Sylvia Rivera Law Project issues statement opposing federal hate crimes law

November 14, 1:26 PMTransgender & Transsexual Issues ExaminerMatt Kailey

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Sylvia Rivera
SRLP Web site

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), named for civil rights pioneer Sylvia Rivera and working to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence, has issued the following statement about the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act that was signed into law by President Obama in October. This statement is also online here at the organization’s Web site.

SRLP statement (links from original statement are included):

In October 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. This law makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity by expanding the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. In support of this goal, it expands the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute such crimes instead of or in collaboration with local authorities. The law also provides major increases in funding for the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement to use in prosecuting these crimes – including special additional resources to go toward prosecution of youth for hate crimes.

The recent expansion of the federal hates crimes legislation has received extensive praise and celebration by mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations because it purports to “protect” LGBT people from attacks on the basis of their expressed and/or perceived identities for the first time ever on a federal level. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project does not see this as a victory. As an organization that centers racial and economic justice in our work and that understands mass imprisonment as a primary vector of violence in the lives of our constituents, we believe that hate crimes legislation is a counterproductive response to the violence faced by LGBT people.

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

What hate crimes laws do is expand and increase the power of the same unjust and corrupt criminal punishment system. Evidence demonstrates that hate crimes legislation, like other criminal punishment legislation, is used unequally and improperly against communities that are already marginalized in our society. These laws increase the already staggering incarceration rates of people of color, poor people, queer people and transgender people based on a system that is inherently and deeply corrupt.

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

We are also dismayed by the joining of a law that is supposedly about “preventing” violence with the funding for continued extreme violence and colonialism abroad. This particular bill was attached to a $680-billion measure for the Pentagon’s budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan protects no one, inside or outside of U.S. borders.
We continue to work in solidarity with many organizations and individuals to support people in prison, to reduce incarceration, to end the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and to create systems of accountability that do not rely on prisons or policing and that meaningfully improve the health and safety of our communities--especially redistribution of wealth, health care, and housing. A few of the many other organizations doing radical and transformative work to increase the health and safety of our communities include:

• The Audre Lorde Project

• FIERCE

• Incite! Women of Color Against Violence

• Queers for Economic Justice

• Right Rides

• TGI Justice Project

• The Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois

For these reasons, we believe that a law that links our community's experiences of violence and death to a demand for increased criminal punishment, as well as further funding for imperialist war, is a strategic mistake of significant proportion.