On Wednesday, Oct. 8 the Critical Diaspora Studies undergraduate working group hosted a panel discussion on transgender justice in the carceral system. Hailey Saya Tomlinson, a senior studying Sociology and International Studies at Hopkins, served as the moderator for the panel. She introduced the panelists: Dr. Nicole Morse and Dr. Vesla Weaver, who joined the panel in person, and Arianna Lint, who joined virtually.
Morse is a professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, whose research focuses on media studies and LGBTQ+ identity. Their upcoming book, Bending the Bars: Queer Conspirators Against Carcerality, is about queer people affected by the carceral system and how they have used media to challenge oppression.
Weaver is a professor of Political Science and Sociology at Hopkins. She is the co-director of the American Prison Writing Archive and the author of several books that explore the relationship between race and incarceration in the United States.
Arianna Lint is a transgender educator and advocate, as well as a law school graduate. Lint worked in HIV and AIDS studies at the Florida Health Department, and, in 2015, she opened Arianna’s Center, an organization supporting trans women of color in Florida. She currently serves as the CEO of the group and provides services including emergency housing, help attaining GEDs and English language instruction.
In an email to The News-Letter, senior Vanessa Han, member of the Critical Diaspora Studies undergraduate working group, described how the panelists were chosen.
“Community-centered voices and those with first-hand experiences are critical to understanding issues dealing with marginalized populations, so we prioritized finding local and national organizations dedicated to serving system-impacted trans individuals,” Han said. “We thought that including scholarly insight would be an interesting balance to bridge academia and the community.”
After introductions, each of the panelists spoke about their work. Lint discussed her efforts to provide HIV and AIDS care for incarcerated people, and about how her work has been affected by the current political state. She explained that Arianna’s Center closed its housing program for transgender individuals who are HIV positive because of a decline in financial support from the Trump administration.
Morse then spoke about their personal experiences, including their former marriage to a prison guard who worked in maximum and minimum security prisons, their efforts to find a queer community after coming out, and how the Black and Pink program inspired them to start exploring prison incarceration as an activist.
Weaver explained that she doesn’t usually study transgender justice but rather the historical and political violences of the prison system. She has been told that the study of the justice system doesn’t fit into political science, but she believes that view neglects the fact that understanding the carceral system is about understanding government order, power and communal worth — all facets of political science.
After a question from Tomlinson regarding the Trump administration’s impacts on their work, Morse emphasized that the current administration has been moving trans women into men’s prisons. At these facilities, they are often kept in solitary confinement to protect them from violence from other inmates. Morse explained that solitary confinement for longer than 15 days is classified as torture.
“People who are incarcerated have been, in a sense, the canary in the coal mine for authoritarianism,” they said. “If we’re not in solidarity with incarcerated people already, this is the time to get connected and learn from that.”
Morse then established that their intention is to create safe LGBTQ+ spaces within the carceral system. While others have suggested creating exclusively LGBTQ+ prison units, Morse does not believe in creating more jails. They then emphasized the importance of addressing issues that might lead to incarceration, like being kicked out of housing or dealing with substance abuse.
Weaver noted that individuals who grow up fearing government interactions will have more difficulties with the justice system in the future. She claimed that there are ways for the government to prevent crime, in addition to punishing it.
“People have many interactions with the state before they ultimately are incarcerated,” she said. “We sequester incarceration from all these other touch points that the state had to intervene but didn't, and that ultimately opened somebody up to vulnerability."
Tomlinson then asked Lint how her work helping trans people navigating the immigration system had been affected by ICE.
Lint spoke about working with immigrants moving to Puerto Rico and Florida. She explained that many transgender immigrants have stopped using resources provided by Arianna’s Center, such as the English language classes, because they are afraid of being detained by ICE.
Additionally, she expressed disappointment in the government for refusing to provide the support she has asked for. Lint said that she understands that as an educated, supported woman who has worked in government, she has more security than most, but she often feels just as invisible as the rest of the trans community.
“The most sad [thing] is when founders and when people... make a policy and the people they have in power right now... don’t listen to us, they don’t answer our emails, they don’t answer the phone calls, and they’re acting like we are invisible,” she said.
Following another question from Tomlinson regarding the importance of archives in studying incarceration, Weaver spoke about the value of the first person narrative, since statistics are often reductive and fail to tell the true story of prison. She explained that incarcerated people are often excluded from the statistics that measure the country’s well being, such as unemployment and housing security, which suggests that the government may not be acting in the interest of the affected people.
The talk concluded with an audience Q&A session. Sebastian Witherspoon, an MFA student with the Hopkins Writing Seminars program, asked how the panelists would recommend reconciling the difference between advocates who promote the abolition of prisons and those who are working to improve conditions within the existing system.
Weaver responded by referencing how litigation originally meant to alleviate the overcrowding and poor conditions of prisons led to the building of more prisons, demonstrating the struggle Witherspoon described. However, she also emphasized one success in the prison abolition movement: the closure of hundreds of juvenile facilities as a result of small movements across the country.
Sam Bessen, who works in the Special Collections department at Brody Learning Commons, asked about balancing the amplification of queer visibility while protecting individuals from the Trump administration’s surveillance.
In response, Weaver argued that, despite the risks of visibility, it is important to have records and archives that prove historical brutality to prevent the cycle from repeating.
“We are vulnerable. Does that mean that I’m going to stop talking about incarceration? No,” she said.
Victoria Harms, a professor with the Hopkins History department, asked if any of the panelists had any recommended resources for people looking to get more involved with transgender and carceral justice. Tomlinson shared the names of organizations in Maryland, such as the Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition and Trans Maryland.
In an email to The News-Letter, Han elaborated on what she hopes audience members will take away from this event.
“Ideally, audience members will have learned a bit more about trans experiences with the violence and ubiquity of the carceral state,” she wrote. “With these first steps of education, we hope audience members will become more involved, whether it’s through CDS, similar course topics, research projects, community engagement, or more!”
