October 29, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 47

Change Agent

Change Agent: Dean Spade

by: Rosette Royale , Assistant Editor

Printer-Friendly Version

Like it? Share it!

 

Law and legal know-how, Dean Spade believes, shouldn’t be seen as cure-alls for society ills. Instead, they should be thought of as tools. “Mass-based struggle is the way to make change,” says Spade.

Surprising words from a law prof. Or maybe not.

Spade, 32, teaches at Seattle U., where his classes carry titles that speak to the progressive mindset: Poverty Law (which examines how law produces wealth disparity and how legal reform can alleviate it); Administrative Law; and Critical
Perspectives on Transgender Law.

These classes arose from ideas formed during his activist days, when he saw how the judicial and welfare systems criminalize women, low-income, queer and trans people, not to mention people of color. That led Spade, in ’02, to found the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (http://www.srlp.org), a nonprofit law collective that “offers free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color.” SLRP is based in New York City.

Knowing what he does about the prison industrial complex, Spade thinks the U.S. should abolish prisons. “Exiling people is not a sustainable way to deal with harm,” he notes.

And as for those who think prison abolition amounts to wishful thinking, Spade has a reply: “If we curtail our vision in ways that make it impossible to imagine a more just world,” he says, “then we’ve lost.” n
—Rosette Royale

 

----

Comments

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.I will keep visiting this blog very often. Warehousing and Fulfillment

sam | submitted on 03/12/2010, 9:18am

i wouldn’t have said this had been useful several years ago and yet it is amusing the way age adjusts the manner you experience many creative concepts, thanks with regard to the blog post it is actually nice to read something intelligent occasionally in lieu of the popular crap mascarading as blogs on the net, cheers
Payment Gateway

guliana | submitted on 03/19/2010, 1:06pm

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Search Our Archives

Real Change on Facebook

Real Change on Twitter


Follow realchangeorg on Twitter


Nominate a Vendor of the Week