Joey Mogul

What a mess this book is! I wanted to read this or something like it, after reading about the abuse of gays by San Francisco law enforcement in Randy Shilts' The Mayor of Castro Street. The book failed in so many ways to present a case for the state of affairs, perhaps because it had three authors and they were all so passionate about their subject that they couldn't control themselves. The beginning part of the book is particularly poorly done. (Because all three authors co-wrote it?) It jumps all over the place, making points, supposedly about injustices to gays, by pointing out examples of injustice to blacks and other minorities. (Huh?) And it does that while failing to point out many key nuances of those injustices to blacks that are easily learned by studying the literature readily out there. Certainly, there are several examples of LGBT injustices given, many quite memorable and to the point, but there are inadequate statistics to give backing to those examples. In the end, this should have been no more than an extended magazine article plus a booklet for handout to persons interested in the topic. The book does make a very key point about the connection between the perceived "deviance" of LGBT lifestyles and what then becomes the presumed "illegality" of anything LGBT people do. But what about the questions of why religion has a fetish with homosexuality abuse or why so many homophobic people go into law enforcement and other related questions that are never approached in this book? After reading this, I'm not sure the book I'm looking for even exists yet.… (mer)

from my review in Monthly Review:

In 1513, en route to Panama, Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa ordered forty Quaraca men to be ripped apart by his hunting dogs. Their offense? Being “dressed as women” and having sexual relations with each other. The homophobia and transphobia behind Balboa’s actions are far from arcane relics of the past, and violence against LGBTQ people continues to this day, both legally sanctioned and in the streets.

In 2008, Duanna Johnson, a black transgender woman, was arrested for a prostitution-related offense in Memphis. At the jail, she was brutally beaten by a police officer. Her beating was caught on videotape, leading to the firing of two officers. Johnson filed a civil suit against the police department but, less than six months later, was found shot in the head a few blocks from her house. This was the third killing of a black transgender woman in Memphis in 2008 alone, and her murder remains unsolved.

Queer (In)Justice examines the violence that LGBTQ people face regularly, from attacks on the street to institutionalized violence from police and prisons. The three authors are long-time advocates and attorneys who work directly with people impacted by incarceration. Joey L. Mogul, a partner at Chicago’s People’s Law Office and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University, has advocated for LGBTQ people ensnared in the criminal legal system. Andrea Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney, organizer, and coordinator of Streetwise and Safe, a New York City organization focused on gender, race, sexuality, and poverty-based policing and criminalization of LGBTQ youth of color. Kay Whitlock has worked for almost forty years to build bridges between LGBTQ struggles and movements fighting for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice. Together, they center race, class, and gender/gender nonconformity in analyzing the myriad ways in which LGBTQ people have been policed, prosecuted, and punished from colonial times to the present day.

Rest of my review at: http://monthlyreview.org/2012/11/01/queer-liberation-means-prison-abolition… (mer)

This book is an absolute must-read. It details this history of how the criminal system has preyed upon queer people throughout the centuries and how criminalization effects queer people more severely than other folks. This book covers in-depth the intersections of class, race, gender, and gender identity to present a chilling picture how police and society preys upon queer people; particularly poor, queer, people of color and offers them no recourse. The authors present on the ineffectiveness of domestic violence laws and hate crimes legislation.

I was challenged by this book to think in new ways about prisons and prison reform. I think this book should be required reading for all queer people and all people of faith who want to see justice for queer people. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.… (mer)