Alejo Rodriguez†

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Introduction: An Odyssey and an Awakening

In 1985 I was convicted for a robbery related homicide. I wish I could say that it wasn’t me, that they picked the wrong person out of the line-up, or that I had nothing to do with the actual shooting, but I can’t. The minute I picked up a gun with the thought that a robbery would somehow rid me of my drug dependent lifestyle was the minute I became the coward who would end up taking someone’s life. I received an eighteen years to life sentence and before I knew it, I was in Attica Correctional Facility. I was a twenty-three-year-old unskilled high school graduate who had never been incarcerated. I didn’t know how I would make it to see the next day, let alone the next eighteen years. All I had was the present, “one day at a time.”

Prison is a world in and of itself. It is designed to break the human spirit. Yet, strangely, there was a familiarity about prison that I didn’t expect. Sure, the constant threat of cell bars, prison guards, and gun towers were all new and intimidating, but the sense that there was no way out and the constant threat of violence were, in many respects, no different than where I grew up in the Bronx. Many of us came from the same neighborhoods, same families, and formed the same gangs. Drugs were readily available, as was gambling, and prostitution. It would be years before I would hear the term “school-to-prison pipeline,” but once I did, I knew for certain that it was more than just a catch phrase—we were its by-product. Continue reading →

Lee Clark†

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As a trans person, one of the places that I have found safety is through the way I represent my gender expression. Clothing is at the pinnacle of my gender expression; it is something that I have had control over for a long time. To quote the famous social theorist Simone De Beauvoir, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”¹ I might have been assigned female at birth, but I definitely did not express my gender in feminine ways, opting for clothes from the boys’ section of stores rather than the girls’ section. One way that people have been classified in society for centuries is through the lens of the gender binary as showcased through clothing, media, and culture. Clothing and fashion are where I recognized my personal autonomy at a young age, and how I could fight back against gender restrictions throughout my life.

A quote from Daniel Friedman, a suit designer from Brooklyn-based tailoring company Bindle & Keep, who works almost exclusively with trans and non-binary² clients, resonated with me: “It’s all about feeling great in your body, especially when people have been struggling their entire lives and they finally get into something that really fits them . . . the way they’ve always envisioned something would fit them. That’s not fashion anymore and that’s what we’re after.”³ Obviously, clothing is fashion, as it pertains to garments and construction, but it extends further than that. Bindle & Keep is dedicated to dressing an identity and a body. Clothing and gender have a direct correlation as one of the ways to present one’s gender daily. Cis and trans people alike curate outfits and silhouettes that are used to present gender. But while the trans community is fighting for our fit in the courts, we are also fighting the gender binary that has never recognized our identity. Continue reading →

Sean Meehan†

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Landlord harassment against low-income, rent-regulated tenants is an enduring problem in New York City that forces vulnerable tenants from their homes as landlords illegally pursue greater profits. Protection from harassment was a significant issue during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s unprecedented land use revision of nearly 140 rezonings from 2002 to 2014.^[1] As communities throughout the city began to understand the inequitable effects of rezoning, particularly for low-income communities of color,^[2] many tenants and community groups began to organize and demand greater protection from the anticipated effects that rezoning would have on their communities.

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