Group Snapshot
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP)
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence. SRLP is a collective organization founded on the understanding that gender self-determination is inextricably intertwined with racial, social and economic justice. Therefore, we seek to increase the political voice and visibility of low-income people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming. SRLP works to improve access to respectful and affirming social, health, and legal services for our communities. We believe that in order to create meaningful political participation and leadership, we must have access to basic means of survival and safety from violence.
SRLP serves trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people of color and low-income people. We engage in direct legal assistance, public education, organizing support, and policy reform work on both a local and a national level.
Since our founding in 2002, SRLP has served over 450 clients facing discrimination in shelters, jails, foster care, schools, hospitals, at work, and from government agencies. We have trained over 3000 city employees, activists, and service providers to help make their work more welcoming and accessible to our communities. We have had major legal victories in family law, foster care, and access to name changes. Our video project, Toilet Training, focusing on trans access to bathrooms, has screened at film festivals around the world and is being used in programs across the country, including the New York City public schools, to combat discrimination.
Our biggest challenge remains the misunderstanding of transgender people, our health care, and the discrimination we face by policy makers and administrators of institutions. Due to these misunderstandings and myths, our clients are still being denied access to ID needed for school and employment, forced to live in gender inappropriate facilities where they face sexual assault and other violence, denied jobs and health care, and harassed out of schools.
We are currently working on major projects focused on access to transgender health care in the foster care and juvenile justice systems and through Medicaid programs. We are also mobilizing against changing to policies that govern ID which would make it harder for immigrants and trans people to access ID and which would roll back trans rights by 30 years or more. We are also actively working on changing policies that make homeless shelters unsafe for transgender people. Our work addressing the horrendous violence that transgender prisoners face continues.
The images on this page are stills from Toilet Training, a film by Tara Mateik and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
For more info on SRLP and the organization's work, check out the following links:
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