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Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Hate Crimes, Exceptionalism, and the State’s Order to Kill

When we focus on who commits such acts, we conveniently forget why they happen in the first place.  And then, of course, it allows us to forget a simple fact: no one actually deserves to die a violent and senseless death.

Image result for paintings of public punishment
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Feminism Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Is Slutwalk the End of Feminism?

If feminism is to remain relevant, it needs to become more intractable, not less, and it needs to see itself working beyond the landscape of the personal.

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Immigration Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History Yasmin's Media Appearances

An Interview with me and Ralowe T. Ampu for Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

Captive Genders
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Immigration Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

National Immigrant Justice Center files mass civil rights complaint on behalf of LGBT immigrant detainees

Breaking News

Originally published in Windy City Times, April 15, 2011

The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), a project of the Heartland Alliance, recently released a mass civil rights complaint about the “abuse and mistreatment” of thirteen immigrant detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The complaint was filed with the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Office of Inspector General on April 13.

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On Books and Publishing Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

It persuasively argues that innocence is a shifting category, contingent on visible markers of race and class privilege.

Queer (In)Justice
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Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Loving Hate: Why Hate Crimes Legislation is a Bad Idea

Is jailing people for their prejudice really going to curtail bigotry and prejudice? 

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Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

POW-WOW prepares to wow Chicago

She is acutely aware of how the term “safe space” translates differently for women, depending on their ethnic and racial background, and that white women have historically been reluctant to make it out to what might be defined as a “Black space.”

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Film, Art, Television, and Media Gay Marriage Hate Crime Legislation Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Reporting

Queers on the Run: Interview with Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas

“Radical queers haven’t yet figured out how to use film as politics; we’ve done it with performance and spoken word, but not with film. The assimilationists are winning the war because they’ve learned how to use film as propaganda by wrapping their message in the preferred discourse of civil rights.”

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Gay Marriage Hate Crime Legislation Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History Reporting

Interview with Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese

Joe Solmonese, executive director of Human Rights Campaign (HRC) , frequently finds himself in the eye of the LGBT political storm.  In recent years, criticism of the nation’s largest gay organization has increased, whether for what many described as the betrayal over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or its rumored agnosticism over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).  The organization recently unveiled a nationwide campaign, No Excuses, which aims to empower LGBTs everywhere to talk to their members of Congress about the issues facing them.  Solmonese talked to Windy City Times over the phone about the campaign, and about a range of legislative and political issues.

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Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

The Real Costs of the HIV Ban

“There is no good reason, absolutely no science.”