December 27, 2023 • 44 mins
Layleen’s spirit is very much alive in her sister Melania’s home: photos dot the walls, a recording of Layleen’s voice lives inside her daughter’s teddy bear, and Melania surrounds herself with animals and pets as her sister once did. In the final episode, Melania reflects on how her own life has changed in the past four years and what she wishes for Layleen’s legacy. We’ll hear from activists fighting for the future she dreams of– where trans people can live safely and Rikers Island is closed forever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
the Heads Up, the following episode discusses transphobia, racism, violence,
(00:20):
and police violence. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Okay, I'll ever see me again.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Learn you'll never see me again. So I have a
photo of her on the side right there when you
walk in, there's this one, and then I have more
on the other side than I have.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Milania has moved out of New York since her sister's death,
but in her new home, Leayleen spirit is very much alive.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm still working around with slowly put in all her
pictures up. I mean, they do have a stack over there.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
When you walk in the front door, there's a shelf
along the wall with the framed photo of Leayleen on
her birthday. A friend had just smashed a piece of
cake into her face. It's a selfie of them together
with Layleen covered and frosting. Near it, there's a glass
(01:29):
trophy honoring Milania's work as an activist. When you turn
the corner into the kitchen, you can't miss the life
size print of the Out magazine cover that originally brought
us together back when I first wrote about Leayleen and
her family. It's an image of Milania's mother our Selli's
gazing up at a portrait of Leileen. All of these
(01:53):
images allowed them to stay connected to her memory.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Every pictures to put up because it's not like I'm
just putting a picture up off my sibling. I'm putting
up a memory.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Milania has three daughters. Her youngest, Juliette, is just under
two years old. She never met her aunt, Laileen, but
Milania gave her something to make sure that she hears
her voice every day. It's a gift from a friend
that she passed on to her daughter.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We actually got a teddy bear with Leileen's voice in
it that Juliette wakes up every morning and that's the
first thing she plays. So from my room, I hear
Layleen singting out of a teddy bear.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Milania brought the teddy bear out and showed me during
our interview. It's brown and fuzzy with a little pink
T shirt. It's about the size of a cabbage patch
kid and a bit beaten up. She squeezed it and
Layleen's voice filled the room.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
That's that was her favorite star.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Does my daughter in my with this?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It used to sing the whole thing, but yeah, yeah,
my daughter did a little number on this.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Do you guys know that song?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
How is September?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (03:21):
And then I'm not a class are you?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So my daughter introduced her to that song, and then
it just became like Laylean's song.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's bittersweet to see the way is. Layleen remains a
vibrant presence in Milania's home. Grieving is one of the
most challenging things we humans go through, and it's rarely linear.
The circumstances surrounding lay Lean's death made it especially hard
to process. Unexpected, violent, very public.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
There would never be any explanation to what happened to
myself have never happened. I don't even feel like I
even begin to grieve because I still have to go
through the acceptance part in order to grieve.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Just three days after Lalen passed away, Milania spoke at
her first rally, throwing herself into activism, doing interviews and
demanding answers.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I started off as a warrior and as a soldier
for my sister.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It helped for a time, but eventually she realized how
badly she needed a break from the public eye.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
The reason why I took a step back was because
I really wasn't seeing the change that I wanted, and
I started seeing how I was declining as a human
for myself and my children. I was losing myself, and
part of that was not seeing real change. Sty'll feel
to the day like no one is hearing me.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
There's no need ending to Laiyleen's story. The battles in
her name are still being fought to this day, and
her legacy continues to unfurl an after life that will
have ripples for years to come. Grief can leave an
almost impossible wound to heal, but it also can give
(05:28):
way to new perspectives on life. All who carry the
torch of Layleen's life today are unified by the belief
that she mattered, that her story should continue to be told,
and that they've been forever changed. I'm Raquel Willis and
(05:50):
this is Afterlives, Episode seven, trans Futures. More than four
(06:12):
years after Layleen's death, Milania's life has changed a lot.
These days. She spends much of her time living a
more private life, taking care of Juliet, her adopted daughter
who has loved that Layleen Teddy Bear to tatters.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
In a way, we feel like Leileen sent her to
us because at that time when Juliet came about, it
was really tough. I know, it was because of the
loss that we just had and everybody was just losing
their mind. Nobody knew how to quote. And then boom,
here comes Juliet and now the focus is Juliet, you know.
So we always say that Leileen had picked her and
(06:52):
just used somebody else's body, and she was meant to
be ours.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Milania's two older daughters are growing up for her eyes too.
Her eldest, Aliyah, went off to college this fall and
wants to be a doctor. But as joyful as big
milestones are, they can also be reminders of what's missing.
That's kind of how Aleiah's high school graduation felt.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, seeing how my daughter broke down just the
day before what is supposed to be the happiest day
of her life. She did it. I mean, she got
accepted in over eleven colleges and all scholarships. She should
have been so happy, and she wasn't. We weren't. It
felt empty because Leanny was always like, you know, I'm
(07:41):
going to be there and you're going to be eighteen.
All she keeps saying is like, God, I would have
had so much fun with her. She just said I
needed to be eighteen, you know. So she just thinks
of all the fun that she could have had her aunt,
and she just didn't even want to go. I had
to drag her out of the house to go to
graduation and to her, you know, yeah, I don't want
(08:01):
you to be She's going to be there. She she's
always with you. She's gonna be there.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Milania's middle child, Isis, started middle school this year.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
She reminds me so much of her aunt. It's not
even funny, like she's like tough like her. She's very
like voisterous. This is who I am. You don't like it,
like you don't have to talk to me. My daughter
is gay, and I think moving her hair was one
of the best decisions I made, because everybody here is
(08:33):
like so close in and like they love our children.
You know, my daughter's schools they have unisex bathrooms. Like
it's not girl boy.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Isis's best friend is a transgender girl who hangs out
at their house all the time. Milania couldn't stop looking
at her the first time they met, because she sees
Leileen and her too. It's comforting for Milania to find
signs of her sister wherever she goes.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I still try to look for her and everything, and
I mean everything, even if it's an animal that comes
up to me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I'm like Layleen.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Like I remember after she passed away. I went to
a park and it was like a whole bunch of
little ducks that started following me. I felt like it
was her. And then I just started just doing what
Leyleen does. I have two guinea pigs, two rabbits, a dog. Yeah,
just feed the animals outside, which I got screamed at
by the neighbors here because we had beers. It was
(09:34):
all about healing, and that's the aftermath, talking to animals,
adopting animals, just being away for a while.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
This show is about how Layleen's story highlights systemic problems
in our culture and politics. But Layleen the person remains
at the heart of all of it.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And she was loving.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
She was Karen. Here's what Malania wants you to know
about her sister.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
She loved her family, she loved her nieces. She deserves
to be here with us today, and I would give
anything to have her back. We should all have a
little Leileen in us. She'll all dig for her, little
lelean in us. The wild side, the funny side, the
(10:28):
love inside, going above and beyond, even for those that
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Leileen was just unique.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And I don't think ever in a lifetime I will
ever ever come and counter with another human being like her.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So what is Leileen's legacy in your eyes?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I mean, leave it up to Lelein. It would just
be unicorn and butterflies and rainbows everywhere, just peace, humanity.
I will want for her name to be brought up
in history class. I will want her to always be remembered.
I would want a world where transgender women are not
(11:10):
afraid to live in that they could be themselves and
feel safe and feel protected and not go through what
my sister went through that it cost her life, discrimination
cost her life. A world where solitary confinement also ends
what took my sister's life, and a perfect world. Rikers
(11:32):
Island wouldn't exist in my perfect world.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The future of these movements, transliberation, the fight to close
Rikers that's coming after the break. Welcome back to Afterlives.
(12:04):
Throughout this series, we've talked about the many ways reforms
ignited by Laileen's death have fallen short, from feld attempts
to eradicate solitary confinement to the unraveling of the LGBTQ
Plus Affairs Unit. But so many people are still showing
up and still fighting for change. When it comes to Rikers,
(12:27):
coalitions argue that there's only one true answer to its problems,
shut it down.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
My name is Darren mack I go by hem pronounce.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Darren is a leader in the campaign to close Rikers.
He's the co director of Freedom Agenda, which is.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
A member led grassroots organization dedicated to organizing people to
achieve deconservation and system transformation.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Many members of Freedom AGEDI To have been incarcerated at
Rikers and some have lost loved ones there. How are
you today, Darren.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I'm coming along, same fight, different round.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's a good way to put up.
Speaker 7 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
Unfortunately this week another person lost their life on Records Island,
So it's just been a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's still pain full.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And trans community. Whenever we lose someone, it's triggering. Darren's
relationships to his organizing work is rooted in personal experience.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
I'm a native New Yorker Brooklyn Night born and sort
of raised in the old Bushwick Best style area. I
say born is somewhat raised because at the age of seventeen,
I was incarcerated and spent nineteen months on Records Island
when a population was over twenty thousand people detained there.
This was at the age of seventeen, and then I
(14:01):
ultimately spent the next nineteen and a half years throughout
the New York State prison system.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Darren was at Rikers in the early nineties. While he
was in jail, he recognized his life was part of
a larger story, a story of the injustices that the
car throw system is built on.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I got a letter from one of my cousins and
it had a newspaper article cut out that spoke about
George Stenny Junior, a distant relative of mine. George Stinney Jr.
He was falsely accused of killing two young white girls
in South Carolina in less than eighty three days, he
was arrested, convicted by all white male jury, and sentenced
(14:46):
to death body electric chair. George was fourteen years old.
He was the youngest person to get the electric chair
in the US. Learning about that story, I just reflected
like something is wrong with the system.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Darren kept reading more about the case and about US
history more broadly. He even got a bachelor's degree in
history as a part of the Barred College Prison Initiative.
Over time, he gained a larger context on incarceration and
how it ties to our country's past. This informs his
(15:23):
work today. His role as an organizer in the Clothes
Wreckers campaign is part of a larger project abolition. Can
you define abolition for our listeners.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
That's a really great question, because in my experience, if
you would ask ten people who identified abolitionists, sometimes I
would get like nine to ten different answers. If I
ask one person, they might say closing jails, in prison.
They might even include immigration detention centers, and then they'll
(16:00):
stop this. Then I might add to another person. They
might add to that and say police. Then I might
ask to another person. They might add to all of
that by adding on the state or capitalism.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
It's an umbrella term.
Speaker 8 (16:17):
To me.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's helpful for thinking bigger. Reforming a gel like Rikers
is one thing, but an abolitionist lens asks us to
imagine a world where a gel like Rikers doesn't exist.
To begin with, what would it take to build a
system that centers harm reduction and public resources instead of
(16:41):
punishment as a baseline. We've seen the importance of that
through Layleen's story, how every step of her experience in
the clarsural system involves some kind of penalty for simply
existing in a world that limited the way she could
have existed. Many prison abolitionists today, like Darren, are focused
(17:04):
on what's called decarceration, shrinking the number of people in
prisons and jails, and in the years since Darren was
on Rikers, the average daily population has declined by a lot.
It's nearly seventy percent smaller today compared to the early
nineties when Darren was one of twenty thousand inmates.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Unfortunately, the horrible conditions has exacerbated. Last year twenty twenty
two one of the deadliest years in the history of
New York Tobabita corrections.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Last year, nineteen people died in New York City jails.
According to Vera Institute. Almost all of those were Rikers inmates.
Over this series, we've talked a lot about the harms
caused by Rikers specifically and that's not controversial. Politicians and
even current employees talk openly about how bad things are
(18:10):
at Rikers. Activists and public officials have spent decades trying
to improve the jail's conditions, with little success. When Rikers
was at its peak population in the eighties and nineties,
the jail was notoriously violent. Sometimes there were more than
one thousand slashings and stabbings a year. Headlines like inside
(18:34):
Rikers Island, a bloody struggle for control were the norm. Today,
the population is a fraction of what it once was,
and officers are no longer outnumbered by inmates, but the
rates of violence and death are higher than when the
population was at its peak. In twenty fifteen, the city
(18:55):
even brought in a highly paid expert to manage violence,
but under his watch, fights and assaults have more than doubled.
All this has led many to believe the geils just
can't be fixed.
Speaker 9 (19:12):
The afternoon everyone back.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
In twenty seventeen, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's
intent to close Rikers completely.
Speaker 9 (19:21):
I'm here to make what is really a historic announcement.
New York City will close the Rikers Island Jail facility.
It will take many years. It will take many tough
decisions along the way, but it will happen.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
What this would look like exactly took some time to
take shape, but a plan emerged to close Rikers by
twenty twenty seven and replace it with four smaller jails.
Still well, many people don't believe building new jails is
a suitable solution, even if the overall jail population in
(20:06):
the city decreases. Skeptics believe these plans are like band
aids on a gaping wound. Current New York City Mayor
Eric Adams inherited the plan to close Rikers from de
Blasio and committed to seeing it through during his campaign.
So far, his administration's policies haven't reflected that. For example,
(20:33):
the Riker's Island population will need to be cut nearly
in half to fit in the new constellation of smaller jails.
Officials say we can expect to see the population rise,
just as advocates say, if we're going to keep people
out of jail, we need to reallocate funds and invest
(20:54):
in support from mental health care, housing, health services, and education.
The front end costs for prevention are far less than incarceration.
I sometimes imagine an alternate reality where Leileen could have
benefited from social safety nets like these.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
Your tax paid dollars is costing you over half a
million dollars to keep one personal record outed for a year,
over half a million dollars a year. Do you think
that's the best use of it? People suffering, and people
have died.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
The City's budget negotiations were tense in twenty twenty three.
Many New Yorkers stood up against proposed cuts to schools, libraries,
programming for incarcerated people, housing services, and more. We heard
from people at a rally in May called care not Criminalization.
(21:49):
It sought to raise awareness about the imbalance in city resources.
Speaker 7 (21:54):
Did you know we spent three hundred percent more unincarcerated
people in LA and Chicago.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's not right, it's not right.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Rallygoers march from Manhattan's Foley Square to City Hall Park.
We met some of the folks who attended, like the owner.
Speaker 10 (22:18):
She recas Island is a failure, a complete failure. Men
are going there who are pretrial detainees and they're losing
their life. Institutions are supposed to save us, right, and
it's not doing this purported job. And when somebody is
not doing their job. What did we normally do We
normally terminate them or get.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Rid of them.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Diana was at Rikers in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 10 (22:40):
I have personal experience. I served twenty eight years in
New York State Prison. I believe I did approximately sixteen
months on Ragas Island. It was a hellhole back then
and it's a hellhole now. Absolutely nothing has changed. It
is not only detrimental and harmful to people who go
and reside there, but for people who worked there. The
place is full of trauma in regardless of where you stay.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
We wanted to know what the rallying cries of care
not criminalization meant to him.
Speaker 10 (23:08):
We all have issues, right, so a person who has
a substance abuse issue, he should not be locked away
in sales. So what we should be given him treatment?
It's extremely important because the reality is ninety nine point
nine percent of the men are going to return to
our community. Ninety nine point nine percent of the women
are going to return to the community. So how would
you want them to return? You want them healthy and whole. Ah,
(23:31):
you want them hurt and harm you know, you want
them healthy, And that's what we say not to do.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
We heard that loud and clear.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
We demand care not cuts, Care not cuts.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
While there have been pushes to close Rikers in the past,
Darren says the coalition formed in twenty sixteen has been
a special effective because it's truly grassroots.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
It's been a challenge, but I'm optimistic because we've been
battle tested. For one of our members, Anna, she's been
in this campaign from the beginning, her sums on Rackazala
for over five years. And it's people like Huh, people
like Tamaracotta, the mother of Brandon Rodriguez who lost his
life of raconzaland there in his fight to the end.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
We're going to bring this to the finish line.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Their work is cut out for them. Rikers is getting
harder to monitor under the Atoms administration. This year, the
Department of Corrections stopped informing the press of deaths in
their custody. They've also prevented the Jails Oversight Agency from
watching real time video surveillance from inside Rikers, and Mayor
(24:50):
Adams has been throwing cold water on the plans to
close the complex on schedule, But Darren is driven. It's
deaths like Leileen that motivate him to stick with his work.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Any death always brings a lot of pain because I
know there's a family connected to that person that's suffering
right now. I lost a brother in the state prison
system at a young age, and I remember that vividly
because I never saw my mother cry before. So anytime
a death happens, I know that a family is suffering,
a family is in pain. It's sad, but it also
(25:25):
makes me angry as well that this system could It's
a teams to exist that's taking the lives of black
and brown New Yorkers and the most vulnerable and marginalized
people in our community.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Closing Wrikers would save lives. It would be a breakthrough
for the city and set an example for abolitionists organizing
across the country and around the world. It would also
show families like Laylens that the legacies of their loved
ones matter will be right back. We're back with Afterlives.
(26:11):
The battle to close Rikers is taking place in New
York City, but across the country, people are trying to
push the needle on other issues that also matter to
Laleen's life and death. One of the biggest struggles we're
seeing play out surrounds anti LGBTQ plus legislation. Several Republican
(26:34):
led states are considering legislation that would ban drag shows
in public.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
These bills target healthcare, bathroom access, the ability for trans
kids to play sports, ID laws, and same sex marriage.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It also makes seeking gender affirming.
Speaker 10 (26:48):
Care a condition for child protective services to take a
minor away from their parents.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Now, state legislatures are coming for adult healthcare too.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Okay, so we're here. I wanted to hear from someone
who's been on the ground in that fight, and I
knew the perfect person to call and just briefly explain
what your current job is.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
I am Deputy Director for Transjustice with the National Office
of the ACLU.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
This is Chase Strantio.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I use hee him or they then pronounce.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
From the American Civil Liberties Union.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
And I work across the country litigating trans justice related
cases and working in state legislatures to lobby against largely
anti trans bills, and have been at the ACLU for
a little over ten years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
A minute a hot minute. Chase's work is needed now
more than ever. In twenty nineteen, the year Layalen died,
there were nineteen bills specifically target being trans people introduced
in state legislatures. The following year, that number more than tripled,
(28:08):
and by twenty twenty one it doubled again. Every year
since Leyleen's passing, the number of bills breaks the previous
year's record. At the time I'm recording this, the ACLU
is tracking over five hundred anti LGBTQ bills across the country,
and that number keeps going up.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Can you help people understand what's happening without overwhelming them?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
I mean, I think it is incredibly overwhelming, and it's
hard not to be because that is, in fact the
goal for us to be inundated and overwhelmed and limited
in our ability to push back.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's difficult to capture just how disorienting this barrage of
hate can be, from the legislation to political rhetoric to
mountains of misinformation. But the majority of people in the
US Court trans rights. That's according to a poll conducted
by PBS, MPR and Maris. I'd like to think stories
(29:09):
like Layleen's helped move the needle on acceptance and awareness.
And if you look under the hood at the source
of this onside of bills, there's a small group of
lobbyists with outsized political power. However, as Republicans continue to
push anti trans legislation as part of their agenda, public
(29:32):
acceptance is growing.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
If we take a step back and try to boil
down what's going on, I think we're living through a
moment where political forces are designed to limit access to
what we learn, limit ability to vote, and limit access
to bodily autonomy and control.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Conservative lawmakers are obsessed with trying to roll back civil
rights for groups on the margins. Along with abortion bands
and voter supp bills are being passed that prevent trans
people from accessing healthcare or updating identification documents, and the
pilot legislation for all this hate the bathroom bills are
(30:13):
simply another attempt to divorce trans people from public life.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
The arguments that the states are making in defense of
their laws is that they have an interest in stopping
youth from becoming trans adults. They have an interest in essence,
in eradicating transnists. Their notion of transness is that it
is inherently fixable, that you can push someone to become
non trans by intervening at a younger age, and that
(30:45):
being a trans adult is a bad outcome that the
state has an interest in preventing.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
This is troubling for a lot of reasons. Look, I'm
solidly millennial, so you can bet it was already difficult
being any kind of queer when I was growing up
in the nineties and early two thousands. After waves of visibility,
marriage equality, increased social acceptance, the hope was that the
(31:11):
next generations would have it infinitely easier. But unfortunately these
policies curb progress, putting more targets on all of our backs.
Conservatives who argue that children shouldn't grow up to be trans,
who debate the validity of trans people in general, only
(31:31):
make it harder for us to live our lives on
our own terms.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
That is what they are going into court to argue
that trans people aren't miserable, that they are not real,
and that the state has an interest in stopping a
trans youth from turning into a trans adult. I don't
know what else that is, if not eliminationist project, if
not a genocidal imperative.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
On some level, our community has been raising alarms about this,
but more and more of this discourse is finding its
way onto popular platforms. In March of this year, on
the main stage at Seapack, the Conservative Political Action Conference,
trans people were consistently mocks and derided in speeches and
(32:12):
panel discussions. Far right political commentator Michael Knowles went as
far as saying that transgenderism must be eradicated from public
life entirely.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
One of the strategies to try to attack and ultimately
eliminate trans people is to posit us as an ideology,
not as human beings.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Amid criticism of Know's remarks, he went on social media
to say he was attacking transgenderism the ideology, not actual people.
But it's bs. The point is to dehumanize us. Trans
people are people. We're not ideas to be debated. We
(32:59):
deserve for our entire humanity to be seen. Leyleen deserved
for her entire humanity to be seen. But time and
time again people turned her away, denied her safety and
medicine and care, and eventually let her die. A world
(33:20):
with more stories that end like Layleen's is a world
I'm not willing to accept.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
We're fighting back in federal court and the judges aren't
buying it. The judges are ruling for us. They're hearing
the evidence and saying there is nothing to be debated here.
This is a preposterous notion that there are two sides
to a conversation of transnis.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I realized I talked about trans futures and visions for
liberation in many of the interviews I did for this show,
and no matter how hard our conversations were, this was
always such a powerful idea to conclude with. I'd like
(34:03):
to leave you with a look at the rod ahead
from some of the incredible and brilliant trans folks you've
heard from throughout our season, like Travell Anderson, whose work
as an author and journalist is critical to telling a
more complete story about trans lives. That's what your work
(34:24):
speaks to us, like I'm gonna keep doing me. I'm
gonna keep doing this worse and y'all will catch up
one day. We got to and they have no choice
but to catch up.
Speaker 11 (34:33):
Okay, right, So just go ahead and get on the
train now, all right, It'll be easy for all of us, Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
And when eighty year old travelle Is you know, is around,
I think you're gonna see it. I think you will
be pleasantly surprised. I'll be the old crotchety person back
in my day, I actually can't wait. Or Tabitha Gonzales,
(35:04):
who reminds us that everyone has a role in making progress.
She's chosen to reform the system from the inside as
a human rights specialist for the City of New.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
York, to be a person not working in the same
city that kept me prisoner. That's what fuels my advocacy
because I know the harm that my people face in
these industrial conferences.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
While some people would look from.
Speaker 12 (35:30):
A lens of scarcity, there's so much to do and
we all can't be doing the same things. We have
to figure it out how to amplify, how to move
the needle forward. If I'm in commissions, and I'm in
the city, my sisters in the state, Queen jeans, in
the streets, la laws and the courts, everybody got to
(35:50):
take their position.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
We all have something to do.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Kristen Levell, who brings a powerful personal perspective to her
work as a filmmaker. Historically, we have always been here
and trans this is not this new thing. Some people
are confused to think that this is just something that
happened within the past few years, and everybody's running to
take hormones because they see that trans people are on
television or something. So now there's a takeover and everybody's scared,
(36:18):
you know.
Speaker 11 (36:21):
So it's important to tell these stories to show that
we have history, that these things have been going on
systematically for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
We're fucking tired of it. We just want to live
our lives.
Speaker 11 (36:33):
We don't want to be sitting here over explaining ourselves
to you over and over again.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Just let me be.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I want to work, I want to have a home.
I want to drive a car. I want to be
happy too. And Cecilia Genteely a friend, an icon and
an elder. And what is the trans future you dream of?
Speaker 7 (36:58):
I dream of future of trans people being sick. I
dream of future where trans people may not be fully understood,
and that is fine. I want people to say, like,
I don't understand your transness, but I respect it, and
I encourage you to leave it to the fullest and
(37:21):
to live happily. I cannot lose faith in humanity, because
otherwise it'll be nothing for me to live for. I
live in one of the most conservative parts of Brooklyn.
I'm two blocks on the water. It's just beautiful, but
it's very conservative, right, So I know that it's people
(37:44):
who are transphobic in my blog, and I always think
of like I go to a supermarket and attach my
fruits and I smell my throats and things like that,
and I'm like, I'm gonna leave this avocado here, and
I just wish that someone who is transphobic comes and
(38:05):
pick it and make it nice, workmonly, so they could
see that we share an avocado experience. And then nothing
happened to them, And then me touching the avocado didn't
make it worse or better. It kept it a fucking avocado.
(38:29):
So with that, what I'm trying to symbolize always is
that my existence really doesn't affect anybody.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I love it, and now I want an avocado.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh God.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yes, I know what Cecilia is saying, and it's moving.
But what I'll add is that her existence it does
have an effect. And that's true of every amazing trans
person and we've heard from here. By being themselves, they
(39:04):
are setting an example for other trans people, and Cecilia
is showing us that we all deserve to be trans elders,
that we can make change in the world around us,
and we can live without sacrificing our humanity and While
Cecilia has changed the lives of so many individuals, she
(39:27):
admits she can't reach them all.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
But then I'm like, you know, I can't do this
with everyone. That's why policy is great, right, because you
can make changes that are much more macro instead of
going one by one person.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Leileen's story has never ventured far from my heart. In fact,
as I was working on my recently published memoir, The
Risk It Takes to Bloom on Life and Liberation, I
decided to write a letter to Leileen. I wanted to
tell her all of the things that flew through my
(40:03):
mind as I learned her story. I'll leave you with
some of those words. Dear Layleen, I learned your story
before I knew your name. A familiar feeling of depletion
washed over me as I absorbed your demise. Within days,
(40:28):
a micro movement hundreds deep coalesced for a rally. Some
organizers asked me to speak somehow on the spot, I
broke through my spirit's fatigue. I said, I think, at
this moment, I can't be sad anymore. I'm sadden in
(40:50):
an instant, and then I'm quickly fucking angry. Fuck the
respectability and the assimilation. We are who we are, we
deserve to be here, and we are the future. Literally,
I thought of how my sisters and siblings become martyrs,
and how that characterization strips away a level of your humanity.
(41:17):
So often the names trickle into a deluge as transday
of remembrance approaches, and all that beauty, glory and nuance
is subsumed by tragedy that couldn't happen again. Perhaps no
(41:37):
story had been as transformative for me as yours. Those
shifts seem to be happening. The murders within our community
haven't let up since your death. Trust that there are
folks continuously fighting to ensure that what happened to you
doesn't happen again. I know words in a glossy magazine
(42:00):
or podcast series can't bring you back or serve as
an ultimate bomb for the people wounded by your death. Still,
I hope you accept it as an offering and a
catalyst to change things for future generations in Liberation. Rackelt,
(42:30):
thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. This episode
concludes our first season, but don't worry, we have a
few bonus interviews coming your way. You can find this
episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(42:50):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a
rating and review to let us know what you think.
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with the School of Humans.
I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is
(43:12):
our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer is Joey Patt.
Sound design and engineering by Daisy Makes Radio Productions, with
additional support from Jess Krinchitch, Story editing by Aaron Edwards
and Julia Ferlain, fact checking by Savannah Hugile. Our show
(43:34):
art is by Makai Baldwin. Score composed by Wisely Murray.
Our production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include me,
Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from The Outspoken Podcast Network,
Michael Alder, June and Noel Brown from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott,
(43:57):
Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans and
The Cats Company. School of Humans
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the
Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just
the Heads Up, the following episode discusses transphobia, racism, violence,
(00:20):
and police violence. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Okay, I'll ever see me again.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Learn you'll never see me again. So I have a
photo of her on the side right there when you
walk in, there's this one, and then I have more
on the other side than I have.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Milania has moved out of New York since her sister's death,
but in her new home, Leayleen spirit is very much alive.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm still working around with slowly put in all her
pictures up. I mean, they do have a stack over there.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
When you walk in the front door, there's a shelf
along the wall with the framed photo of Leayleen on
her birthday. A friend had just smashed a piece of
cake into her face. It's a selfie of them together
with Layleen covered and frosting. Near it, there's a glass
(01:29):
trophy honoring Milania's work as an activist. When you turn
the corner into the kitchen, you can't miss the life
size print of the Out magazine cover that originally brought
us together back when I first wrote about Leayleen and
her family. It's an image of Milania's mother our Selli's
gazing up at a portrait of Leileen. All of these
(01:53):
images allowed them to stay connected to her memory.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Every pictures to put up because it's not like I'm
just putting a picture up off my sibling. I'm putting
up a memory.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Milania has three daughters. Her youngest, Juliette, is just under
two years old. She never met her aunt, Laileen, but
Milania gave her something to make sure that she hears
her voice every day. It's a gift from a friend
that she passed on to her daughter.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We actually got a teddy bear with Leileen's voice in
it that Juliette wakes up every morning and that's the
first thing she plays. So from my room, I hear
Layleen singting out of a teddy bear.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Milania brought the teddy bear out and showed me during
our interview. It's brown and fuzzy with a little pink
T shirt. It's about the size of a cabbage patch
kid and a bit beaten up. She squeezed it and
Layleen's voice filled the room.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
That's that was her favorite star.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Does my daughter in my with this?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It used to sing the whole thing, but yeah, yeah,
my daughter did a little number on this.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Do you guys know that song?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
How is September?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (03:21):
And then I'm not a class are you?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So my daughter introduced her to that song, and then
it just became like Laylean's song.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's bittersweet to see the way is. Layleen remains a
vibrant presence in Milania's home. Grieving is one of the
most challenging things we humans go through, and it's rarely linear.
The circumstances surrounding lay Lean's death made it especially hard
to process. Unexpected, violent, very public.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
There would never be any explanation to what happened to
myself have never happened. I don't even feel like I
even begin to grieve because I still have to go
through the acceptance part in order to grieve.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Just three days after Lalen passed away, Milania spoke at
her first rally, throwing herself into activism, doing interviews and
demanding answers.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I started off as a warrior and as a soldier
for my sister.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It helped for a time, but eventually she realized how
badly she needed a break from the public eye.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
The reason why I took a step back was because
I really wasn't seeing the change that I wanted, and
I started seeing how I was declining as a human
for myself and my children. I was losing myself, and
part of that was not seeing real change. Sty'll feel
to the day like no one is hearing me.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
There's no need ending to Laiyleen's story. The battles in
her name are still being fought to this day, and
her legacy continues to unfurl an after life that will
have ripples for years to come. Grief can leave an
almost impossible wound to heal, but it also can give
(05:28):
way to new perspectives on life. All who carry the
torch of Layleen's life today are unified by the belief
that she mattered, that her story should continue to be told,
and that they've been forever changed. I'm Raquel Willis and
(05:50):
this is Afterlives, Episode seven, trans Futures. More than four
(06:12):
years after Layleen's death, Milania's life has changed a lot.
These days. She spends much of her time living a
more private life, taking care of Juliet, her adopted daughter
who has loved that Layleen Teddy Bear to tatters.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
In a way, we feel like Leileen sent her to
us because at that time when Juliet came about, it
was really tough. I know, it was because of the
loss that we just had and everybody was just losing
their mind. Nobody knew how to quote. And then boom,
here comes Juliet and now the focus is Juliet, you know.
So we always say that Leileen had picked her and
(06:52):
just used somebody else's body, and she was meant to
be ours.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Milania's two older daughters are growing up for her eyes too.
Her eldest, Aliyah, went off to college this fall and
wants to be a doctor. But as joyful as big
milestones are, they can also be reminders of what's missing.
That's kind of how Aleiah's high school graduation felt.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, seeing how my daughter broke down just the
day before what is supposed to be the happiest day
of her life. She did it. I mean, she got
accepted in over eleven colleges and all scholarships. She should
have been so happy, and she wasn't. We weren't. It
felt empty because Leanny was always like, you know, I'm
(07:41):
going to be there and you're going to be eighteen.
All she keeps saying is like, God, I would have
had so much fun with her. She just said I
needed to be eighteen, you know. So she just thinks
of all the fun that she could have had her aunt,
and she just didn't even want to go. I had
to drag her out of the house to go to
graduation and to her, you know, yeah, I don't want
(08:01):
you to be She's going to be there. She she's
always with you. She's gonna be there.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Milania's middle child, Isis, started middle school this year.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
She reminds me so much of her aunt. It's not
even funny, like she's like tough like her. She's very
like voisterous. This is who I am. You don't like it,
like you don't have to talk to me. My daughter
is gay, and I think moving her hair was one
of the best decisions I made, because everybody here is
(08:33):
like so close in and like they love our children.
You know, my daughter's schools they have unisex bathrooms. Like
it's not girl boy.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Isis's best friend is a transgender girl who hangs out
at their house all the time. Milania couldn't stop looking
at her the first time they met, because she sees
Leileen and her too. It's comforting for Milania to find
signs of her sister wherever she goes.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I still try to look for her and everything, and
I mean everything, even if it's an animal that comes
up to me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I'm like Layleen.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Like I remember after she passed away. I went to
a park and it was like a whole bunch of
little ducks that started following me. I felt like it
was her. And then I just started just doing what
Leyleen does. I have two guinea pigs, two rabbits, a dog. Yeah,
just feed the animals outside, which I got screamed at
by the neighbors here because we had beers. It was
(09:34):
all about healing, and that's the aftermath, talking to animals,
adopting animals, just being away for a while.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
This show is about how Layleen's story highlights systemic problems
in our culture and politics. But Layleen the person remains
at the heart of all of it.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And she was loving.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
She was Karen. Here's what Malania wants you to know
about her sister.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
She loved her family, she loved her nieces. She deserves
to be here with us today, and I would give
anything to have her back. We should all have a
little Leileen in us. She'll all dig for her, little
lelean in us. The wild side, the funny side, the
(10:28):
love inside, going above and beyond, even for those that
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Leileen was just unique.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And I don't think ever in a lifetime I will
ever ever come and counter with another human being like her.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So what is Leileen's legacy in your eyes?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I mean, leave it up to Lelein. It would just
be unicorn and butterflies and rainbows everywhere, just peace, humanity.
I will want for her name to be brought up
in history class. I will want her to always be remembered.
I would want a world where transgender women are not
(11:10):
afraid to live in that they could be themselves and
feel safe and feel protected and not go through what
my sister went through that it cost her life, discrimination
cost her life. A world where solitary confinement also ends
what took my sister's life, and a perfect world. Rikers
(11:32):
Island wouldn't exist in my perfect world.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The future of these movements, transliberation, the fight to close
Rikers that's coming after the break. Welcome back to Afterlives.
(12:04):
Throughout this series, we've talked about the many ways reforms
ignited by Laileen's death have fallen short, from feld attempts
to eradicate solitary confinement to the unraveling of the LGBTQ
Plus Affairs Unit. But so many people are still showing
up and still fighting for change. When it comes to Rikers,
(12:27):
coalitions argue that there's only one true answer to its problems,
shut it down.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
My name is Darren mack I go by hem pronounce.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Darren is a leader in the campaign to close Rikers.
He's the co director of Freedom Agenda, which is.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
A member led grassroots organization dedicated to organizing people to
achieve deconservation and system transformation.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Many members of Freedom AGEDI To have been incarcerated at
Rikers and some have lost loved ones there. How are
you today, Darren.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I'm coming along, same fight, different round.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's a good way to put up.
Speaker 7 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
Unfortunately this week another person lost their life on Records Island,
So it's just been a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's still pain full.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And trans community. Whenever we lose someone, it's triggering. Darren's
relationships to his organizing work is rooted in personal experience.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
I'm a native New Yorker Brooklyn Night born and sort
of raised in the old Bushwick Best style area. I
say born is somewhat raised because at the age of seventeen,
I was incarcerated and spent nineteen months on Records Island
when a population was over twenty thousand people detained there.
This was at the age of seventeen, and then I
(14:01):
ultimately spent the next nineteen and a half years throughout
the New York State prison system.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Darren was at Rikers in the early nineties. While he
was in jail, he recognized his life was part of
a larger story, a story of the injustices that the
car throw system is built on.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I got a letter from one of my cousins and
it had a newspaper article cut out that spoke about
George Stenny Junior, a distant relative of mine. George Stinney Jr.
He was falsely accused of killing two young white girls
in South Carolina in less than eighty three days, he
was arrested, convicted by all white male jury, and sentenced
(14:46):
to death body electric chair. George was fourteen years old.
He was the youngest person to get the electric chair
in the US. Learning about that story, I just reflected
like something is wrong with the system.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Darren kept reading more about the case and about US
history more broadly. He even got a bachelor's degree in
history as a part of the Barred College Prison Initiative.
Over time, he gained a larger context on incarceration and
how it ties to our country's past. This informs his
(15:23):
work today. His role as an organizer in the Clothes
Wreckers campaign is part of a larger project abolition. Can
you define abolition for our listeners.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
That's a really great question, because in my experience, if
you would ask ten people who identified abolitionists, sometimes I
would get like nine to ten different answers. If I
ask one person, they might say closing jails, in prison.
They might even include immigration detention centers, and then they'll
(16:00):
stop this. Then I might add to another person. They
might add to that and say police. Then I might
ask to another person. They might add to all of
that by adding on the state or capitalism.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
It's an umbrella term.
Speaker 8 (16:17):
To me.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's helpful for thinking bigger. Reforming a gel like Rikers
is one thing, but an abolitionist lens asks us to
imagine a world where a gel like Rikers doesn't exist.
To begin with, what would it take to build a
system that centers harm reduction and public resources instead of
(16:41):
punishment as a baseline. We've seen the importance of that
through Layleen's story, how every step of her experience in
the clarsural system involves some kind of penalty for simply
existing in a world that limited the way she could
have existed. Many prison abolitionists today, like Darren, are focused
(17:04):
on what's called decarceration, shrinking the number of people in
prisons and jails, and in the years since Darren was
on Rikers, the average daily population has declined by a lot.
It's nearly seventy percent smaller today compared to the early
nineties when Darren was one of twenty thousand inmates.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Unfortunately, the horrible conditions has exacerbated. Last year twenty twenty
two one of the deadliest years in the history of
New York Tobabita corrections.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Last year, nineteen people died in New York City jails.
According to Vera Institute. Almost all of those were Rikers inmates.
Over this series, we've talked a lot about the harms
caused by Rikers specifically and that's not controversial. Politicians and
even current employees talk openly about how bad things are
(18:10):
at Rikers. Activists and public officials have spent decades trying
to improve the jail's conditions, with little success. When Rikers
was at its peak population in the eighties and nineties,
the jail was notoriously violent. Sometimes there were more than
one thousand slashings and stabbings a year. Headlines like inside
(18:34):
Rikers Island, a bloody struggle for control were the norm. Today,
the population is a fraction of what it once was,
and officers are no longer outnumbered by inmates, but the
rates of violence and death are higher than when the
population was at its peak. In twenty fifteen, the city
(18:55):
even brought in a highly paid expert to manage violence,
but under his watch, fights and assaults have more than doubled.
All this has led many to believe the geils just
can't be fixed.
Speaker 9 (19:12):
The afternoon everyone back.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
In twenty seventeen, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's
intent to close Rikers completely.
Speaker 9 (19:21):
I'm here to make what is really a historic announcement.
New York City will close the Rikers Island Jail facility.
It will take many years. It will take many tough
decisions along the way, but it will happen.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
What this would look like exactly took some time to
take shape, but a plan emerged to close Rikers by
twenty twenty seven and replace it with four smaller jails.
Still well, many people don't believe building new jails is
a suitable solution, even if the overall jail population in
(20:06):
the city decreases. Skeptics believe these plans are like band
aids on a gaping wound. Current New York City Mayor
Eric Adams inherited the plan to close Rikers from de
Blasio and committed to seeing it through during his campaign.
So far, his administration's policies haven't reflected that. For example,
(20:33):
the Riker's Island population will need to be cut nearly
in half to fit in the new constellation of smaller jails.
Officials say we can expect to see the population rise,
just as advocates say, if we're going to keep people
out of jail, we need to reallocate funds and invest
(20:54):
in support from mental health care, housing, health services, and education.
The front end costs for prevention are far less than incarceration.
I sometimes imagine an alternate reality where Leileen could have
benefited from social safety nets like these.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
Your tax paid dollars is costing you over half a
million dollars to keep one personal record outed for a year,
over half a million dollars a year. Do you think
that's the best use of it? People suffering, and people
have died.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
The City's budget negotiations were tense in twenty twenty three.
Many New Yorkers stood up against proposed cuts to schools, libraries,
programming for incarcerated people, housing services, and more. We heard
from people at a rally in May called care not Criminalization.
(21:49):
It sought to raise awareness about the imbalance in city resources.
Speaker 7 (21:54):
Did you know we spent three hundred percent more unincarcerated
people in LA and Chicago.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's not right, it's not right.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Rallygoers march from Manhattan's Foley Square to City Hall Park.
We met some of the folks who attended, like the owner.
Speaker 10 (22:18):
She recas Island is a failure, a complete failure. Men
are going there who are pretrial detainees and they're losing
their life. Institutions are supposed to save us, right, and
it's not doing this purported job. And when somebody is
not doing their job. What did we normally do We
normally terminate them or get.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Rid of them.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Diana was at Rikers in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 10 (22:40):
I have personal experience. I served twenty eight years in
New York State Prison. I believe I did approximately sixteen
months on Ragas Island. It was a hellhole back then
and it's a hellhole now. Absolutely nothing has changed. It
is not only detrimental and harmful to people who go
and reside there, but for people who worked there. The
place is full of trauma in regardless of where you stay.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
We wanted to know what the rallying cries of care
not criminalization meant to him.
Speaker 10 (23:08):
We all have issues, right, so a person who has
a substance abuse issue, he should not be locked away
in sales. So what we should be given him treatment?
It's extremely important because the reality is ninety nine point
nine percent of the men are going to return to
our community. Ninety nine point nine percent of the women
are going to return to the community. So how would
you want them to return? You want them healthy and whole. Ah,
(23:31):
you want them hurt and harm you know, you want
them healthy, And that's what we say not to do.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
We heard that loud and clear.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
We demand care not cuts, Care not cuts.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
While there have been pushes to close Rikers in the past,
Darren says the coalition formed in twenty sixteen has been
a special effective because it's truly grassroots.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
It's been a challenge, but I'm optimistic because we've been
battle tested. For one of our members, Anna, she's been
in this campaign from the beginning, her sums on Rackazala
for over five years. And it's people like Huh, people
like Tamaracotta, the mother of Brandon Rodriguez who lost his
life of raconzaland there in his fight to the end.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
We're going to bring this to the finish line.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Their work is cut out for them. Rikers is getting
harder to monitor under the Atoms administration. This year, the
Department of Corrections stopped informing the press of deaths in
their custody. They've also prevented the Jails Oversight Agency from
watching real time video surveillance from inside Rikers, and Mayor
(24:50):
Adams has been throwing cold water on the plans to
close the complex on schedule, But Darren is driven. It's
deaths like Leileen that motivate him to stick with his work.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Any death always brings a lot of pain because I
know there's a family connected to that person that's suffering
right now. I lost a brother in the state prison
system at a young age, and I remember that vividly
because I never saw my mother cry before. So anytime
a death happens, I know that a family is suffering,
a family is in pain. It's sad, but it also
(25:25):
makes me angry as well that this system could It's
a teams to exist that's taking the lives of black
and brown New Yorkers and the most vulnerable and marginalized
people in our community.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Closing Wrikers would save lives. It would be a breakthrough
for the city and set an example for abolitionists organizing
across the country and around the world. It would also
show families like Laylens that the legacies of their loved
ones matter will be right back. We're back with Afterlives.
(26:11):
The battle to close Rikers is taking place in New
York City, but across the country, people are trying to
push the needle on other issues that also matter to
Laleen's life and death. One of the biggest struggles we're
seeing play out surrounds anti LGBTQ plus legislation. Several Republican
(26:34):
led states are considering legislation that would ban drag shows
in public.
Speaker 8 (26:38):
These bills target healthcare, bathroom access, the ability for trans
kids to play sports, ID laws, and same sex marriage.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It also makes seeking gender affirming.
Speaker 10 (26:48):
Care a condition for child protective services to take a
minor away from their parents.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Now, state legislatures are coming for adult healthcare too.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Okay, so we're here. I wanted to hear from someone
who's been on the ground in that fight, and I
knew the perfect person to call and just briefly explain
what your current job is.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
I am Deputy Director for Transjustice with the National Office
of the ACLU.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
This is Chase Strantio.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I use hee him or they then pronounce.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
From the American Civil Liberties Union.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
And I work across the country litigating trans justice related
cases and working in state legislatures to lobby against largely
anti trans bills, and have been at the ACLU for
a little over ten years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
A minute a hot minute. Chase's work is needed now
more than ever. In twenty nineteen, the year Layalen died,
there were nineteen bills specifically target being trans people introduced
in state legislatures. The following year, that number more than tripled,
(28:08):
and by twenty twenty one it doubled again. Every year
since Leyleen's passing, the number of bills breaks the previous
year's record. At the time I'm recording this, the ACLU
is tracking over five hundred anti LGBTQ bills across the country,
and that number keeps going up.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Can you help people understand what's happening without overwhelming them?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
I mean, I think it is incredibly overwhelming, and it's
hard not to be because that is, in fact the
goal for us to be inundated and overwhelmed and limited
in our ability to push back.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's difficult to capture just how disorienting this barrage of
hate can be, from the legislation to political rhetoric to
mountains of misinformation. But the majority of people in the
US Court trans rights. That's according to a poll conducted
by PBS, MPR and Maris. I'd like to think stories
(29:09):
like Layleen's helped move the needle on acceptance and awareness.
And if you look under the hood at the source
of this onside of bills, there's a small group of
lobbyists with outsized political power. However, as Republicans continue to
push anti trans legislation as part of their agenda, public
(29:32):
acceptance is growing.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
If we take a step back and try to boil
down what's going on, I think we're living through a
moment where political forces are designed to limit access to
what we learn, limit ability to vote, and limit access
to bodily autonomy and control.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Conservative lawmakers are obsessed with trying to roll back civil
rights for groups on the margins. Along with abortion bands
and voter supp bills are being passed that prevent trans
people from accessing healthcare or updating identification documents, and the
pilot legislation for all this hate the bathroom bills are
(30:13):
simply another attempt to divorce trans people from public life.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
The arguments that the states are making in defense of
their laws is that they have an interest in stopping
youth from becoming trans adults. They have an interest in essence,
in eradicating transnists. Their notion of transness is that it
is inherently fixable, that you can push someone to become
non trans by intervening at a younger age, and that
(30:45):
being a trans adult is a bad outcome that the
state has an interest in preventing.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
This is troubling for a lot of reasons. Look, I'm
solidly millennial, so you can bet it was already difficult
being any kind of queer when I was growing up
in the nineties and early two thousands. After waves of visibility,
marriage equality, increased social acceptance, the hope was that the
(31:11):
next generations would have it infinitely easier. But unfortunately these
policies curb progress, putting more targets on all of our backs.
Conservatives who argue that children shouldn't grow up to be trans,
who debate the validity of trans people in general, only
(31:31):
make it harder for us to live our lives on
our own terms.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
That is what they are going into court to argue
that trans people aren't miserable, that they are not real,
and that the state has an interest in stopping a
trans youth from turning into a trans adult. I don't
know what else that is, if not eliminationist project, if
not a genocidal imperative.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
On some level, our community has been raising alarms about this,
but more and more of this discourse is finding its
way onto popular platforms. In March of this year, on
the main stage at Seapack, the Conservative Political Action Conference,
trans people were consistently mocks and derided in speeches and
(32:12):
panel discussions. Far right political commentator Michael Knowles went as
far as saying that transgenderism must be eradicated from public
life entirely.
Speaker 5 (32:25):
One of the strategies to try to attack and ultimately
eliminate trans people is to posit us as an ideology,
not as human beings.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Amid criticism of Know's remarks, he went on social media
to say he was attacking transgenderism the ideology, not actual people.
But it's bs. The point is to dehumanize us. Trans
people are people. We're not ideas to be debated. We
(32:59):
deserve for our entire humanity to be seen. Leyleen deserved
for her entire humanity to be seen. But time and
time again people turned her away, denied her safety and
medicine and care, and eventually let her die. A world
(33:20):
with more stories that end like Layleen's is a world
I'm not willing to accept.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
We're fighting back in federal court and the judges aren't
buying it. The judges are ruling for us. They're hearing
the evidence and saying there is nothing to be debated here.
This is a preposterous notion that there are two sides
to a conversation of transnis.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I realized I talked about trans futures and visions for
liberation in many of the interviews I did for this show,
and no matter how hard our conversations were, this was
always such a powerful idea to conclude with. I'd like
(34:03):
to leave you with a look at the rod ahead
from some of the incredible and brilliant trans folks you've
heard from throughout our season, like Travell Anderson, whose work
as an author and journalist is critical to telling a
more complete story about trans lives. That's what your work
(34:24):
speaks to us, like I'm gonna keep doing me. I'm
gonna keep doing this worse and y'all will catch up
one day. We got to and they have no choice
but to catch up.
Speaker 11 (34:33):
Okay, right, So just go ahead and get on the
train now, all right, It'll be easy for all of us, Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
And when eighty year old travelle Is you know, is around,
I think you're gonna see it. I think you will
be pleasantly surprised. I'll be the old crotchety person back
in my day, I actually can't wait. Or Tabitha Gonzales,
(35:04):
who reminds us that everyone has a role in making progress.
She's chosen to reform the system from the inside as
a human rights specialist for the City of New.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
York, to be a person not working in the same
city that kept me prisoner. That's what fuels my advocacy
because I know the harm that my people face in
these industrial conferences.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
While some people would look from.
Speaker 12 (35:30):
A lens of scarcity, there's so much to do and
we all can't be doing the same things. We have
to figure it out how to amplify, how to move
the needle forward. If I'm in commissions, and I'm in
the city, my sisters in the state, Queen jeans, in
the streets, la laws and the courts, everybody got to
(35:50):
take their position.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
We all have something to do.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Kristen Levell, who brings a powerful personal perspective to her
work as a filmmaker. Historically, we have always been here
and trans this is not this new thing. Some people
are confused to think that this is just something that
happened within the past few years, and everybody's running to
take hormones because they see that trans people are on
television or something. So now there's a takeover and everybody's scared,
(36:18):
you know.
Speaker 11 (36:21):
So it's important to tell these stories to show that
we have history, that these things have been going on
systematically for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
We're fucking tired of it. We just want to live
our lives.
Speaker 11 (36:33):
We don't want to be sitting here over explaining ourselves
to you over and over again.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Just let me be.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I want to work, I want to have a home.
I want to drive a car. I want to be
happy too. And Cecilia Genteely a friend, an icon and
an elder. And what is the trans future you dream of?
Speaker 7 (36:58):
I dream of future of trans people being sick. I
dream of future where trans people may not be fully understood,
and that is fine. I want people to say, like,
I don't understand your transness, but I respect it, and
I encourage you to leave it to the fullest and
(37:21):
to live happily. I cannot lose faith in humanity, because
otherwise it'll be nothing for me to live for. I
live in one of the most conservative parts of Brooklyn.
I'm two blocks on the water. It's just beautiful, but
it's very conservative, right, So I know that it's people
(37:44):
who are transphobic in my blog, and I always think
of like I go to a supermarket and attach my
fruits and I smell my throats and things like that,
and I'm like, I'm gonna leave this avocado here, and
I just wish that someone who is transphobic comes and
(38:05):
pick it and make it nice, workmonly, so they could
see that we share an avocado experience. And then nothing
happened to them, And then me touching the avocado didn't
make it worse or better. It kept it a fucking avocado.
(38:29):
So with that, what I'm trying to symbolize always is
that my existence really doesn't affect anybody.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I love it, and now I want an avocado.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh God.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yes, I know what Cecilia is saying, and it's moving.
But what I'll add is that her existence it does
have an effect. And that's true of every amazing trans
person and we've heard from here. By being themselves, they
(39:04):
are setting an example for other trans people, and Cecilia
is showing us that we all deserve to be trans elders,
that we can make change in the world around us,
and we can live without sacrificing our humanity and While
Cecilia has changed the lives of so many individuals, she
(39:27):
admits she can't reach them all.
Speaker 7 (39:29):
But then I'm like, you know, I can't do this
with everyone. That's why policy is great, right, because you
can make changes that are much more macro instead of
going one by one person.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Leileen's story has never ventured far from my heart. In fact,
as I was working on my recently published memoir, The
Risk It Takes to Bloom on Life and Liberation, I
decided to write a letter to Leileen. I wanted to
tell her all of the things that flew through my
(40:03):
mind as I learned her story. I'll leave you with
some of those words. Dear Layleen, I learned your story
before I knew your name. A familiar feeling of depletion
washed over me as I absorbed your demise. Within days,
(40:28):
a micro movement hundreds deep coalesced for a rally. Some
organizers asked me to speak somehow on the spot, I
broke through my spirit's fatigue. I said, I think, at
this moment, I can't be sad anymore. I'm sadden in
(40:50):
an instant, and then I'm quickly fucking angry. Fuck the
respectability and the assimilation. We are who we are, we
deserve to be here, and we are the future. Literally,
I thought of how my sisters and siblings become martyrs,
and how that characterization strips away a level of your humanity.
(41:17):
So often the names trickle into a deluge as transday
of remembrance approaches, and all that beauty, glory and nuance
is subsumed by tragedy that couldn't happen again. Perhaps no
(41:37):
story had been as transformative for me as yours. Those
shifts seem to be happening. The murders within our community
haven't let up since your death. Trust that there are
folks continuously fighting to ensure that what happened to you
doesn't happen again. I know words in a glossy magazine
(42:00):
or podcast series can't bring you back or serve as
an ultimate bomb for the people wounded by your death. Still,
I hope you accept it as an offering and a
catalyst to change things for future generations in Liberation. Rackelt,
(42:30):
thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. This episode
concludes our first season, but don't worry, we have a
few bonus interviews coming your way. You can find this
episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(42:50):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a
rating and review to let us know what you think.
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The
Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with the School of Humans.
I'm your host and creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is
(43:12):
our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer is Joey Patt.
Sound design and engineering by Daisy Makes Radio Productions, with
additional support from Jess Krinchitch, Story editing by Aaron Edwards
and Julia Ferlain, fact checking by Savannah Hugile. Our show
(43:34):
art is by Makai Baldwin. Score composed by Wisely Murray.
Our production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include me,
Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from The Outspoken Podcast Network,
Michael Alder, June and Noel Brown from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott,
(43:57):
Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans and
The Cats Company. School of Humans
Host
Raquel Willis
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