Prisoners Are Wearing Blue in Protest for LGBTQ and Human Rights this Pride

This Saturday LGBTQ and allied prisoners at Shakopee Correctional Facility are wearing blue shirts for Pride and human rights, a peaceful protest in support of demands made by LGBTQ prisoners on May 19th.

The prisoners, in partnership with the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), circulated seven changes they wanted the DOC to make by Pride, which is this Saturday.

“If it is the thought that counts. It has been 50 years since the stonewall riots. We will wear our blue shirts for gay pride because it is the only thing not gray that we can wear without getting in trouble” says Joe Vanderford, a prisoner at Shakopee and trans man who has been denied hormones for years by the DOC.

Prisoners want: hormones for trans prisoner Joe Vanderford; sensitivity training for prisoners and staff; support groups and an advocate for LGBTQ prisoners; an end to mail censorship and the practice of denying or stopping medical treatment as punishment - including hormones; a trans person on the committee that makes trans-treatment decisions; and an end to the controversial “no-touch policy” which is using homophobia to undermine the wellbeing of all prisoners at Shakopee.

Response from the DOC have been meager. DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell told KSTP he would “be responsive” and “on the forefront of this issue” but has failed to meet or set a meeting with prisoners or their representatives. The Transgender Committee has not recommended hormones for Joe Vanderford.

Worse, the only substantive communication has been a June 5th email from Shakopee Associate Warden Bosch to IWOC that has incensed prisoners by claiming prisoners’ concerns are “false” or “ongoing”. Bosch also wrote “we [at Shakopee] do not have a no touch policy but are continuously reviewing healthy touch within the facility”.

“If there isn’t a no touching policy why are people getting arrested and put in segregation over it?” says Simone Stillday, an out lesbian and current prisoner at Shakopee. “I've known prejudice but the outright targeting of LGBTQ prisoners is crazy. I’ve been put in segregation for my ex-partner’s foot accidentally touching the tip of my shoe when she was stretching out her legs under the table”.

Nor is the culture of discrimination and harassment only found at Shakopee. Ex-prisoner and trans woman Diana Current, who like Mr Vanderford was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and therefore rightfully qualified for hormones, has twenty three years of prison experience in Minnesota.

“I asked for hormones and was sent to solitary confinement for doing so,” Diane says. But this didn’t end her fight for justice. “But I’m out now and not giving up on myself or all of us prisoners, trans, queer or otherwise. Isn’t that what Pride is all about?”

IWOC and friends, including Ms Current, will be collecting petitions at Pride in Minneapolis on Saturday, engaging the community about what will happen next. They ask you to join them, like them on facebook, or sign the petition.