pettyandvindictive

[pettyandvindictive]

Today No Pride in Prisons orchestrated 4 simultaneous actions demanding a suicidal transgender woman is removed from a 23-hour isolation unit where she has said she is contemplating suicide. Three actions were pickets at Department of Corrections offices. At the other, members of No Pride in Prisons entered the Central Regional Corrections office, responsible for the prison in which this abuse is occurring, and occupied it. After several hours, their condition that the prisoner be removed from solitary confinement was not met and they were arrested by police. 

We stand committed to the abolition of solitary confinement, the abolition of mental health neglect, and the abolition of prisons in Aotearoa. The struggle has only just begun – as protesters chanted at the Northern Regional office, “We’ll be back.”

[pettyandvindictive]

PRESS RELEASE: No Pride in Prisons “disappointed” by Rainbow Auckland Gala

No Pride in Prisons, a queer and transgender prison abolitionist group, is disappointed by Rainbow Auckland’s decision to charge $125 for its “Gala Extravaganza” celebrating the 30th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform.

“While we recognise the importance of celebrating this massive milestone for the LGBTIQ community, we believe that many people are being left behind by the likes of Rainbow Auckland,” says No Pride in Prisons spokesperson Sophie Morgan.

The group argues that much more needs to be done to address the ongoing issues that many people in the queer and transgender community face.

“While sodomy between consenting adults has been decriminalised, many queer and trans people continue to be marginalised by the criminal justice system.”

“As we know, many transgender women are currently being incarcerated in men’s prisons and are at an extremely high risk of being sexually assaulted while in prison.”

“Incarcerated people more generally have to go through humiliating and dehumanising treatment in prisons every day. They are unnecessarily strip searched, denied basic rights to privacy and bodily autonomy and sometimes held in conditions that breach the UN convention against torture.”

“The rainbow movement must fight with and for the most marginalised within our community. Flashy, expensive galas for the gay elite do nothing to address the ongoing issues of homelessness and unemployment that many young queer and transgender people face.”

“Until we address the structural racism and economic exploitation that people experience alongside their queer and trans identities, the LGBTIQ movement will remain a party for the privileged.”

[pettyandvindictive]

No Pride in Prisons was formed following the 2015 Auckland Pride Parade to boycott the inclusion of violent and racist institutions – namely the police marching in uniform, and the corporatisation of Pride. This short documentary by Accompany collective discusses the formation, kaupapa, and actions held by NPIP.

Most of the documentary centres around the Fuck Pride Rally, organised in response to the Pride Board’s decision to include uniformed police and corrections officers in Auckland’s 2016 Parade, despite months of negotiation with NPIP.

[pettyandvindictive]

[pettyandvindictive]

In Solidarity With Aiden Katri, a Transgender Woman Currently Being Incarcerated by the Israeli Defense Force

PINKWASHING (NOUN):

the promotion of mainstream ‘gay rights’ by corporate or political entities as a veil to excuse or hide unethical practices, particularly where those practices ignore basic human and workers’ rights.

On Tuesday 29th of March 2016, Aiden Katri, a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman was sent to an IDF men’s prison for refusing to serve in the occupational military.

My name is Aaliyah Zionov. I am a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman and a member of No Pride In Prisons. Were it not for my family’s migration from Israel to Aotearoa, this could have been me.

The Israeli Defense Force is often cited as a clear example of an organisation which utilises pinkwashing – being increasingly accommodating of LGBT soldiers and needs not for the cause of queer liberation, but for strengthening and obscuring the true purpose of a violent occupational force. Presenting itself as a supposed bastion of queer rights, the IDF diffuses legitimate criticism and gains positive international attention as a progressive organisation whose genocidal practices are to be admired.

However, pinkwashing does not result in material improvement in queer conditions. In fact, it is often actively harmful. For example, in 2013, the IDF began to allow transgender women to openly serve on the front lines. Usually, transgender women are permitted to opt out or seek alternative forms of civil service; this change did not exist to advance transgender rights but rather served only to expand the pool from which people could be conscripted.

The IDF Spokesperson on Tuesday emphasized that Aiden Katri’s imprisonment has nothing to do with her being transgender, and claimed that the army was not even aware of her gender identification until Tuesday.

Katri’s current situation highlights some of the largest contradictions of pinkwashing. The fact that we as Israeli trans women now have the ‘privilege’ of serving in the IDF means that we now also have the accompanying ‘privilege’ of being imprisoned in men’s prisons if we conscientiously object. The IDF took care to emphasise that, as she did not disclose her status as a trans woman while objecting, Katri’s imprisonment was “nothing to do with her being transgender”; this is impossible.

Firstly, the fact that the IDF requires one to disclose one’s status as a member of a vulnerable or “deviant” class to the state in order to be treated with dignity, effectively “outs” them and puts them potentially in danger. This means that the “trans-friendly” status of the IDF is nothing more than a farce.

Secondly, in Katri’s words: “I struggle against my oppression – my gender oppression as a trans women and my ethnic oppression as a Mizrahi Jew, and if I turn a blind eye to an oppression of another people, this would be hypocrisy.” In other words: since her decision to conscientiously object was made as a trans woman, her imprisonment for said decision cannot be separated from her identity.

Thirdly, she was incarcerated in a men’s prison: there were immediate material consequences to her resistance as a trans woman.

The military is a patriarchal body that perpetuates for the youth the a-symmetry between men and women. [… ] I refuse to take part in an organization that makes “masculine” behaviors such as aggression and violence, an entry ticket to the social elite.

Aiden Katri recognises the importance of resisting colonisation and incarceration for queer and trans liberation; for her, the hypermasculinity of Israel’s military culture is an imperial force that is also directly violent against gender non-conforming persons. Allowing trans women to participate in this culture does not liberate them, rather pressuring them to conform to toxic constructions of gender. No group can achieve true liberation through the oppression of another group.

Decolonisation is integral to the achievement of queer and trans liberation. The modern gender binary was imposed by Western colonisation upon peoples and cultures across the world; in the Israeli state, we see not only a colonised understanding of gender that neglects traditional Jewish genders but an extension of this colonisation to Palestinian queers, through the occupation of their land. The ‘right’ of Israeli trans women to participate in the IDF directly erases the right of Palestinian trans women to self-determination and indeed to survival.

Similarly, the ‘right’ of New Zealand LGBT people to work at prisons or in the New Zealand Police directly erases the rights of whakawāhine and takatāpui Māori to self-determination and sovereignty. No carceral and military system in the world can be separated from its creation and purpose as a tool of state oppression and colonial settler occupation. Queer and trans liberation can only be realised through global prison abolition, for which international solidarity is absolutely vital.

IDF officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told +972 and its Hebrew-language site Local Call that the army does not really know what to do with a transgender inmate, and that a various levels of the professional echelon (including the Chief of Staff’s Advisor on Gender Affairs) are involved in tackling the question. For the purposes of comparison only, the Israel Prison Service, which runs civilian prisons, holds transgender prisoners in isolation — or in other words, in even harsher conditions than others.

Incarcerated transgender people are often put in solitary confinement “for their safety”, which the United Nations considers torture. In Aotearoa, incarcerated transgender people are generally offered the choice to enter protective segregation, which sometimes results in complete isolation for up to 23 hours each day. In Israel, they are subject to solitary confinement by default. Statutory provisions for “choice” and for “case by case” consideration are meaningless in the context of a system which is necessarily coercive and designed to disregard the needs of queer and trans people. Many trans women of color in Aotearoa “choose” to be placed in protective segregation to minimize exposure to sexual and physical violence, and are assaulted in segregation nevertheless.

The Israeli Defense Force decides how to treat trans soldiers with regard to gender on a “case by case” basis: it retains full power to disregard any person’s gender identity or needs. The admission that they do not “really know what to do” with transgender people does not bode well for any material improvement in conditions. The modern military, as Katri recognizes, is built on patriarchal and white supremacist conceptions of gender and gender roles, and can never be safe for trans people, be they soldiers, civil servants, inmates or victims of its violence.

Aiden Katri’s objection to serving in the IDF and her subsequent imprisonment contradicts Israel’s pinkwashing narrative where it attempts to present itself as an LGBT friendly face to colonial settler occupation and apartheid. Israel’s Pinkwashing is an attempt to distract you from the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the stark inequality between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, ongoing illegal settlements, and mass incarceration of Palestinians, including children under the age of 16 years old. In Katri’s statement, she described witnessing some of the daily violence in the lives of Palestinians:

I went to the Friday protests in the Palestinian village of Bil’in to protest the theft of the village lands for the growth of the neighboring settlement, and I saw the violent suffocating space the children grow up in. When the military does not allow the residents to protest legally, as it shoots tear gas canisters at elders, children, men and women that are trying to protest, I can’t but feel shame.

These are some statistics of the imprisonment of Palestinians:

20% of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned

40% of Palestinian men have been imprisoned

The conviction rate is 99.7% with no access to international standards of a fair trial

406 Palestinian minors were held in Israeli prisons at the end of Jan 2016

6,072 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners were held in Israeli prisons, 342 of them from the Gaza Strip. An additional 873 Palestinians were held in Israeli Prison Service facilities for being in Israel illegally, 27 of them from Gaza

The conditions of detention are deliberately degrading, with sexual violence, torture and other forms of dehumanising treatment being systematically practiced. Intended to debilitate the Palestinian population, particularly as they resist oppression, the corrupt and arbitrary nature of imprisonment negatively encompasses all spheres of life, including education.

In the Auckland Pride Parade 2014, the Israeli Embassy was given a platform to pinkwash Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. But we see with their treatment of trans conscientious objectors, this narrative quickly falls apart. As queer and trans people committed to the liberation of all people, we need to stand with those who are most marginalised and support the resistance against military occupation, genocide, colonisation and apartheid. We can do this by standing with Aiden Katri and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Aotearoa and internationally until there is justice for Palestine.

No Pride in Prisons stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and in full support with Aiden Katri’s decision to conscientiously object to participation in the IDF. There are no statistics on the sexual assault of trans women in the IDF. However, given that 1 in 8 women and 1 in 5 gay men have reported being sexually assaulted and given that, where data exists, transgender women are assaulted at a far higher rate than cis women and gay men, it is not unreasonable to assume that Katri would have been placed in an unsafe situation even if she had not conscientiously objected.

Katri was put in a position where she had two choices: to be at risk of sexual assault and participate in a violent imperialist occupation, or to be at risk of sexual assault in a men’s prison because she refused to participate. No Pride in Prisons recognises that many trans women are placed in similarly impossible situations in Israel, Aotearoa and around the world, and maintains that the advancement of transgender rights therefore cannot happen without the global abolition of prisons and of military forces.

Written by A. Zionov, with assistance from K. Foster and MZ for No Pride in Prisons

[pettyandvindictive]

Daily Torment

A personal account of one woman’s experience of incarceration in Aotearoa.

I was arrested on the 15th of October, 2007 in the so-called “anti-terror raids.” By 6pm that evening, I was incarcerated in Arohata Prison just north of Wellington. At the time, our situation was somewhat unusual: generally, even for serious crimes, people would be bailed (often with quite strict conditions) until trial. The state said we were terrorists and the court agreed it was too dangerous to let us out.

Today, however, changes to bail laws mean that it is much harder for people who have been arrested for a crime to get bail pending their hearing. The implications for this are significant, because people who are in jail have much less access to justice: it’s hard to talk to a lawyer, to talk with witnesses, to get documents together or simply organise your life for a long court proceeding. Once in prison, it is much harder to get out.  

Earlier on that day, my friend Emily and I had been stripped of our own clothing and given blue boilersuits. We were placed in the general holding cells downstairs in the Wellington District Court, a quite old fashioned set up with steel barred cells adjacent to each other, and with a toilet in each nominally covered by a waist-high wall.

We were taken to the prison and subjected to a full body strip search. A screw (corrections officer) watched me undress, then made me squat to my ankles to ensure that anything concealed in my anus or vagina fell out. This was just the beginning of day-to-day searches, day-to-day degradations.

We were initially placed in segregation (solitary confinement) “for our own good” where we had no contact and were only allowed out of our cells for 1 hour per day. On October 16th, I got to make my first phone call. I was in shock and despair and could hardly form words. Also done for my “own good” was a 15-minute check-up throughout the night: a screw would come shine a light in my face to wake me up.

We demanded to be moved to general population and, when we arrived, we were searched. Then, we were warmly greeted by the other prisoners who had all heard about the case on TV. At the time, all of the women in the Tizard Wing (Remand) were Māori save for one other Pākehā.

The routine was mind numbing, isolating and degrading: we were searched whenever we went anywhere. We were taken to the gym for a sad game of volleyball every morning and required to play with a flat ball. We were searched before we left the wing; we were searched when we returned.

We were searched when we went to get clothes from the prison repository. We were searched when we got back.

Our rooms were searched. We were let out into the yard for an hour in the afternoon; we were searched.

By the end of the second week, we finally got some visitors. We were searched leaving our wing. When we arrived at the visitor area, we were searched and put into orange jumpsuits (so they know who the prisoners were) with zip ties on the wrists and ankles (so we couldn’t stuff anything up them). I thought those jumpsuits only existed at Guantanamo Bay; how little did I know that they are standard prison gear in New Zealand. We were searched again when our visitors left. We would be searched again when we returned to our wing from the visiting area.

When we went to court, we were searched. Our legal documents would be read by screws before we were locked into tiny transport cages.

One day, a guard came to my cell and said, “Pack your stuff.” Everyone else had just gone to volleyball. I had no idea where I was going, but I was expecting some visitors that day so I guessed that I was being transferred to another wing. I was worried I would be separated from Emily.

We were driven to the airport and put into shackles: we were locked into a cell at Wellington Airport. We were subsequently dragged around the airport by a chain.

Eventually, we arrived at the Auckland Women’s prison at Wiri. Of course, we were searched again. The new prison has cameras in every cell so the guards can watch you all of the time. Ostensibly the camera doesn’t film the shower or toilet area but I felt exposed and vulnerable, watched in bed or at the desk all day, every day. The person in the cell next to me had an amazing voice; she was 17. They didn’t know what else to do with her so they put her in an adult prison.

Each day, we went outside for an hour. We all got searched. When we returned to the wing we got searched.

We had regular visitors by the time we got to Auckland. The bureaucratic process for getting visitors takes ages, and I was thrilled to see my mum and friends.

Within a few days of arrival, my lawyer told me that the police were trying to bring charges against 13 of us under the Terrorism Suppression Act. If they succeeded in bringing the charge (which required the consent of the solicitor-general), he said we would never get out.

After that, I remember sitting in the common area of our wing, looking out the window and starting to cry. When the other women saw me, they immediately said, “Don’t cry.” They said that it would be worse for me if I cried. The screws would send me back to segregation to “help” me.

It was horror. I thought I would be there for 14 years.

The thing about prison that most people don’t understand is that it is an institution that teaches violence. The powerful in our society say, “we want to create a safe, secure community” so people should obey some guidelines about how to behave. But the reality is that the state operates by violence and coercion. Most of that violence and coercion is the small, day-to-day degradations of strip searches or night time patrols, with guards waking you up to “make sure you’re alive”, or having to beg to use the phone or get medical treatment or just get a tiny bit more food. One day I counted I was searched seven times.

There are far more violent activities, of course, such as sexual assaults and rapes. There were stories of a prisoner who was pregnant to a guard when I was there. Prison teaches the lesson that the powerful have the right to use violence and force to get what they want, and to get you to do what they want.

I was really lucky. I got out after a month. There was a whole lot of community support and solidarity that mobilised around the case. But I will never forget what the dread of that locked door felt like, and the utter sense of powerlessness I felt at the hands of people who clearly took pleasure in making supplicant beggars of us all. 

Written by Valerie Morse

[pettyandvindictive]

Corrections Responsible for High Rates of Suicide in New Zealand Prisons

No Pride in Prisons is condemning the Department of Corrections following another ‘non-accidental’ death at Mount Eden Prison. Corrections announced that a prisoner died last Monday due to an ‘apparent suicide’.

“There is a crisis in New Zealand prisons. Overcrowding, systemic violence and inadequate access to medical care, including mental health services, all make New Zealand prisons an unbearable place to live,” says No Pride in Prisons spokesperson Ti Lamusse.

Lamusse, a Masters student in Sociology at the University of Auckland, is currently researching queer and transgender people’s experiences of incarceration.

Lamusse says, “From the information that Corrections has provided me, I have found that prisoners commit suicide at a rate of approximately 72 per 100,000, compared with a rate of 12-13 per 100,000 in New Zealand broadly.”

“This means that incarcerated people on average commit suicide at a rate six times higher than the general population.”

No Pride in Prisons says that the Department of Corrections, and the New Zealand criminal justice system more generally, have to take part of the blame for this problem.

“Suicide is a societal problem and when incarcerated people are attempting suicide at a rate that far exceeds that of the free population, we have to ask why.”

“Corrections is fostering a prison environment that makes suicide seem like the only option for some people. Prisons are not safe. People are terrified to leave their cells. Staff treat incarcerated people like human cargo that just needs to be managed.”

No Pride in Prisons says that the Department of Corrections’ failure to provide adequate mental health care for incarcerated people is putting them at even greater risk.

“Corrections is responsible for the health and well-being of all incarcerated people. It is failing miserably.”

Labour MP, Kelvin Davis, said the prisoner who died on Monday was being held in solitary confinement. “As we have learned recently, the Department of Corrections is willing to hold prisoners in their cells for up to twenty three hours a day.

“By all measures, deprivation of human contact for extended periods of time amounts to torture. Various studies have also found that solitary confinement vastly increases the risk of suicide for incarcerated people.”

“Although we do not know the exact details of this prisoner’s experience, it is understandable that somebody who is being tortured by the Department of Corrections would take their life.”

“New Zealand prisons have become a place where we send our most vulnerable and mentally unwell people. They are also a place where the conditions of life are so unbearable that it is impossible for some to live.”

“New Zealand has to seriously reconsider whether prisons are the best way to solve issues of mental illness and social harm.”

“Prisons are dangerous for incarcerated people. We have to soberly consider if it is worthwhile to put people in extreme danger in prisons, when incarceration does nothing but perpetuate social victimisation.”

No Pride in Prisons is demanding that the Department of Corrections takes responsibility for every unnatural death in its custody.

“Taking responsibility means doing everything you can to stop it from happening again. This means ending solitary confinement, improving medical care, and ultimately decarceration.”

“Until we, as a society, realise that prisons are not the solution, we will continue to needlessly subject people to harm and to sustain injustice.” 

[pettyandvindictive]

Which side are you on?

The queer community in Aotearoa is at a turning point. It is fundamentally divided. Some of us are happy with the status quo and some of us demand more. On the one side, there are those who are complacent with the astounding rates of incarceration of Māori, with the violence of police officers and with the rape of incarcerated trans women. On the other side, there are those who stand in solidarity with all the queer and trans people who have been left behind by a community more concerned with rainbow-coloured flags at Pride parades than the suffering of their people.

Pride started with a moment of rupture, where our predecessors stepped out of the shadows and rioted against police brutality. At its emergence, Pride was nothing if not political. Those proud rioters demanded an end to violently policed norms of gender and sexuality. They fought in the street against anyone who thought they had the right to tell them not to.

Shamefully, Pride has become something else. It has become a corporatised pinkwashed event where institutions like the police and corrections, which do untold violence to the most vulnerable members of the queer community, can show themselves off as so-called beacons of gay rights. Organisations like ANZ and the University of Auckland, both of which impose unfair pay and conditions on their workers, appropriate pride in a lolly scramble for pink dollars. Theirs is a hollow beacon of progress built from the co-option of our struggle.

There are some comfortable queers who say “things have really changed” and that police and prisons are better now, that the police is not the same institution that used to round up suspected homosexuals in nightclubs and throw them in jail. Unfortunately, the police and prisons are still racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic institutions. According to their own 2015 report, which is likely to under-report rates of violence, New Zealand Police used force against Māori at a rate nearly eight times that of Pākehā. The New Zealand Police also used tasers against Māori and Pasifika at a rate higher than it used tasers against Pākehā.

In the last four months alone, No Pride in Prisons has been in touch with two of our incarcerated trans sisters who have been raped in custody. Corrections hasn’t done a thing to end this sexual violence. It continues to place two people in a single cell overnight, putting those incarcerated people at extraordinary risk of sexual and other violence. In fact, it plans on exposing more prisoners to violence by expanding this practice of double-bunking. Why should we pretend that Corrections is anything but a racist and rape-facilitating arm of the state? We see through the pinkwashing, we acknowledge the suffering these institutions cause - do you?

Queers in Aotearoa have a legacy of insurgency. It is our responsibility to continue this struggle and perpetuate it - to destroy those things which are destroying the lives of the most marginalised members of our community. In Aotearoa, in 2016, the prison system is destructive. Police are destructive. We bear responsibilities, as those who carry on the work begun by those radical queers who came before us and who are with us still, not to be fooled. Violence wrapped in a rainbow flag is still violence. Racism covered in glitter is still racism.

Some say that Pride is just a celebration, that it’s supposed to celebrate how far ‘we’ have come. We ask, who is this ‘we’? When we celebrate, who are we leaving behind? When we invite these institutions to the party, we are siding with the forces who have wanted us in the closet, in a cell, or dead. How ever far we may have come, it has been in spite of police and prisons. These institutions always have been and always will be the enemies of queer liberation and universal liberation.

We look around and see soaring rates of homelessness and unemployment among young trans and queer people. We see daily acts of discrimination and violence against those who do not fit into a colonial gender model. We hear of rape and other violence done to incarcerated queer and non-queer people. This is not a time to celebrate. This is a time to demand action.

Our argument is simple: you can choose to side with corrections and the police or with the marginalised; with the oppressors or the oppressed; with the status quo or with change; with the institutions that hurt people or with the people they are hurting. The Auckland Pride Board has chosen its side, so what about you?

Written by T Lamusse, S Vella and E Rākete 

[pettyandvindictive]

We received a really lovely message from: “Pink Bloc - Narrm / Melbourne is a coalition of queer and gender diverse anarchists from the land of the Kulin Nations (whose sovereignty has never been ceded ) in the colonized territories of so-called ‘Australia’ who formed this year to protest the Pride March. We intend to continue to protest against the march in future years - against pink washing, colonialist and assimilationist attitudes and the inclusion of the police (among other issues ) - as well as responding to future events.

We would like to extend warm greetings of solidarity to our comrades from No Pride in Prisons on the occasion of the Fuck Pride Rally. We express our support for the ongoing struggle for prison abolition which we wholeheartedly support. We also believe that cops and screws have no place participating in Pride nor any other LGBTIQ event in Aotearoa or in any other land.”

[pettyandvindictive]

Dunedin Solidarity with No Pride In Prisons

Queer and transgender activists in Dunedin this weekend are standing in solidarity with No Pride in Prisons, Aotearoa’s trans and queer prison abolitionist group.  

The group has condemned the Auckland Pride Board’s decision to allow New Zealand Police and Corrections officers to march in uniform the 2016 parade.

No Pride in Prisons Ōtepoti member Bell Murphy said “The desire by police and corrections to conspicuously associate themselves with Pride and mainstream gay rights is a form of ‘pinkwashing’ in order to veil their unethical practices.”

Corrections have said they intend to improve their treatment of transgender prisoners in New Zealand over the coming year but according to a report from the New Zealand Herald this week, they are planning to increase their double bunking policy.

Only last year it was found that a transgender woman had been raped as a result of double bunking in a New Zealand men’s prison. This year, No Pride in Prisons has heard from another transgender inmate who was brutally attacked while in Corrections’ custody.

The Dunedin group’s spokesperson, Scout Barbour-Evans has said “It’s really important to us in Ōtepoti to support the kaupapa of No Pride in Prisons and continue their kōrero about the ongoing human rights abuses towards transgender prisoners both in policy and in practice. We are not willing to watch our community suffer any further within prison in Aotearoa.”

According to Barbour-Evans, “Māori make up 61% of the prison population in Aotearoa despite only making up 15% of general population, and evidence suggests that brand of discrimination and inequality extends to other minority groups in the Corrections system too.”

No Pride in Prisons Ōtepoti will be meeting for a solidarity demonstration at the Octagon, in Dunedin on Saturday 20th of February at 5pm.

[pettyandvindictive]

The Auckland Pride board has officially announced that uniformed police and corrections officers will once again be marching in this year’s Pride Parade. This event is a clear message to the Pride Board that Police and Corrections are not welcome in any pride parade. No Pride in Prisons is holding a counter-rally in condemnation of the event. We know that many other individuals and organisations are disappointed with what Pride has become. We encourage those people to boycott Pride and join us in solidarity at the counter-rally.

PLEASE BOOST THIS POST FOR YOUR AUCKLAND/TĀMAKI MAKAURAU FOLLOWERS!

[pettyandvindictive]

PRESS RELEASE: Pride Board’s Decision to Allow Police and Corrections in 2016 Pride Parade “Shameful”

Queer and trans group No Pride in Prisons is condemning the Auckland Pride Board for choosing to allow Police and Corrections Officers to march in this year’s parade.

The Auckland Pride Board announced their decision yesterday, reasoning that the Department of Corrections will be taking steps over the coming year to improve its treatment of transgender prisoners.

No Pride in Prisons’ spokesperson, Sophie Morgan, says that this is not nearly enough. “To this date, the Department of Corrections has shown a blatant disregard for the treatment of all incarcerated people, especially queer and trans prisoners.”

“This year alone, No Pride in Prisons has heard from multiple transgender inmates who have been either raped or brutally attacked while in Corrections’ custody.”

The group points to an incident late last year where a trans woman was raped after being placed in a cell overnight with a man.

“Corrections has introduced policies such as double-bunking, where two or more inmates are housed overnight in a single cell. These policies have directly led to the rape of trans women and other prisoners,” says Morgan.

“Corrections has proven, time and time again, that it has no regard for the safety or bodily autonomy of inmates.”

No Pride in Prisons is concerned that the Pride Board may be getting ahead of itself in making this controversial decision.

“Corrections is being rewarded for making vague promises to improve the safety of trans prisoners. It is not enough to reward the Department for making promises it has yet to fulfil. Ultimately, the Department is unlikely to make good on these promises, as up until now it has denied that it has a problem.”

No Pride in Prisons says the problems with prisons and police go much deeper than the Pride Board is willing to address.

“The fact of the matter is that prisons and police are violent, racist institutions that have no place in any pride parade.”

No Pride in Prisons says that at every stage of the criminal justice system, Māori are discriminated against. Morgan says, “Police have recently admitted that they have an ‘unconscious bias’ against Māori.”

“Māori are more likely to be apprehended, charged, convicted and sentenced to incarceration than Pākeha. This is because Māori are targeted and discriminated against by police and the criminal justice system more generally.”

“In a report of its own making, New Zealand Police found that it uses force against Māori at 8 times the rate it does Pākehā. Māori make up 15% of the general population of Aotearoa, and roughly 50% of the prison population.”

“These are not unusual statistics. The prisons and police of a colonising government will always be used to repress the indigenous population. These institutions are designed for the social control of marginalised peoples.”

“The Auckland Pride Board may want to believe that there are no Māori queer people or that there are no queer or trans prisoners. That’s just not the case. As marginalised people, we have an obligation to stand with those who are being oppressed.”

“However, the Board and the Auckland queer community are actively choosing to side with institutions that have inflicted untold violence on Aotearoa’s most vulnerable populations.”

“The Auckland queer community should be ashamed that it is being represented by those who choose to stand with inherently violent institutions. It is shameful that the community is turning its back on the marginalised groups most targeted by police and the prison system.”

In 2015, No Pride in Prisons disrupted the parade in protest of police and corrections’ inclusion. This year, the group plans to hold a counter-rally at the same time as the parade.

“We are encouraging those in the queer community who are ashamed of what Pride has become to boycott the parade and stand in solidarity with Aotearoa’s most marginalised people.”

Link to the Facebook Event

[pettyandvindictive]

Violent Police Officers are 'just doing their job', and that's why they should be banned from Pride

On Thursday 4th February 2016, tens of thousands of people from across Aotearoa marched, chanted, sang, rallied, and blockaded, putting their bodies on the line in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). It was, hands down, one of the biggest and most successful days of civil disobedience in this country for decades. Auckland was on lockdown. The people’s message was clear: TPPA? No way.

The protesters’ agenda for the day was also clear: non-violent civil disobedience in a display of unforgiving opposition to the trade deal. It seems that the New Zealand Police did not get the memo. As protesters have explained to media outlets, and on social media, the only violence they experienced that day was at the hands of the police.

That police violence included pulling protesters by their hair, throwing them on the ground, and beating them with batons and fists. It involved twisting arms and, in one instance, pushing a protester’s neck at such an angle that it seemed they were trying to break it. Police have also been pictured choking protesters with illegal holds.

While this violence is significant, it should in no way detract from the organised and impressive work of the protesters who unapologetically conveyed their message. That violence should also not be taken to be exceptional: police violence is commonplace at peaceful demonstrations. This instance wasn’t as bad as the extremely brutal crackdown on students protesting the 2012 budget, for example.

Those brave (or perhaps foolish) enough to read the comments on news websites, Facebook, and other social media about the TPPA protests were pummeled with misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted comments. Amongst these was one recurring comment that is particularly important to the Auckland queer community as it decides whether to include police in the 2016 Pride Parade. As many noted, the police were ‘just doing their job’.

The commenters are correct: this is the police doing their job. It is the job of the police to serve the state, no matter how corrupt or undemocratic the practices of that state. This protection is carried out with whatever aggression deemed necessary. On Thursday, it was the job of the police to deal violence to those protesting the absolute evasion of the democratic process in signing the TPPA. This is because it is the police’s job to unconditionally protect and serve the state.

The majority of police violence, however, does not occur when the people stand up in organised public demonstration. It occurs out of a lot of people’s sight. Police violence is ever-present and concentrated in brown and black communities, indigenous communities, and poor communities. For the people in these communities, police violence is never out of sight. It is no mistake or coincidence that these constant instances of violence go largely unreported. They reveal the true function of the police in a colonial, capitalist society: to repress the oppressed.

If we accept that the police’s role in this society is to maintain public order, then the maintenance of that order is inherently violent. In the current order of things, there is a small elite who benefit largely from an economic and social system that structurally privileges the few at the expense of the many. Actions against the dominant order, such as the demand for tino rangatiratanga, require a fundamental re-ordering of Aotearoa. As such, the maintenance of the current order is achieved partly through the incarceration of Māori at a rate almost five times greater than the colonisers.

If the world we live in is racist, misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic, then those who are responsible for maintaining order in this system are also inherently racist, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, and undeniably violent. If Pride is supposed to be an event that challenges the entrenched cisheterormativity of everyday life, then the inclusion of the police is absolutely incompatible with Pride.

So, we have some questions for the Auckland Pride Board and the queer community more generally: is it over? Now that marriage ‘equality’ has been won, is that the end of queer politics? Do the lives and oppression of the poor, indigenous, and other people of colour not matter? Do you not care that there are members of the queer community who are disproportionately targeted by the police and incarcerated? Do you not care that it is the job of the police to sustain the system which oppresses the vast majority of us?

Ongoing issues of racism, transmisogyny, systemic inequality and poverty cannot be ignored by a community that was, not too long ago, feeling the full weight of police and societal violence. The fact that a rich gay couple can now have a ‘normal’ life in the gentrified suburb of Ponsonby doesn’t mean that the fight is over.

In fact, it is far from over. The only reason that the police are no longer systematically beating and jailing people for engaging in non-normative sexuality and gender practices is because thousands of people took to the streets and demanded the decriminalisation of sodomy. It is not because the police have ethically evolved. If you choose to include cops in the parade, you are siding with the oppressor.

Written by T Lamusse and S Morgan 

[pettyandvindictive]

The Auckland Pride board has, so far, failed to take a firm stance on the inclusion of uniformed Police and Corrections officers in the 2016 parade. This event is a clear message to the Pride Board that Police and Corrections are not welcome in any pride parade. In the event that the Board chooses to allow either of these institutions to march, No Pride in Prisons will hold a counter-rally in condemnation of the event. If the Board makes such a decision, we also encourage other organisations to boycott Pride and join us in solidarity at the counter-rally. More details to come. 

BOOOST FOR YOUR AUCKLAND FOLLOWERS!!!

[pettyandvindictive]

No place for Police or Corrections in Pride Parade

Queer and trans activist group No Pride in Prisons is putting pressure on the Auckland Pride Board to disallow uniformed Police and Corrections officers from marching in the 2016 Pride Parade.

Articles published by news source GayNZ last week revealed that the Pride Board was willing to negotiate its decision to disqualify uniformed Corrections officers from the parade. It was also revealed that Police would march in uniform, as they did in last year’s parade.

According to spokesperson Sophie Morgan, “No Pride in Prisons encourages the Pride board to stick to its decision to disqualify uniformed Corrections officers from marching, and to reconsider its decision to allow Police to march.”

“Uniformed Corrections and Police officers have no place in the Auckland Pride Parade. Both of these organisations inflict disproportionate violence on already marginalised people. These actions should in no way be accepted by the queer community.”

The group points to Corrections’ decision to introduce the policy of “double-bunking” as a reason for excluding the organisation. Double-bunking means holding two or more prisoners in a single cell overnight.

Sophie Morgan says, “This policy was expanded despite advice that it would lead to greater instances of sexual assault. According to a US study, trans women in men’s prisons already face thirteen times the likelihood of sexual assault than the general prison population.”

“The Department’s double-bunking policies lead directly to violence against trans women incarcerated in men’s prisons.”

No Pride in Prisons has been in contact with two transgender women in the last couple of months who have been allegedly raped while in men’s prisons.

“One woman was raped after being placed in a cell with a man overnight by Corrections officers. These Corrections officers and the Department of Corrections more generally are directly responsible for the rape of this woman.”

No Pride in Prisons stresses that the Police have no more a place in the Pride Parade than do Corrections.

“According to a report released in 2015, New Zealand Police use force against Māori at almost 8 times the rate they do Pākehā.[2] This is a clear violation of the human rights of Māori. Inviting this discriminatory institution to participate in the parade is also a clear violation of the Pride Board’s Tiriti obligations to takatāpui Māori,” says Morgan.

News reports recently revealed that the New Zealand Police force admits to an “unconscious bias” against Māori in its policing.

“The queer community should not turn its back on its Māori whānau, queer or otherwise. By allowing Police officers to march in uniform, the Tāmaki Makaurau queer community is explicitly condoning that institution. This includes condoning the racism clearly inherent in that institution’s actions.”

No Pride in Prisons is concerned about what it believes the Pride movement has become.

According to Morgan, “The roots of Pride trace back to riots against the violence of the Police. The Police are now welcomed into our parades with open arms. This requires assuming that the Police have stopped being violent. The violence has quite clearly never stopped.”

“We owe more to ourselves and to our marginalised allies than to join hands with violent institutions like the Police and prisons.”

“That a very small subset of the queer community now has marriage equality does not mean that institutional and structural racism, homophobia, and transmisogyny have suddenly disappeared.”

“No Pride in Prisons urges the Pride Board to seriously consider these issues when it decides whether Corrections and Police officers should march in the Pride Parade.”

[pettyandvindictive]

Check out this zine about the International Day of Trans Prisoner Solidarity! Amazing work from our friends and comrades across the world.

[pettyandvindictive]

No Pride in Prisons is holding a rally for International Day of Trans Prisoner Solidarity! Come along to show your support for incarcerated trans people across Aotearoa. The rally will include speakers from No Pride in Prisons and other organisations discussing the reality faced by trans prisoners in this country. More info to come! No Pride in Prisons will be making a set of demands: - In every instance where detention is not mandatory, trans people should not be sentenced to imprisonment. - For trans people to be sent to the facility of their choosing upon intake - An end to the double-bunking policies introduced from 2009-2011 - For the Department of Corrections to apologise and take responsibility for the violence incarcerated trans women are facing in New Zealand prisons

Please come along and boost this post for your Auckland followers!!!