Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

HACK the System — for Amanda Nguyen

“Well, I have a choice here. I can accept the injustice or rewrite the law.”

Amanda Nguyen (born c. 1991) is the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights legislation organization. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to petition Congress to make a law, but the process of getting a law passed is difficult. Rise has developed a structure and techniques for helping people to pass laws in the United States. The organization is responsible for the passage of the Federal Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, as well as numerous state laws guaranteeing and rationalizing the rights of survivors of sexual violence. Nguyen and Rise also succeeded in getting the UN to pass a resolution urging countries to take effective measures to help survivors of sexual and gender-based violence to access justice, remedies, and assistance. It is the first time the UN has addressed sexual violence in peacetime.

“We are leaders from #MeToo, #StopAsianHate, Women’s March, and March for Our Lives—the largest grassroots organizing moments in recent US history. We started by fighting for survivors of sexual violence and collectively we’ve passed more than 60 laws. We’ve gathered our experience to teach you how to pass your own law for your community.”  –from risenow.us

Amanda Nguyen has a background in astrophysics and national security. While she was a student at Harvard someone raped her, and then she learned how broken the justice system is for survivors of sexual violence. Across the country there was a wide variation in the way rapes are investigated and adjudicated. Of particular concern to Amanda was that in Massachusetts the evidence collected (the “rape kit”) would be destroyed after 6 months if charges hadn’t been filed, but the statute of limitations didn’t run out for 15 years. Meanwhile, to try a rape case takes about 2 years of traumatic work. Amanda had to choose whether to give up her job offer in Washington D.C. or to stay in Massachusetts and receive justice. She thought this was just wrong, so she took her Washington job and also started Rise—in her spare time!—so that she could fix the system for other rape survivors. We have seen this before in the stories of perSISTERS: Amanda turned pain and outrage into purpose and regard for other people.

Part of Amanda’s success comes from her social—and social media—abilities and her ease in engaging with famous people to spotlight her issues. She is at ease in fashion shows and filmed interviews. She is brilliant, analytical, and articulate. But it is evident that her rape and her creation of Rise has sidetracked her from what she really wants to do with her life, which is to be an astronaut. Changing the world is just a side gig. She’s working on it, though, and you can follow her training on her Instagram feed (@nguyen_amanda). Maybe having a public life will help her achieve her dream. 

About the phrase HACK THE SYSTEM

Hacking has two main senses. One is destructive: a hacker gains unauthorized access to software and manipulates the code to destroy the program or to make a profit on manipulating the program. Another sense is creative: for example, a hack is using some system devised for one purpose in order to make something unrelated work better. In effect it means to make a system work for one’s particular goal. Amanda’s goal is justice for people who don’t usually have a platform to access justice.

What that hack looked like:

“We put together this basic set of rights and aimed to pass it in the United States Congress. And when we first started out, we were a group of 20 something-year-olds with no money, no connections, no power. And people thought we were a joke. And we just kept relentlessly organizing [and] putting our heads together.”

“I did not have the political luxury of a cathartic performance. I had urgency. My rape kit had a literal timeline to be destroyed. … My justice would be literally thrown in the trash. … I needed to work with anyone and everyone within the legislative process in order to pass these laws. That profoundly shaped the way that I negotiated my rights. … Democracy inherently requires its citizens to hash things out. And so when survivors at Rise or any organizer enters a room of a Senator, they leave their political tribalism at the door.”

“When I got there, even our lead sponsors, the lead senators and representatives who work on this bill, said, ‘I’m so sorry. It’s not going to pass this time.’ And for the next 14 hours, the Rise team and I literally just walked into the decision-makers’ offices and said, ‘I’m here. Here’s why I care about this issue. Respectfully, please listen to our stories.’ We asked people to call into the speaker’s office. I witnessed those calls come in person. And at the end of those 14 hours, he brought it up for a vote, and it passed.”

RESOURCES

risenow.us

My favorite thing is this “School of Greatness” video podcast interview, this is where she uses the phrase “Hack the System”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtkLeG6h7Kg

And a written synopsis of the podcast: https://lewishowes.com/podcast/take-your-power-back-with-amanda-nguyen/  The Amanda quotes above are from this synopsis.

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

Fight for Something, Fight for Someone — for Sylvia Rivera

“Remember it was transgender people who gave you this liberation.”

“We were all involved in different struggles, including myself and many other transgender people. But in these struggles, in the Civil Rights movement, in the war movement, in the women’s movement, we were still outcasts. The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn’t take no shit from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I’ll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician’s toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community.”

Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist. She was a passionate advocate for queer unhoused youth in New York and created the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) group together with her friend, Marsh P. Johnson. They occupied a building where they provided housing and support to unhoused trans and gay youth. They struggled to find funding and were not supported by the wider gay rights community. Later in her life Sylvia managed the food pantry at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. The love she found with her partner, Julia, and her commitment to helping people, did actually save her life when she was drinking herself to death. She had to fight for someone. She had to fight for something. 

With a later version of STAR, Sylvia fought for trans inclusion in New York State non-discrimination laws. The assimilationist mainstream gay rights leadership regularly neglected transgender rights as too extreme and off-putting to straight politicians. They claimed that trans rights could be added later. Sylvia demanded that transgender people be included in the discussions and their rights be included from the start. As a multiply marginalized person, she knew that inclusion needs to be there at the start, otherwise it is not inclusion at all. Because drag queens were at the front of the protests when cops were bashing heads, they clearly should be included in the laws establishing gay rights.

Born in New York City, Sylvia had a Puerto Rican father who abandoned her family, and a Venezuelan mother who died when Sylvia was three. She was raised by her grandmother who was severely ashamed of Sylvia’s effeminate behavior. Because of this, Sylvia began living on the streets in 1962, just shy of her 11th birthday, and supported herself with sex work. She was taken in by the local community of drag queens, who gave her the name Sylvia. She used mothering language to describe her relationship to her community.

Sylvia described herself as a woman trapped in a male body. She also identified herself as a drag queen. She was most active at a time when the language describing herself was fluid, and she grew tired of making distinctions: “I’m tired of being labeled. I don’t even like the label transgender. I’m tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that’s who I am.”

Sylvia was all over the gay rights movement and you can find a lot about her online. 

Here are some useful things I found:

Wikipedia, as always. (Send them money! I do.)

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-rivera

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/24/nyregion/about-new-york-still-here-sylvia-who-survived-stonewall-time-and-the-river.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXmJL9nadc

https://wams.nyhistory.org/growth-and-turmoil/growing-tensions/marsha-p-johnson/#

The Piers: Sylvia Rivera, 1990s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera

https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/gay-power-is-trans-history-street-transvestite-action-revolutionaries

The Banal and The Profane: Melissa Febos
Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

BE SEEN for Judith Heumann

BE SEEN for Judith Heumann, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project.
You can purchase this print here.

Judith (Judy) Heumann was born in 1947 and contracted polio at two years old. As a result she has had to rely on a wheelchair for mobility and needs care to perform some of the tasks of daily life.

It would be hard to exaggerate Judith Heumann’s importance in the international movement for disability rights. She has been a part of every important event in the struggle for disability rights. 

Her mother fought hard for Judy to get an education as a child because services for the disabled were minimal and classrooms were not accessible. As an older student she struggled to get access to education. She earned her B.A. in 1969 and had to sue the New York Board of Education to get her teaching license.

In the 1970s she worked as a counselor at Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled people. Many of the major players in the disability rights movement were involved in this camp, which changed their lives. I encourage everyone to watch Crip Camp on Netflix, or at the free YouTube link below. It is an amazing story and Judith is one of the main characters. 

Judy was instrumental in almost all the disability activism in the 1970s including:

– Shutting down Manhattan traffic to protest Nixon’s veto of the 1972 Rehabilitation Act

– Getting hauled off an airplane for asserting her right to a seat

– Launching a sit-in—which ended up lasting 28 days—at a federal building in San Francisco, calling for a plan and funding to get Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act implemented and enforced.

– She was one of the founders of the groundbreaking Berkeley Center for Independent living 

Heumann earned her Master’s of Public Health at Berkeley in 1975 and proceeded to build institutional structures for disability rights:

– In 1983, she co-founded the World Institute on Disability (WID) as one of the first global disability rights organizations founded and continually led by people with disabilities that works to fully integrate people with disabilities into the communities around them via research, policy, and consulting efforts.

– From 1993 to 2001, Judy served in the Clinton Administration as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education.

– Judy served as the World Bank’s first Adviser on Disability and Development from 2002 to 2006. In this position, she led the World Bank’s disability work to expand its knowledge and capability to work with governments and civil society on including disability in the global conversation.

– President Obama appointed Judy as the first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights at the U.S. Department of State, where she served from 2010-2017.  

– Mayor Fenty of D.C. appointed her as the first Director for the Department on Disability Services, where she was responsible for the Developmental Disability Administration and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.

She has played a role in the development and implementation of major legislation including the IDEA, Section 504, the Americans with Disability Act, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

As Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation (2017–2019), she wrote “Road Map for Inclusion: Changing the Face of Disability in Media.” She also currently serves on a number of non-profit boards including the American Association of People with Disabilities,  the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund,  Humanity and Inclusion, as well as the Human Rights Watch Board.

Fully one quarter of our population has a disability. ANYONE can become disabled: it is the most inclusive minority group. Aging almost always involves some kind of disability.

SOURCES

This is the best and most thorough synopsis of Huemann’s story I have found:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/judith-heumann

Memoir, with Kristen Joiner, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

Judith Heumann’s website

“Crip Camp,” documentary on Netflix, but you can also stream for free from here: https://wheelchairtravel.org/how-to-stream-netflix-crip-camp-movie-for-free/

TED talk in the fall of 2016, “Our Fight for Disability Rights—and Why We’re Not Done Yet”

I Make Things Out of Words, Mostly