In episode 57 of The Activist Files, we’ll hear a discussion around Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that went before the Supreme Court on April 22, 2024. According to the National Homelessness Law Center, “this case will decide whether cities are allowed to punish people for things like sleeping outside with a pillow or blanket, even when there are no safe shelter options.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in our amicus brief, argued that the Supreme Court should rule that ordinances criminalizing homelessness violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. We’re joined by more than forty LGBTQIA+ rights groups who signed on in support of the brief.

Amid a national homelessness crisis driven by a lack of affordable housing, the Court’s ruling in the case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson will have a profound effect on the rights and wellbeing of the hundreds of thousands of people without shelter in the United States. It will have a disproportionate impact on LGBTQIA+ people because they are unhoused at extremely high rates due to discrimination and bias.

Legislators behind the laws have openly stated that their goal is to force unhoused people out of Grants Pass, a city of 40,000 that has no homeless shelters. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with the plaintiffs, issuing an injunction blocking enforcement of the ordinances.

We’re joined by Eric Tars Senior, Policy Director at National Homelessness Law Center, and Justin Lance Wilson, Co-founder of Rise Public Strategies.

Speakers:

• Mikaila Hernández, Bertha Justice Fellows
• Eric Tars, Senior Policy Director - National Homelessness Law Center

Eric Tars serves as the National Homelessness Law Center’s Senior Policy Director, leading the development, oversight, and implementation of the Law Center’s policy advocacy agenda to cultivate a society where every person can live with dignity and enjoy their basic human rights, including the right to affordable, quality, and safe housing. Eric helped spearhead the launch of the Law Center’s national Housing Not Handcuffs campaign, has served as counsel of record in multiple precedent-setting cases, including Martin v. Boise in the 9th Circuit.

Moderator:

• Zee Scout, Bertha Justice Fellows

Resources:

• Johnson v. Grants Pass website
• Press Release - 46 LGBTQIA+ Rights Groups Urge Supreme Court to Overturn Oregon Ordinances That Criminalize Homelessness
• Case Page - City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (Amicus)

Black August began in the 1970s to mark the assassination of incarcerated political prisoners like the revolutionary organizer and writer George Jackson during a prison rebellion in California. Black August honors the freedom fighters, especially those inside the walls of our sprawling prison-industrial complex, who, with their vision, tenacity, and deep love for our communities, are leading us toward the horizon of abolition. The Center for Constitutional Rights is proud to be part of a rich legacy of inside-outside organizing to transform material conditions and build a world of collective safety without prisons, surveillance, and police.

This Black August we bring to you an episode discussing the ongoing inside-outside organizing taking place to put an end to involuntary servitude in prisons or, more appropriately named, prison slavery. We are proud to represent incarcerated workers in Alabama as they seek to abolish forced prison labor, and we will continue to support them until slavery is banned everywhere, once and for all, in all its forms – not just in the law but in practice.

Alabama is one of several states to join the growing movement to abolish prison slavery and involuntary servitude at the state and federal levels. Voters in Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont have approved similar changes to their states' constitutions to remove the loophole permitting slavery as a form of punishment for incarcerated people.

Speakers:
Theeda Murphy - Abolish Slavery National Network, Organizer & Operations Manager
Max Parthas - Abolish Slavery National Network, National Campaign Coordinator & Paul Cuffee Abolitionist Center in Sumter, SC., Acting Director
Claude-Michael Comeau - Promise of Justice Initiative, Staff Attorney

Moderator:
maya finoh, Political Education and Research Manager

This year marks the 90th anniversary of our longtime ally and current partner, the Highlander Research and Education Center, the storied school that’s helped nurture the Black freedom struggle and other social movements across the south. For this month’s episode of the Activist Files, co-executive directors Ash-Lee Henderson and Allyn Maxfield-Steele chat with Emily Early and Jess Vossburgh from our Southern Regional Office about Highlander’s singular role as a training ground and meeting spot – the place where Rosa Parks took a workshop, Martin Luther King spoke, and John Lewis had his first integrated meal. Ash-Lee and Allyn discuss the centrality of the Black Freedom movement to other liberation movements, stress the importance of joy, storytelling, and cross-racial solidarity in movement-building, and celebrate the resilience and love that have enabled them to withstand repeated attacks from white supremacists. But Highlander’s 90th year, they say, is an occasion for looking ahead, for envisioning and planning to build a new world, one grounded in sharing and interdependence. The dire state of the country – “for some of us, fascism is already here” – makes this task all the more urgent, they say.

Resources:

Red-baiting poster of Martin Luther King at Highlander
Highlander and Citizenship Schools
SNCC Legacy Project
Highlander petition opposing nomination to National Registry of Historic Places
Q & A with Norma Wong

How do attacks on trans organizing and rights impact related movements for bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, and liberation? On episode 51 of "The Activist Files," our Communications Associate Lexi Webster talks with Imara Jones, award-winning journalist, content creator and thought leader, founder of TransLash Media, and host of the TransLash podcast, and Diamond Stylz, activist, media maker, executive director of Black Trans Women Inc., and host of the Marsha’s Plate podcast, about how the work of movements for trans justice can inform social justice organizing on all liberation struggles.

Their discussion centers around the ways in which an emboldened post-Trump era extremist movement on the right has set into motion a plan whose long-term goal is the creation and enforcement of a white ethnostate and how such a plot relies on the eradication of minorities deemed deviant, the targeting of reproductive rights, and the elimination of any and all protections afforded to trans individuals and communities across the country. They discuss the need for a broad, intersectional approach by progressives who purport to fight for queer and trans liberation, and the continued urgency to build popular momentum for forward-thinking policies by and for Black trans people. They argue that to combat an organized and well-resourced white supremacist Christofascist, nationalist movement would require that the needs of Black trans communities are not only acknowledged, but prioritized by mainstream LGB institutions and that trans-interest groups engage in deeper dialogue and collaboration to provide guidance toward those ends. They also touch on the importance of mutual aid in this work and how our collective eagerness and ability to meet the material needs of Black trans people can act as a litmus test to assess the health of our society and movements.

Resources:

Organizations and public figures:

House of Tulip, New Orleans
The Transgender District, founded by three black trans women in 2017 as Compton’s Transgender Cultural District
Tourmaline, Black trans artist

Quotes and publications:

Biopower, theory of Michel Foucault
Necropolitics, theory of Achille Mbembe
Raquel Willis’ speech at the 2020 Brooklyn Liberation event
Toni Morrison quote
Julian K. Jarboe quote

On the eleventh episode of The Activist Files, host Ian Head talks with writer and educator Walidah Imarisha and musician and teaching artist Gabriel Teodros about the relationship between fantastical writing and social justice work. As Walidah says, we are all doing science fiction when we imagine a different world. Science and visionary fiction, says Gabriel, is a useful tool for imagining a different future. When we do social justice work, we are so often reactive, so often fighting against something, it is easy to forget the importance of envisioning the world we want to see. Listen to this inspiring episode on how to imagine new futures, even while we fight against oppressive systems. Walidah is the co-editor of the collection 'Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements,' published in 2015, to which Gabriel is a contributor. She is also the author of ‘Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption,’ which won the Oregon Book Award in 2017. Gabriel has put out over ten albums, including his latest, ‘History Rhymes If It Doesn’t Repeat (A Southend Healing Ritual),’ and performed and taught in classrooms and stages around the world.