The Sylvia Rivera Law Project - A Proud foundation of lies, grift and exploitation.
As we kick off what is set to be the most consequential Pride season since Stonewall, I have chosen to speak out about how I was misused and exploited by several prominent figures in the Trans rights movement. Governors DeSantis and Abbott and Trumpers alike aren’t the only villains out there. Indeed there are a few ‘George Santos’s among us. Bold, unapologetic, and they need to be called out.
We can’t fight revisionist history and erasure from the MAGA GOP if we won’t address it within the TLGBQ+ community, here in our own backyard. It’s important for our young people to learn that the truth matters. This is especially the case when it comes to those we choose to uplift as leaders.
Many of you know me as the daughter of Trans rights icon Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia (or ‘Ma’ to those of us who stayed at Transy House in the late ‘90s and early 2000s), adopted me as her youngest daughter after I showed up on her doorstep on a hot, muggy afternoon during the summer of 2001. I was sent to her as a baby-faced teen after I told adults in my life that I would flee the state, before being forced to return to a juvenile detention facility (where I’d be forced to detransition). When Sylvia heard my story she was having none of it, and she insisted that I immediately move in with her and others at Transy House. She vowed to protect me.
In addition to being Sylvia’s youngest daughter, I am also ‘Jean Doe’: The original “Trans teen” so to speak. I am a proud former foster youth, who has won several landmark cases against the City of New York on behalf of TLGBQ+ individuals, especially Trans teens in care.
During the summer of 1998 I was introduced to attorneys from the Urban Justice Center and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, both high powered law firms working together to identify TLGBQ+ kids in foster care facing abuse. These attorneys eventually filed a lawsuit, captioned Joel A. v Giuliani (after my dead-middle-name), which the City agreed to settle out of court, resulting in landmark reform for queer-kids in foster care here in New York.
In 2001 I was placed in an all-male facility in Brooklyn for boys ages 16-21, despite living openly as a female. City officials soon enacted new anti-Trans policies (many of which read like the anti-Trans bills we see today), essentially ordering me to detransition (and punishing me if I didn’t).
These new anti-Trans policies banned me from wearing clothes that aligned with my gender. Staff were directed to refuse me food or assistance of any kind while I was “dressed” in female clothing. This included jeans and sneakers. As a result of this abuse I was forced to sue ACS again, this time in a lawsuit captioned Jean Doe v Bell. I was represented by Debevoise & Plimpton this time around. This is when I met Dean Spade. At the time he was a legal fellow at Urban Justice Center.
Despite what he claimed for over a decade Dean Spade did not play a significant role in shaping or winning this case. He was swatted down during strategy meetings at Debevoise. He even cried once during a meeting after he was essentially shushed by the grown-up attorneys in the room. Had we taken Dean Spade’s advice (regarding not relying on ‘disability’ based protections for Trans folk under a doctor's care) we would have lost Doe.
Tragically Sylvia Rivera passed away before we won the case. In a dark twist of fate all too common with great figures such as Sylvia, her death increased her name recognition tremendously.
After the win in Doe, Dean Spade asked me to participate in media appearances and other events to promote the case, and naively I agreed. Today it's easy for me to understand he was grooming me in a non-sexual way. He was using me as his personal Trans-teen mascot to attract deep-pocketed donors. Had I not supported him, SRLP would not exist in its current form today.
Dean Spade also failed to mention that Sylvia Rivera’s partner Julia Murray had expressly denied him permission to use her name for the ‘project’. If I had known this I would never have worked with him or supported his vision for SRLP.
Another point of interest for the lawyers reading this: When Dean Spade first approached me for support in starting SRLP, like most other children placed in foster care I was represented by a Law Guardian from Lawyers For Children. Mine was the brilliant Betsy Kramer.
Dean Spade knew that I was still in care and represented by counsel (and all the ethical quandaries involved in working with a kid in care) yet he never sought or received permission from Betsy/LFC to traipse me around to fundraisers and networking events from roughly 2003 to 2005. ‘Working’ with Dean Spade made me feel like an adult. I felt content, being showered with the attention of wealthy white queers, especially lawyers and law students. This felt safe. It felt right. Now I know better.
By the time Dean Spade officially departed SRLP the tone and the culture of the organization had been set. Chase Strangio, Gabriel Z Arkles, Pooja Geiji, and Reina Gosset (now known as Tourmaline) eventually expanded the Trans-savior-grift, using their positions at SRLP to open as many doors (and wallets) as possible, on the back of the poor and disenfranchised clients who turned to them for help.
Dean Spade
Some staff who are still with the organization such as Stephanie Rivera (zero relation to Sylvia Rivera) are vestiges of the social-fraud embodied by the cult-of-Dean that is SRLP. For instance Stephanie Rivera claims to have lived with Sylvia Rivera at Transy House in the late 1990s. Despite never having lived at Transy House. She just made the whole story up. But if Dean Spade is your example, hey, just making stuff up seems fine.
Many former SRLP staffers, especially Tourmaline, continue to exploit both Sylvia’s, as well as Marsha P Johnson’s legacies to this day. Tourmaline, who comes from money and simply plays on the margins, has turned exploiting Sylvia and Marsha’s legacies into an art form. They have created a lavish lifestyle and steady stream of income for themselves (securing book deals and countless speaking
engagements), falsely asserting proximity to cultural icons, all while navigating the upper crust of the TLGBQ+ community. Tourmaline has used her status as SRLP-alum to hunt down valuable artifacts and archival material related to STARR, Sylvia, and Marsha, and she hoards and spends it like capital.
Chase Strangio would not be the darling of the ACLU and proclaimed champion of Trans rights without their humble beginnings at SRLP, which we now understand to be founded on half-truths. Dean Spade wouldn’t be teaching generations of new legal minds without the grift and exploitation he used to climb the ladder of success, and without the labor and grit of Trans street youth’ circa the early 2000s; Pooja Geiji, although soft spoken and meek, is not all innocent or blameless in terms of the dark turn SRLP took decades ago, and she knows it.
Journalists and mainstream media outlets are partially responsible for the lucrative personas and false narratives which many former SRLP staff have cultivated around themselves. In the rush to push out edgy “TGNC centered” stories, listicles and other online content of late, it appears many major outlets such as Teen Vogue and Mother Jones are among the outlets which failed to adequately fact check the backstories of people like Dean Spade and Tourmaline.
Revisionist history from liberal progressives is as toxic and harmful to TLGBQ+ kids, as anything that radical conservatives could ever dish out. This Pride season we shouldn’t feel empowered to fight the ‘right’ while we are choosing to allow theft.on the left.
We cannot argue about book bans and barred subjects coming from the right if we too are guilty of the same. It feels important for me to get my story out this Pride season, whether or not anyone reads this piece or cares.
I want TLGBQ+ youth and families to know the truth is always worth fighting for, and this includes in classrooms, in the community, or in your own backyard.
-Mariah Lopez Ebony