Category: Prison industrial complex

Beth Richie on race, gender and the ‘prison nation’

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date May 22, 2013

“Excerpt: I realized that in some ways the closing of the buildings doesn’t change all that much, because as we close more buildings, we put more people in ankle bracelets, under house arrest, or make their probation longer.”

Chicago Chronicles Prison industrial complex

Cut Schools! Build Prisons!

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 28, 2013

It’s also significant that the text of the bill specifically names “gang members,” code for youth of colour.

Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

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

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date December 29, 2012

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

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

Is Slutwalk the End of Feminism?

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date October 9, 2012

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.

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

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date June 29, 2011

Immigration Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

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

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date April 21, 2011

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.

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

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

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 2, 2011

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

Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Loving Hate: Why Hate Crimes Legislation is a Bad Idea

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date August 4, 2010

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

Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

POW-WOW prepares to wow Chicago

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date August 1, 2010

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.”

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

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date May 14, 2010

“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.”