Damon Williams: Welcome to One Million Experiments, a podcast showing and exploring how communities are creating a world without police and prisons. I'm Damon.
Daniel Kisslinger: I'm Daniel, and we're two Chicago-based podcast hosts, movement workers, who every month are bringing you a conversation with the practitioners, thinkers, and actors, and these experiments in expanding and redefining what safety and protection mean. We're so excited to be hosting this podcast brought to you by AirGo, Interrupting Criminalization, and Project NIA.
Damon: Each month we hop into the lab with a different emerging community-based project program or dares say experiment, not only to amplify and broadcast amazing work but to invite you, the listener or our peers, into the practice or practices of experimenting to creating a world beyond carceral systems. Listen, not just to learn, but from a space of inquiry, as we want as many people as possible to get into doing this work.
Daniel: We want to bring in our partner in this project, our fearless co-host, and generally wonderful human who have been really happy to be getting to know as we launched this podcast forward. Folks, Eva Nagao is here.
Eva Nagao: Wow. Episode two, and I already get sound effects. Y'all are too good to me.
Daniel: No, the sound effects come standard.
Damon: Yes, yes, yes. It's only up from here.
Daniel: You'll see, as we move into like rarer animal noises towards episode five and six, Damon has a really nice Jaguar that you can be ready for.
Damon: We want to keep the people waiting so I'm going to keep that in the bag, but the jungle cat is coming, be prepared.
Eva: Okay. I'll know I've made it when jungle cat comes. You got me.
Daniel: Absolutely. Eva, first of all, thank you for hobbing back on with us for this second episode. As one of the practitioners of this One Million Experiments project overall beyond just the podcast, maybe we can start with who we're talking to today and why we decided that they would be a good contribution as we get the series started.
Eva: Absolutely. Great to be back with you all. When we were thinking about launching the One Million Experiments podcast and the Zine series, that's going to go along with it. The first project that came to my co-creator mind, Mariame Kaba, was the Black Trans Travel Fund. Project NIA, the organization that Miriame heads up, back in, I think it was spring of 2019 had heard about the Black Trans Travel Fund starting in New York City and gave the seed money actually to Devin Lowe our guest today, who is the executive director of the Black Trans Travel Fund. We've seen this project from its infancy to where it is now, and it's exploded. It was an obvious place to start.
The Black Trans Travel Fund is unique for a bunch of reasons that Devin's going to go into, but it is a black trans-led collective. It's a grassroots project. It really started in the true One Million Experiments spirit. It started by seeing a need in community working to meet that need and then growing into something else. Devin was seeing their partners, seeing loved ones and movement spaces, seeing black trans women having a hard time accessing safe, reliable transportation at the very least and so in order for people to be able to go to rallies, to go to vigils in their movement work, Devin wanted to provide funds, a tangible material good, to black trans women, to be able to access movement work in a safe and sustainable way.
What has gone from 50 rides a month for 50 black trans women in New York and New Jersey in 2019 and blossomed into an organization that staffs black trans people, and that is serving 150 black trans women a month in transportation, but not only the transportation of their choice around the city to do the things that they want to do but also things like flights for court dates that they want to make. They have a program for people to get their TSA pre-check so that they're not hassled at the airport. They have a program for people to get passports.
The Black Trans Travel Fund is not just this need for transportation and not just a way to keep people safe from day-to-day, but an expansion of what is possible and what is possible when people feel safe and can go about their day-to-day lives, doing the things that they want to do. Especially when that includes giving back to community and to building movement.
This project really highlights the experiments that we were thinking of when we launched this project it is an experiment that can really serve as a model for people around the country who have not just an idea about transportation, but an idea about a tangible, small thing that they can do and they can really see that small idea grow into itself in community, in collaboration, in conversation to something that continues to evolve and meet the needs of the people that it's trying to serve.
Daniel: Eva, as you mentioned, we really get into how the project has expanded and some of the potential for what's going to come next but if you want to learn more and you want to tangibly support by donating or any other type of support, head to blacktranstravelfund.com.
Damon: With no further ado, let's hop into the lab with Devin Lowe.
Daniel: We are so excited on this episode to be talking with Devin Lowe.
Devin Lowe: [background noise] There it is.
Daniel: Love itself air horn, love it. We're right in the zone. Devin, let's start with the same question that we start all of our episodes with. It's a two-part question, in this time however you define time could be this hour, this moment, this season, this lifetime, how is the world treating you and how are you treating the world?
Devin: What a profound question, how the world is treating me? I do I have to say that I'm definitely blessed and highly favored, given the circumstances of so much chaos happening in the world but I'm fed and clothed and housed and healthy. Got to be grateful for that, even though there's plenty of chaos in my life but we persevere. How am I treating the world? I am trying my hardest to make this world a better place because I'm in it. Yes, I think I'm doing all right by the world. I sleep well at night.
Daniel: Love a sound sleeper. That's me as well. I feel like Damon, where do you fall on the sound sleeper spectrum?
Damon: Once I get there, I'm gone. If I get to sleep, I'm a knockout. It's the get in there sometimes that can be, but lately, I've been pretty comatose, so I'm regenerating.
Daniel: In the waking hours, we're so excited to talk about the work that you and your team have done building the Black Trans Travel Fund. Before we get into what it looks like now, I want to start before this project existed, before this experiment had been put into practice, what was your hypothesis?
Daniel: -- about what you thought this project could do and what did you hope do?
Damon: I'm going to give a disclaimer as you think of that. For everyone listening and for you, Devin, just being completely transparent, we are going to be as corny as we can about this experiment metaphor and so be prepared for us to drag that out. If it don't work for you, it's okay. We're over here just experimenting with this experiment so just be prepared.
Devin: That's all right. I will be the scientist for the day. I'll be completely honest with you. I never, in my wildest dreams expected for the Black Trans Travel Fund to grow in the ways that it has. I didn't know what it was going to look like. I knew that it was going to look like me trying to get some black trans women home safely, but it's just expanded so, so, so much.
We're not just getting girls home from the rally or the protests anymore, or the pride event is like, putting women off flights to get to their court cases or to go see they mama. It's so many beautiful ways in which it had grown. When I first thought about the Black Trans Travel Fund and wanting it to be a thing, it was because I was constantly in the midst of movement struggle. I was always at a rally, always at a protest, always at a vigil because so many of the women in our community were dying.
They were being brutally murdered. My partner Morticia Godiva who is part of the Black Trans Travel Fund team, we've been together for four years now. I was sick of hearing her talking about how she didn't want to go out because she was afraid to take the train, how she was afraid to walk down the street and be harassed by the men that are on the block. I didn't know what Black Trans Travel Fund was going to look like, but I knew that whatever it was, it was going to try to minimize the possibility for that harassment when the girls go out.
Damon: I'm really excited to be starting here. Being in the abolitionist camp, being down with abolition, and hearing how the fun emerged and responds to need for folks showing up to movement. This really excites me about this project of going into these experiments of opening up how people can understand abolition because for so many, the conversation of abolition starts and stops with police policing in the carceral state, which is obviously central and impactful, the name of the game, but it's easy to then not see abolition as a creative project. Building off the hypothesis, once we create this space for this type of travel that is being initiated or being provided, what becomes more possible?
Devin: The possibilities are limitless when black trans people when black trans women have the capacity to go out and experience joy, and not have to worry about how they're going to get at home. It just makes room for so much. Right now, this month, for example, we're getting ready to sponsor transportation for a black trans woman who is putting together artist residency where they're going to be taking a group of black trans women and other black queer artists and develop their music together, but they need money for the transportation so that they can go and get all of those folks and bring them to this house.
We're helping to make that happen. That's a super random thing, but you think about creation and possibility to create. They reached out to the Black Trans Travel Fund because Ms. Boogie, she's amazing black trans woman artist, rapper, check her out, but she was like, "Yoo, I want to create this thing and I want to know what does it look like when we start removing those barriers for our creatives," and black trans people are creative as hell, remove that barrier of food, remove that barrier of housing, remove that barrier of transportation and just put them in a space where they have the tools to show up as their best self, show up to create, and so much magic happens.
There is no movement without art, art informs movement always. That's just one example of the possibilities of something that can be created out of something as simple as making sure that the girl got to ride to go do whatever it is that they got to do. The possibilities for black joy is limitless. We just want to be a conduit and it's beautiful to see all of the things that have been able to happen as a result of the work that we do, which is so simple.
It's something that is so small, a ride can mean so much, but we've been able to sponsor rides home from open mics where women come out and perform. We've been able to sponsor stuff from beauty and wellness events where girls get to come and be loved on and be like if they facials. There's so many things that we sponsor and make able to happen in support. That's one less thing that people don't have to worry about.
Damon: Hearing this, the word that's coming to me is expansion and on two levels. In hearing just that of open mics, beauty, and wellness, international travel. Those are all things that expand your humanity. I'm thinking about all of the folks, all of the girls that are benefiting and being able to expand themselves through this work, and then that takes me back to the work itself because it started off as rides to and from actions and protests. I'm curious, what are some of the things that it has expanded to that were not even a part of the imagination or a part of what was thought of when it was first emerging at first coming off the ground.
Devin: Something that I never anticipated, people tend to be a bit surprised when they hear about this but one of my favorite programs that we have is, we have a monthly book sponsorship program. You Black Trans Travel Fund, what do you mean you got a book sponsorship program? Book sponsorship program is in tandem with Noname Book Club. I don't know if you know about Noname Book Club, but they are amazing black women, doing really radical work, just opened up a new free library, and a lot of the literature that they put out is centered around abolition. They understand the need to do away with gender essentialism. It's very black, very feminist, stuff that is really in line with BTTS politics.
We recognize that the work that we're doing is centered around black trans liberation, but that a key component of liberation is political education. We're not going to be able to get free unless we understand these systems, and also recognizing the lack of access that so many of our folks have. There are books that we want to read, but that money is going to my food. If I have to choose, that's just one choice that we don't want people to have to make. We pay for the books of the month for black trans women all across the country and ship those books of the month out to the girls who request them. That's a beautiful little program.
If you're a black trans woman listening to this, and you're interested in getting some free literature, you can always come to our website, blacktranstravelfund.com, and request the book of the month.
Damon: That's an amazing program and makes so much sense as a collaboration. Also, people do like to read in cars and planes and on trips. That's when I get my reading done.
Devin: You need something to do. Hello.
Damon: I want to go back to those first couple weeks and months of putting this idea into practice. What made it more challenging? What were some exciting possibilities that opened up just as you started to put it in practice? I think so much of the time it's needed is revealed as we start to try to do it and there's so many things you can't anticipate.
Devin: Oh yes, absolutely. In regards to challenges of the work, first thing that comes to mind is the scammers. You've got women who are reaching out to us for financial support, which we love to do, but our programs are specifically for black trans women. We make that very clear and I can't tell you how many non-black or non-trans people reach out to us every month trying to straight-up swindle us and pretend to be the girls when they really not the girls but I have a team full of black trans women who know, you can't get by, I don't know what they think. Maybe this is some computer that's going through these applications and you can just swindle them, but we're actual people, actual black trans people that are going here, we know our community. We have to sift through a lot of white people, a lot of lot sissies who trying to get our funds. I understand.
Damon: To be fair, you were very clear in the name. You would think this isn't some misread, it's like when someone sends someone an email and they misspell the name that's in the email address, it's like, you just wrote it right there.
Devin: Yes, it is. It's very frustrating, but we prioritize who we prioritize and we do that for a reason. It got to the point, and then we even had to put a disclaimer at one point on our applications and on our website that, because our funding is limited that we prioritize the most marginalized when redistributing our funds. With that, we make sure that we prioritize darker-skinned and/or unambiguously black trans women. Some people took issue with that.
We don't care, you can take issue with that all you want because we know who we're doing this work with, we know who is most heavily impacted when we talk about violence and harassment in the streets. You're going to look at the list and you going to see who it is that is being most affected by this violence and time and time again is most often black trans women, unambiguously black trans women. That's also why I love that.
We're not a non-profit. A lot of people mistake the fact and assume that Black Trans Travel Fund is a non-profit, but we're not. We are a grassroots black trans-led collective of people who are trying to make sure that we distribute funds to other black trans people, specifically, women. We don't believe in people who are not black trans, people saying power in how funds that are supposed to be for the girls get redistributed. I love the work that I do.
I love it because I feel it allows us to be the most integral with our work because we're not confined by the constraints of these funders and what they're demanding. We're not making deliverables. You're not going to tell me, "Oh, I have to support X, Y, and Z." I'm like, "No," this money is for the girls. It's staying for the girls." By the girls, I mean the girls, which is the black trans women.
Damon: I love that this is where the focus is. It reminds me of something that Mariame Kaba mentioned in our first episode, which is that often when we're talking about these experiments, we get stuck in this idea of things that are underfunded or haven't been fully-- and she named-- no, we're talking about unfunded things. People are doing this work. People have been buying rides for each other to make sure that they get home safe for a very long time. What we're naming is not that we need to develop new framings. We need to fund the work that people are already doing to keep their community members safe.
Daniel: Fund it on its grounds instead of fund it relative to the structure that oppresses the people that need to then recreate this the first place, sorry.
Devin: Yes. The non-profit industrial complex don't need no more funding. They got plenty.
Daniel: If anything, they got money.
Devin: They got money. I don't know whose pockets is going into, well, we do, all you got to just check the leadership list.
Damon: In thinking about that framework, that's part of what I love about starting the series with this project because I think it feels so tangible and it feels so related to understanding how people's lives can be made more possible by these material conditions and the ability to fund this very tangible part of life. I wonder, at this point, having seen this project expand, how do you imagine this project fitting into this larger abolitionist world-making project that I know you've engaged with it and been part of in other ways as a media maker and an organizer in addition to this?
Devin: Well, I definitely believe that Black Trans Travel Fund has its role in the abolitionist movement. One of the things that we did as a collective was sit down together and write out what our values were as an organization. Things that we stood by, things that we were going to use to inform the work that we did and how we did it. One of our core values is abolition or safety outside of policing because we understand that prisons and police, they don't keep our people or our community safe. Now they breed and perpetuate violence.
We made a firm commitment to never work with the police or to support organizations who work with the police. We have a event sponsorship program. We sponsor events as I already mentioned every single month but we make sure that when we get requests to sponsor events, that if you're someone that's working directly with the police, that we're not going to work with you. We make it clear like we won't sponsor events where the police are showing up, where the police are invited.
We also have a program called the Pay It Forward program. That program is where we send money out to a different black tran-led organization that is providing material support to black trans women every month. That's an international program. We've sent money out to people in Kenya. We've sent folks out to people in Cuba, folks out down in the south and Alabama, all over the place, but we have criteria for that programs like how we choose who we're going to send that money to. One of those criteria is that those organizations or formations or collectives are either practicing or learning abolitionists, meaning that they don't work with the police either and we make that clear.
When we send the money out. We always send a letter to let them know that, "Hey, you were chosen to be a recipient of this program and this is the criteria that we have which includes being not 501C3 or being underfunded or be prioritizing sex workers, prioritizing the housing insecure." Prioritizing abolitionism is another one of those things as we move in our work each month like we all are always keeping abolition in mind.
We are also always trying to support the work of those who are incarcerated or previously incarcerated in our work. We are connected with different organizations who work with incarcerated individuals like the Emergency Release Fund, along with the Legal Aid Society, different organizations who are connected to black trans people on the inside so that as soon as they are released, we're connected with those black trans women so that we can provide them with care packages that include money, $250 stipends, to help them get wherever they go. When they first get out, along with other things like toiletries, face care stuff, different things that folks need when they first get out.
The end of policing includes the end of gender policing. We talk about the freedom to be, the freedom to exist. Often, like the policing of genders, the policing of people's bodies, and the policing of people's presentations, that's another form of policing. It's very violent looking back on the legacy of radicals like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera who organized STAR and how they put out their STAR manifesto. They were very clear about it, they were not here for the pigs. They recognize that the gender policing that they were experiencing constantly being harassed and ridiculed and arrested by police was so violent and it was inherent to the very system of policing.
We think about the ways that black people have always been and gendered, or how are black women have been hyper-masculinized always because of anti-blackness. How that relates to the struggle of black trans women. There are so many connections to be made. The fight for gender self-determination and the fight for abolitionism go hand in hand.
Damon: Wow, that's really significant and important, not just for the world and for humanity to hear, but also explicitly for this project because one of the things that a lot of folks are saying, and Mariame is really pushing forward and the challenge of even people who are becoming comfortable with the notion of abolition and the abstract, or just don't like the police, the distinction between ending police, as in just cops to we are actually trying to transform society and policing, which also then means that people actually have to account for how they are participating in this carcerality.
How this oppression is not just happening with these few hundred thousand licensed agents or behind these bars, that in every day to day life, there is a confinement and gender is-- there are many social structures, but gender is one of the primary ways in which just humanity is confined, detained, suppressed, and extinguished also just like hyperviolently. Just in receiving that and hearing that said so profoundly, are you seeing transformations around that lesson?
The conversation of trans liberation as it is also being repressed and opposed is being forefronted and is coming to popular conscious in a new way. In acknowledging the way in which almost everybody is participating in this carceral oppression, are you seeing new accountability for that participation in policing people's bodies?
Devin: My answer is absolutely. Thankfully I'm so happy to be able to say that. I think, yes, I do see transformation. I see it every day. I've seen it in myself. What I thought of when you were speaking immediately was needing to kill the cop in our heads and in our hearts. That is something that I see myself, the people that I consider myself in direct community with, and just people that I don't know, but the people that I'm learning from all across this world every day, working on, not just getting rid of the police with the badges out on our blocks but like the police that are in our heads and in our hearts because we have all grown up in the same society and all have so much unlearning to do when it comes the way that we police others and ourselves.
There's so much groundwork that is being done. I do see a change. I think that a lot of people who weren't even thinking about abolitionism at all, but just like trans people, queer people, gender-variant people all around the world. We've always existed within every culture and we are just fighting to be free. We're fighting for our existence fighting to be able to live and love out loud freely and be loved freely. Yet when we dive into our history, it starts to become inevitable that we start to get to this place where we find the connections that were made.
Like I said, you can only start advocating for the rights of trans people for so long before you start reading up on STAR, as I have already named, and you start actually hearing the politics that don't just stop at, "I deserve to look and wear what I want," but it goes so much deeper than that. I do think the connections are being made. Likewise, people who were advocating for abolitionists, when you think about black struggle, abolition is inherently a black struggle. We talk about abolition, we're talking about freedom slavery, which still exists to this day, specifically, these police are nothing but runaway slave catchers. That's what they've always been. That's what they always will be. We're still the same fight we're trying to free all the slaves that we got locked up.
Also because there are so many genderqueer, trans, gender-variant people that are abolitionists, you can't show up in those spaces without coming into contact with one another. More and more every day like the fight for abolition and the fight for gender expansion, they go hand in hand.
Damon: I love that connection that you drew. It got me thinking about the work of the fund in terms of movement and safe movement between safe spaces because so much of the history of abolition is building it decentralized and building it in different pockets where people aren't at the risk of incarceration or aren't at the risk of having their bodies police and recognizing that the spaces in between those might not be that case but how do you create pathways for people to move through that. I'm wondering, what does this open up not just in terms of people being able to get home safely, but really in terms of community building, because this, isn't just about tangible money in accounts, though that is, of course, really important but it's about making the possibility for people to share space together. What happens when they get there that this work makes possible?
Devin: The work that we do makes space for so many beautiful connections that have been developing in community. We've sponsored photoshoots for sex workers' rights, so then you had all of these different sex workers, where people that supported sex workers rights, particularly black trans women, were able to come together and be a community together and start to organize with each other. There were some beautiful connections made there. We sponsored self-defense workshops.
People that are catering to trans-feminine people, not just getting people together, but getting people together for a purpose of learning how to support themselves and support others, is hard. Being a trans person, and always feeling like this level of fear, like violence is just around the corner, helping to be able to provide people with tools that can make them feel a little more safe and just also seen because it's hard to show up as a trans person at a regular in the old self-defense class and not feel got that or just not get the level of respect for your personhood.
Almost all of the events that we sponsor, also our events that are organized by black trans people. There is a bias for us, just like our organization is bias for us. That's important, too. I have been to these events and seen people who have never met each other and probably never would have seen each other where it was enough for the fact that you can get home for free you don't have to worry about getting home.
The thing that is stopping people from showing up and being a part of those experiences is the fact that they don't know how to go and get home or rather don't want to get home in the ways that are currently accessible to them, which is like the train. The New York City trains are not. They're not safe at all. There's people are constantly being assaulted on them and attacked on them. Earlier in the summer, there was a black trans woman who was stabbed on the train that we had to reach out to provide some support for. It's like these things are constantly happening. We turn a no into a yes for so many people.
Damon: I'm being so fed by this conversation, but also the work at large in that answer and in this example. I hear you naming a realization of a new freedom. I think a central part of liberation is recognizing that so much of our oppression, so much of these carceral systems is about restricting movement. Movement in the way that we think about it of like rah-rah here come the protest signs but whether its borders and nation-states and controlling migration, whether it's actual prisons, and restricting how the body can move and where it can go, whether it's sundown towns, or apartheid and segregation and then also just disorganized, transphobia throughout community. A central part of oppression is restricting the movement of bodies, and particularly marginalized bodies.
In hearing travel, in the capital T sense of getting from A to B or getting on a plane, being connected to this larger idea of movement, it is creating new freedom. Also, just thinking about how it's not just a ephemeral or just ideological rights - the real material sense of creating a transformation economy is what I like hear you naming.
Whether it is how do we protect these resources for people who try to scam us? How do we have huge activity and relationships to folks who are incarcerated, and then also of being selective of what you sponsor is really exciting and creating new possibilities. To the point of resource of being under-resourced in this transformation economy, it also creates new incentives. One of the things we say like how do we change behavior without violence is offer new things.
If someone's housing or someone's food or if someone's medicine is connected to a community-based in love that has very grounded principles, it may not just be in your heart to be "good" or "anti-violent" but if then I cannot get access to resources that are available that might then change or shape the incentives of my behavior. I'm hearing there are people that may be organizing events that might like to have cops there, that in wanting to be in solidarity with black trans people having these material resources, and saying we only participate when it is liberatory, that then incentivizes spaces to be more liberatory.
From that notion of freedom and this economy that you're building, what are some of the reflections, results, and conclusions that you think the world should be receiving, even if they can't see this work on a day-to-day basis?
Devin: One thing that I didn't touch on yet, but I wanted to make sure that I did and was taken away was that people should be prioritizing and censoring black trans people, black trans women, especially, not just in your neighborhoods but globally. Internationalism is another one of our core values. Our collective recognizes that we live in the Imperial core. This is the US imperialist empire that is responsible for the exploitation of so many of our peoples and their resources and so this money that we are getting we're blessed to be able to redistribute these funds that we have.
That's one of the main reasons that we make sure that we're supporting people that are not just here in the US, but that we're supporting black trans people in Africa and across the African diaspora. The fact that we are in this country, we are inherently benefiting from colonialism, and settler colonialism, and the pillaging of our peoples' resources, so I do want to emphasize that and that black trans liberation is a global struggle as black liberation is a global struggle. As a Pan-Africanist, I just always want to emphasize that our people need support everywhere. We are them and they're us.
Damon: I have a not serious question for you.
Devin: Okay.
Damon: What comes first Kufi shopping or the journey into Pan-Africanism? Did the Pan-Africanism inspire the Kufi or did the Kufi inspire the Pan-Africanism?
Devin: Oh, this funny you know what, I think the Kufi came first.
Damon: Shout out to Kufi.
Devin: You know what? Actually, that's a really hard question because I got this Kufi. This was my grandfather's actually in and he has been a fervent Pan-Africanist since the '60s. Actually, Kwame Toure was his friend and actually nicknamed him...Lowe back in the '60s when they first met. He's been advocating for Pan-Africanism for a very long time. The Pan-Africanism was always there before I even knew it was there.
Damon: So was the Kufi.
Devin: So was the Kufi, as long as I know my grandfather, he always had a Kufi on his head.
Daniel: Honestly, we're asking the wrong Pan-Africanist which came first those two. We got to be talking to your grandpa here.
Devin: Yes, pretty much. You have to look them up, Mr. Lowe. I can't really even separate the two.
Damon: I was being silly but that was actually a really beautiful answer. I'm glad that I asked this, shout out to the lineage and another community just like continuing the tradition and continuing in the work of your ancestors or forefathers. That's really beautiful.
Devin: I say, I am doing my best.
Daniel: Before we want to wrap I know we've thrown a ton at you in the last couple of minutes of ideas and are reflecting back of what we've heard. Is there anything that you want to jump back to, any part of this that it feels like it's really important that we focus on or make sure we discuss?
Devin: One thing I will I definitely want to share before we close out is just like Black Trans Travel Fund's values that there's something that makes us better and there's something that can make any formation out there better just by following some of these core things. We've already touched on a lot of them, but they are black trans liberation understanding and valuing the inalienable right to wellness, shelter, food, leisure freedom from cisheteropatriarchy for black trans people, FOR all people.
Making sure that we honor our history is very important and through this movement work, understanding that we got here from somewhere and to continue to honor the legacy and not pretend that these values that things just like came out of nowhere, because we're doing a disservice, we have to-- Sankofa tells us to go back and get it. Always honoring our lineage and the work that we do, making sure that you are prioritizing black trans leadership as a value.
I told you BTTF is our own bias for us. We value not having cis folks or White people having any decision-making power over resources that are allocated to black trans folks. If you sitting here and you got money and you're trying to figure out how to move that to black trans people. Black trans people need to be the ones involved in that conversation. Make sure that you're getting us involved. Self-determination is a core value, and that can go back to so many different things but just recognizing that a community's people should have the right to control their own manual economy, their own politics, their own culture, we know what we need as a community, black trans people know what we need. You all just need to listen, we've been saying it.
Again, abolition, access to education, and resources is a core value, transparency, and accountability. We can talk too much about that, but we are so committed to like building through openness and just remaining responsible to the expectations that we set for others. We talk about abolition like we have to make sure that we are accountable to the community that we are serving. Then prioritizing and centering black trans women globally, as I said before.
That's 8 core values that I think can really help the people out.
Damon: You more or less answered it but I do want to, just for the sake of the metaphor, ask a closing question of, when we think about experiments, one of the things in this project we're going to be like playing with is everything is unique. Nothing can be exactly duplicated. We're not like falling into the mythologies of scale, but we do want to inspire work. The best experiments in the institutional science spaces can be repeated and so for folks who want to engage in any abolitionists project or experiment, but I think even more specifically if they are black trans people in other spaces that want to mobilize resources in this way, what things do you think need to be in the toolkit? What in their little science project, for folks who are interested in starting something that is in concert or in honor of this legacy for folks that get started practicing and experimenting, what do you offer for folks to have in their toolkit?
Devin: Well, first thing I will say is don't do it alone. You have to have a team of people to support you that believe in the work that you believe in to avoid burnout as an organizer. I know we hear that word burnout so often. It's got to be militancy and care work. As Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas love to mention militancy and care work. Always remember to keep that in your tool kit so that that word can be sustainable. I think that is the answer.
Daniel: One other question on that is what tools have you had to add to your own toolkit in doing this work? What was something you didn't know you were going to need when you started the project?
Devin: I didn't know that I was going to need someone with graphic design skills.
Daniel: It's always the graphic designer. That's always what it comes down to.
Devin: Yes, like you need someone who's going to hold you accountable. You need someone who is not a yes-man. It's always good to have a yes-man. You need someone that's going to hype you up, but you also need someone that is going to keep you grounded.
Daniel: I love the policy. No cis-men, no yes-men.
Devin: Yes, I like it, no cis-men, no yes-men. Like you just need diversity in some important. I hate that word. The whole diversity, inclusion. It's these buzzwords that get thrown around, universities be using them. They don't really mean anything, but for real, you need a diverse group of people around you.
Damon: In hearing that, that lesson of how do we define diversity beyond oppressive social structures? What people usually say when they say diversity is around the gender binary around the racial construction and it usually stops there if we want dynamic, holistic groups of people, how do we then recall out the notion of diversity around new axes of human relationships? I'm just learning that's what you just said.
Devin: That's a great question. I don't mean diversity in the typical sense because, first of all, Black Trans Travel Fund is 100% black trans-led. There is no diversity in that regard, we have black trans people and it's going to be 100%, but it's also like there is black trans men, there's black trans women, there's nonbinary folks, there are people of various sexual identities. There are people that are based in the north, in the Midwest, in the south, on our team, some are folks who are in Atlanta, some of them in Detroit, some of them in Hawaii.
We're connected with folks who are, like I said, out of the country. We have a multitude of voices informing our work. We got life folks with different bodies, keeping everyone in mind and the work that we're doing. I don't know, that's a hard question. That's a good question for me to sit with honestly. I don't know that I can answer your question, but it's more a gift that I will take with me and continue to think about.
Daniel: That's a good outcome of an experiment is some more good questions to think about and keep chewing over. That's another thing that Miriame said in the first one is, we're not trying to get solutions. We're trying to build better questions and that's part of the abolitionist project too. Thank you so much for your time and your thoughts and sharing the process and the how and why of what you do. How can folks find you and your work in the ways you'd like to be found?
Devin: Definitely, first and foremost, check us out on our website is blacktranstravelfund.com. You can learn more about the work that we're doing. If you're a black trans woman that you can apply for funds there. You can also reach out to us via email at blacktranstravelfund@gmail.com. Then we also have Twitter, definitely hit our Twitter pays it'd be lit is blktranstravel, and then on Instagram, which is BlackTransTravelFund, regular spelling, Facebook you can find is Black Trans Travel Fund.
Damon: Are there other, tangible ways that folks who come across this could be supporting the work too?
Damon: Absolutely, you could donate to support our work. We pay for passports now that was something I didn't mention, but we have a whole passport sponsorship program. If you want to fund a passport today, send us some coin. We paying for TSA pre-check for the girls so that they're not getting harassed when they going through the airports. If you want to pay for somebody's TSA pre-checks some funds, if you want to pay for the flights, send us some funds, you could send us money on Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, you can write us a check all of your money is going to black trans people, 100% of it. If you want information on that, you could email us again, blacktranstravelfund@gmail.com, but please donate the Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, hit us up.
Damon: Funds need funding. That is the thing about funds.
Daniel: Fund the fund. Yes and again, just in closing, just want to offer again, gratitude to you, but also the community that you stand with. In a conversation, you can only talk to so many people and I know that you're not doing this work alone. Thank you for your time, for your thoughts, and most importantly, your labor. It is clear that all folks who are interested in any struggle for liberation can first learn from black trans liberation, but most importantly, should be interconnected and intersecting with black trans liberation. Thank you again for making more possible, not just for your community, but for this project and for all of our listeners, we humbly appreciate it.
Devin: Thank you so much, Damon and Daniel. Yes, been amazing. I appreciate you all for just offering up your platform so that more people can learn about the work we're doing.
Damon: Folks that was Devin Lowe for the Black Trans Travel Fund.
Daniel: Wonderful.
Damon: Do you want to say-
Daniel: No, I just wanted to get that wonderful in.
Damon: Lowe's wonderful.
Daniel: I thought you were about to say...That was just a little, a little hi-hat symbol of the background. Speaking of wonderful, we're happy to still have Eva here with us, and let's just debrief a little bit of what we heard and what we talked about so our conclusions, would you say, Damon?
Damon: Conclusions, maybe some observations going on right now...we are continuing. Eva, do you have any takeaways, conclusions observations that are jumping out from that conversation?
Eva: Whoa, Damon, the things that stuck out to me, I think that listening to it again now are just that transformation economy that you all hit on. I'm just struck again by how the Black Trans Travel Fund is a collective inaction. Miriame has this idea of the kitchen cabinet and it's when you are doing anything, when you're going forward and then putting your energy and work out into the world, you invite the people around you in who are experts or who you're connected to in that work and you talk through your idea with them. You get a peer review for your idea. You start to work with the people around you that you know and gather those resources and those opinions.
This also oof, I'm revealing something here, but I went to a Quaker school and so this is also a little bit of like a Quaker thing too, where you call people in to help you mull over some of these questions. I'm not a Quaker myself, but it's a practice that I've found really useful in life and so I think of Devin hearing the suffering and the violence that is being inflicted on their community and bringing people in to this collective to really expand the ways in which not only can they limit the violence, but they can expand the possibilities for, you put it so beautifully Damon and expand the possibilities for humanity and the work that they do to make it generative, to make it creative. I love that that came through in this episode because that is exactly what One Million Experiments is about.
Damon: What about you, Daniel, what are some of your reviews coming out of that conversation?
Daniel: It was a point that I felt like we all got to together in some ways. Damon, I think you led the way on it, was this linking of the freedom to participate in social movement and the freedom that comes from social movement being linked to the ability for people to move freely. Actually, the ways that limiting personal mobility is a tool of inhibiting social movements.
Some of the potential that is enabled by people being able, whether that's to cross-town safely or race borders safely, but the linking of a person's ability to get from point A to point B, and then the things that can come just because of who's able to be in that room who wouldn't have been there otherwise. It's just something that I think it really brought home for me.
Damon: Yes, that definitely rings true. What I'm taking away is how this conversation really spoke to and generativity related to some of the biggest limitations of our movement. From your point on a very basic level, we take for granted transportation at large. We just say we're going to be doing all these things. I think in a very privileged way, discount the energetic financial or spiritual expenditure, and how that can put people at risk. That really resonates. Then the deeper feeling I'm having, I'm almost trying to be careful or cautious around my hesitancy is that I know that there is risk and over extrapolating.
Before I do that, I just want to name the material and compounded value of just the discrete specific community, getting the resources they need. It does not have to be any bigger than that to be important, but I also am taking away this bigger lesson that I think is going to be a through-thread for me through this whole podcast is abolition is so much more
than what people's imagination of it when they usually first come to this space of, "How do I have something else after things have gone really bad? How do I have a different reaction or a different response?" because that's what the state has taught us.
The best thing we can get is an ineffective reaction. The learning that taught me the most about the limitations of both black movement spaces, but also carceral spaces, is the violence black trans communities are resiliently surviving. The truth is, even if you are not an abolitionist, the police and prisons aren't going to do shit about the violence that black trans women are experiencing. Then also within movement spaces, we can perpetuate that marginalization or even contribute to that violence, whether it is physically, emotionally, or politically.
The creation of this transformation economy or this infrastructure that one centers the mobility, the presence of black trans liberatory bodies and voices in the spaces that are supposed to be for liberation. We're getting a little bit of a lesson or the seed of what actually transforming our communities and society looks like. It does not just look like who do we call after the unthinkable or the horrible has happened. How do we actually create these systems of care of nurturing of protection that disallow the violence we take for granted as normal?
Daniel: Yes, and it's not just about it being preventative, it's about making it impossible or obsolete.
Damon: Exactly.
Daniel: I think it leads to the last part of our experiment on this episode, which we've learned in having to learn about experiments to maintain our metaphor that there is such thing as the peer review.
Damon: Boom, boom.
Daniel: You all are the peers, listeners, so get to reviewing. What we're asking of you all is to share with us whether it's on social media, you can email millionexperiments@gmail.com, what are the pieces of this conversation that stick out to you, what became tools that Devin shared that you're going to bring into your toolbox and what are ways this conversation is informing how you're going to be a practitioner in your own experiment? Doesn't have to be some big grandiose takeaway, like we just gave.
It can just be like, "That's something that stood out to me." or "That really resonated with my experience doing this action." Something like that. We want to hear what from this conversation is sticking with you.
Damon: To take the pressure off, you don't even have to have an answer per se. Arguably, the most important part of an experiment is the question or the place of inquiry. If this conversation got you to a deeper place of curiosity or complicated your thinking or challenge do in any way, you can also share that as well because that is the first step to further experimentation. Allow curiosity to be your Beaker or Bunsen burner or telescope, whatever, allowed to be a tool to get going, let's get to work.
Eva: For those of you who are like, "Okay, but seriously, how do we start up an experiment just like this one?" Be on the lookout, because after we do these interviews with experimenters, we will drop an in-depth scene about how they set up that experiment, not to say that you should or can replicate it exactly, but helping people walk through the steps about how we do what we do and make that transparent just like Devin said.
Daniel: Where will they be able to find that Zine, Eva?
Eva: Oh, Daniel, they will be able to find that at millionexperiments.com. You can also follow Interrupting Criminalization on social@interruptcrim.
Daniel: If you are an experimenter, please, please share the information about your experiment with us. There's an area on the website at millionexperiments.com where you can submit your own project to be featured in this encyclopedia that's being built. Also, make sure to subscribe to One Million Experiments wherever you get your podcasts leave us a rating and review. See that's a place for a peer review. It's on a podcast review section. You can check out all the work that Damon and I do on our other show, AirGo at airgoradio.com, or just type in AirGo wherever you get your podcasts and we're at AirGo radio on everything.
Eva, thank you so much again for hopping on with us. We're excited to bring you a new experiment next month. Until then-
Damon: Much love to the people.
Daniel: Peace.