming care for Marylanders on Medicaid. During this year’s session the organization fiercely advocated for SB119, which made Maryland the 12th state to become a sanctuary city for transgender people and providers of gender-affirming care.
They say that they can’t protect trans women in male facilities. So they just hold them in solitary confinement, which is like a punishment for holding an identity.
— Jamie Grace Alexander
But while the group saw success on the healthcare front, a bill focused on the well-being of incarcerated trans people didn’t pass. The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act would have required the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to “provide gender-appropriate housing placement and search procedures, including for transgender, nonbinary, intersex, two-spirit, and other gender diverse individuals.”
The bill also included search procedures giving trans people more power to choose the gender of the officer who will be conducting the search. Alexander said the department of public safety houses trans people in solitary confinement for their own safety. But the solution is counterproductive, she said.
“They say that they can’t protect trans women in male facilities. So they just hold them in solitary confinement, which is like a punishment for holding an identity,” Alexander said.
This isn’t the first year the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act has stalled in the state legislature. Alexander introduced the bill in 2022 while she was with a larger LGBTQ+ nonprofit before she joined the coalition. She was surrounded by the most powerful people making decisions about policing in her state and they were responding to her remarks using dehumanizing and transphobic rhetoric. Alexander feels less isolated now that she is part of a community of trans advocates who are also fighting to change policy.
“It started being not a me thing, but an us thing,” Alexander said. “So I’m really happy to have a coalition around this work because it’s not something that any one person can do or change on their own.”
During a previous legislative session, The Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition was successful in its lobbying for budget language requiring the department of public safety to conduct and present a report on the treatment of trans incarcerated people. When the department presented its findings during a hearing for the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act this year, Alexander said the department was still using harmful language.
“People have these fictions of what they believe an incarcerated trans person to be. The department of corrections and legislators all have a ‘scary trans woman boogeyman’ who is actually a man and she’s pretending to be a woman,” Alexander said. “These anecdotes become a justification for violence.”
The coalition’s strategy to protect the dignity of trans people in prisons has since changed after the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act failed to pass this legislative year. The coalition is now directly working with the department of public safety to work on changes to their policy. Alexander wanted trans individuals to have their own say on what they wanted changed in jails. She believes the oral history project will dispel the myths people have about transgender people.
“The reality is trans people are full human beings who deserve respect and protection, even when they’re incarcerated,” Alexander said. “We’re recording those stories from formerly incarcerated trans people so we can have more humanizing conversations and present first-person accounts of some of the problems we’re hearing about to the people that we’re speaking to in the department.”
Alexander hasn’t started the interviews for the project yet. The coalition is still training volunteers who will be conducting the interviews. But she stressed that the incarcerated trans people inside the jail aren’t just helpless damsels in distress. They have already done their own organizing behind prison walls to make small tweaks to the prison’s policy, including changes to shower procedures and access to gendered commissary.
“People who are inside have the ability to organize and change those things, but people who are inside don’t have the ability to be at the negotiating table with the jail,” Alexander said. “I think we are in a real position of privilege to be able to carry the demands of currently and formerly incarcerated trans people to the people who need to hear them.”
Alexander enjoys using political policy to create change and wants others to feel empowered to make an impact, too. If you see an issue in your area, gather your friends and allies and try to find a way to tackle it politically.
“A lot of change is politically possible, especially when you have momentum and when you have a coalition. Then when you have the support of even just one legislator who is 100 percent on board, you can get things done,” she said. “I want marginalized people to know that they should want their voices to be represented, but not about voting for president. We need to be politically focused and politically aware on the local scale and we need to try to see what is possible.”