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 (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