I just had a WOW moment with Lisa Duggan!

So the NYU Office of LGBT Student Services just had an AMAZING speaker come for our Queer Lunch(Quench) series. Her name is Lisa Duggan and she is a professor at NYU who also works with Queers for Economic Justice. (There is a link for their site on the right hand side of the screen)

She began by introducing a new project that she and a ton of cool people have been working on. It's a new e-book that is being released for free online in October entitled A New Queer Agenda: A Practical Guide to Turn the Gay Rights Movement Into a Progressive Fight for Social Justice (and Succeed!). Seriously, check it out when it's released, I was able to look at the table of contents and it's going to be AMAZING!

A conversation came up about hate crime legislation, and how many groups were opposed to different initiatives such as the Matthew Sheppard Act. Now, my gut reaction was "why would anyone be opposed to putting cold-blooded murders away?" But then as the discussion progressed, I realized that there is a simple answer to that question. Hate crime legislation addresses the symptoms, NOT the disease. Violence is the symptom of systemic hatred.

We all know that the "justice" system disproportionately affects persons of color and of lower socio-economic status. Hate crime legislation has resulted in increased funding for the purposes of of policing these communities even further. But do we spend nearly as much money on social justice education as we do prisons? Organizations like the Audre Lorde Project have advocated to instead give money and funding to educational initiatives that target at risk populations that are prone to violence. Consciousness-raising and the unteaching of early messages of prejudice and bigotry or of the pressures of masculinity are what is needed to decrease hate crimes. Now I'm not saying that when a person engages in violence that they shouldn't be prosecuted, but we have to ask ourselves why violence occurs so often.

What really made me say wow was the fact that when Matthew Sheppard was murdered, there was an outcry across this country and especially New York. Yet hundreds of transgendered sex workers were being beaten and murdered every year. Often times, it was police who were committing the violence.

Where's the justice in that?

Thoughts, reactions, concerns = comments! Please&Thankyou!