Prison Isn’t Just a Place
Written by AC PanellaIn OMCA’s Angela Davis- Seize the Time, a video interview plays of the activist and icon on loop. In the video, she covers a breadth of issues and experiences. One important element is that activism without art has no spirit. I would argue that the same is true with academics. To see a fundamental change in the world. Or as the poet Tracy K. Smith says, we must be able to answer the questions of art and the questions of science.
Source: 2022 OMCA Exhibition Angela Davis
Source: 2022 OMCA Exhibition Angela Davis
Source: 2022 OMCA Exhibition Angela Davis
Since 2020, the question of prisons and policing has become a national conversation and major art organizations and funders are taking on the task of highlighting the impacts of prison. Natalie Fleetwood, who curated the amazing show Marking Time Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, has noted that carceral aesthetics highlight the problem with prisons and the ways that artists resist the oppression, isolation, and inhumane treatment. Many times when discussions of prison abolition arise, it is forgotten that the modern queer and trans movement started with protesting the police.
Tameca Cole. Locked in a Dark Calm. 2016. Collage and graphite on paper, 8 1/2 × 11". Collection Ellen Driscoll
You may be thinking that I am referencing the actions at the Stonewall in in 1969, however, I’m referring to an event that happened much earlier and much farther away: Compton’s Cafeteria Riots.
Source: Screenshot from "Screaming Queens."
Source: Compton Cafeteria Riots / Celebrate Our History / Milwaukee LGBT Community Center
The building at 111 Taylor is the former location of SF’s Compton’s Cafeteria, the site of one of the earliest trans uprisings in the US and, now, recognized as a City Historic Landmark. Landmarking is one step toward embracing trans identity within the US struggle for civil rights. As Susan Stryker writes,
“We need to activate memories of revolt, to contest a carceral power that insinuates itself into more and more avenues of daily life.” For the last seventy years of the US movement for queer and trans civil rights, policing, and prisons have been a central place of resistance and a place for coalition building across our communities of poor and people of color.
Source: www.resetsanfrancisco.org
In May 2022, a collective of artists, activists, and academics came together to form The Transecologies Working Group. This group started as a study group; reading, writing, and talking to a variety of people about the intersections of trans identity, prison abolition, and the building located at the corner of Turk & Taylor in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
While it is important to gain physical visibility in the built environment, it is not enough to rectify the conditions plaguing the trans community. It must happen in conjunction with policies that repair the systemic obstacles that trans people face today. Without them, the landmark becomes merely virtue signaling. It is crucial to pass policy and make structural changes that support trans people in their daily lives. For example, the site of Compton’s Cafeteria ironically houses Geo Group, the largest for-profit prison company in the world. SF could easily buy the building and replace Geo Group with housing, services, and businesses that directly serve and benefit trans people living in the Tenderloin today. This would honor both the historic and contemporary work of trans people.
Resistance comes in the form of art, activism, and academics. Because, as Mariame Kaba reminds us, “Hope is a discipline.” And one that is practiced on a daily basis. Organizations like Mellon Foundation Imaging Freedom and Art is a Form of Freedom are supporting this by funding that art can be a salve for individuals affected by the carceral system, and highlighting the long-term negative impacts on our communities. As we head into “pride season,” we must remember that our liberation must be a collective one.
A detail of Jesse Krimes’s ‘Purgatory’ (2009). PHOTO: JESSE KRIMES/BURNING IN WATER