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Therese Quinn, Erica R. Meiners

QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue, Fall 2013, pp. 149-175 (Article)

P bl h d b h n t t n v r t Pr DOI: 10.1353/qed.2013.0005

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From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners1

ABSTRACT

Recent attention to youth suicides and violence framed as “bullying” has triggered a range of responses by schools and the state. In this article we locate and analyze the “gay wins” most noted in education, including the recent moves to establish gay-inclusive anti-bullying laws and policies, within a larger social justice framework to map contradictions. In particular, we question the efficacy of anti-bullying laws and ask how this initiative can mask the sources of punishing heteronormativity in schools and communities and potentially distract educators and others from identifying and addressing structural conditions that foster interpersonal forms of violence. We close by suggesting how and why a “queer” vision pushes those invested in LGBT lives to move beyond “equality” (or assimilation) as a goal for social justice struggles.

) ) ) Introduction

In , a -year-old boy named Lawrence (“Larry”) King was shot in the head and killed in his middle school computer lab by a classmate, Brandon McIner- ney, aged . Larry attended a weekly group for gay teens and enjoyed wearing makeup and high heels; Brandon was one of many youth and adults at Larry’s school who responded to his gender-play with aggression. Larry defended him- self by asserting his rights, and with an edgy humor: He flirted with the boys who insulted him—“It’s fun to see them squirm”—and invited Brandon to be his Valentine. A couple of days later Brandon brought a gun to school, and used it.

King’s murder was followed, in , by a concentrated and well-publicized wave of suicides by gay youth, including Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Asher

Copyright ©  Michigan State University. Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners, “From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue (): –. ISSN -. All rights reserved.

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Brown, and Billy Lucas. These suicides, like Larry’s murder, were preceded by intense sexuality- and gender-policing interpersonal violence, and triggered a series of anti-bullying initiatives. “In response to a number of [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] students taking their own lives after being bullied in school,” in late  the writer Dan Savage started an online video campaign, the It Gets Better Project, which now has over , contributions. This highly visible platform, with statements from President Barak Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and a host of other politicians and celebrities, spotlighted anti-gay violence across the nation.

The high-profile media attention that focused on select (often White and male) examples of anti-gay bullying also spurred state legislatures to act. States that already had school anti-bullying programs, including character education or legislation, broadened them. For example, in , Georgia was the first state to pass an anti-bullying law; in , the state added a provision to its law that would allow “bullies” to be removed from schools. Also in , New Jersey implemented what has been described as “the strongest anti-bullying legislation in the country” after Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi’s suicide.

Called the “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights,” the law requires teachers to report bullying to administrators, and school superintendents to report bullying to the State Board of Education, and allows the suspension or expulsion of students accused of bullying. In , a law criminalizing cyberbullying that specifically targets school personnel passed in North Carolina. In an effort to protect school employees this law makes it a crime for any student to post real images or make any statement online—even if it’s true—that provokes harassment. Other prohibited acts by students are signing teachers up to receive junk mail, posting pictures of teachers online, and making “fake” Web sites. In North Carolina, those who are  are treated as adults under state law and therefore if convicted, a student could face  days in jail or a $, fine. As we write in early , 

states (excluding only Montana) have anti-bullying laws on the books, according to the self-proclaimed watch-dog organization Bully Police USA, which defines school bullies as “small scale Terrorist[s].”

Meanwhile, despite the increased media focus on particular kinds of youth violence and focused support for anti-bullying legislation, in the last year nongender- conforming and nonheterosexual young people continued to harm and be harmed in classrooms, on playgrounds, and online. A New York -year-old, Jamey Rodemeyer, contributed a video statement to the It Gets Better archive in May  and, after experiencing physical, verbal, and online harassment about his perceived sexuality, hanged himself in September . Also in , the beating of an Ohio gay teen in his classroom was captured as cellphone video footage, later uploaded to

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YouTube, and Tennessee teen Jacob Rogers, who was creative, loved Lady Gaga, and swapped clothes with girls, dropped out of school and killed himself after enduring years of anti-gay insults. On June , , Kardin Ulysse, a New York City middle-school student, was blinded in one eye after being assaulted by a group of boys shouting anti-gay taunts in the cafeteria of Roy Mann Junior High School. In , Pine Lake Elementary School (NJ) student C.O. routinely returned from school “bruised, crying, and depressed” from being verbally and physically harassed about his perceived sexual orientation. His parents asked the school to intervene in a culture of pervasive homophobia that included class- mates yelling homophobic slurs at C.O. from his own front lawn, and being called, “gay,” “fag,” and “girl” every day at school. C.O.’s parents were told that he “should attempt to ‘make new friends.’” When C.O. was assaulted on a school bus with a metal seat belt, and the school and the district still refused to intervene, the family moved and C.O. transferred to a different school. Although most of the attacks that become high-profile or receive media or other attention target gay boys, others, including trans youth in particular, are certainly not exempt from violence. In early , the parents of a transgender -year-old student at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, Colorado, Coy Mathias, filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division because the school prohib- ited the first-grader from using the girls’ restroom.

These acts of interpersonal and structural heteronormativity or transphobia are neither new nor surprising. Just as misogyny and White supremacy shape the institution of schooling, heteronormativity, the structures and systems “that legitimize and privilege heterosexuality and heterosexual relationships as funda- mental and ‘natural’ within society,” is pervasive in most institutions, including schools. Fear of the queer, or all the meanings and associations attached to nonheteronormativity, leads schools to suppress teachers and creates cultures that facilitate harm toward gender nonconforming and nonheteronomative youth. Trans- and homophobic cultures are persistent, and largely still normal- ized. The  presidential aspirations of Mitt Romney were not dinted by the revelation that he, as a high school “prankster,” harassed a “soft spoken” gender nonconforming peer named John Lauber. Or, more specifically, Romney’s action, which he acknowledged and apologized for decades later and only after an exposé in the Washington Post, was that because he was disgusted by Lauber— “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”—he pinned Lauber down and forcibly cut his hair. Gendered anxieties such as those that fueled Romney’s violence expand beyond classroom walls and take shape in attempts to pass anti-gay educational policies and support school cultures where heteronor- mativity and gender policing are naturalized and embedded into playgrounds

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

and staff rooms. Across the United States, schools are set up for social reproduc- tion purposes; however, by definition, queers disrupt the assumption of values congruence when they are known or “out.” And even when unknown and unlabeled in schools, queers can trigger a “moral” or “sex panic.”

Gender nonconforming and nonheterosexual youth are harmed in our com- munities and in our schools. This harm is substantial and has lasting significance, and as we have briefly indicated here, select representations of the damage done to these young people have mobilized a national discussion on bullying that tentatively includes sexual orientation and occasionally gender identity, yet leaves largely unmentioned other forms of structural violence. In this article we locate and analyze the “gay wins” most noted in education, including the recent moves to establish gay-inclusive anti-bullying laws and policies, within a larger social justice framework to map contradictions. In particular, we question the efficacy of anti-bullying laws and ask how this state initiative works to mask the sources of punishing heteronormativity in schools and communities, and to distract educators and others from identifying and addressing structural condi- tions that foster interpersonal forms of violence.

We close by suggesting how and why a “queer” vision pushes those invested in LGBT lives to move beyond “equality” (or assimilation) as a goal for social justice struggles and to choose and build intra-movement organizing over single issue strategies. Queerness, as Cohen and others have articulated, is anchored by a politics of radical social transformation and responds to assessments of the “identitarian gay rights movement” with its “privatize[d] notions of identity based in the homo/hetero language of sexual orientation.” Pushing back on equality as a goal of our movements, this article argues that a queer future demands that the public, and queer critiques of the private, have the potential to challenge neoliberal agendas while also imagining and building a future in which youth are not harmed for difference.

) ) ) Our Queer Political Moment

Our analysis is shaped by Palestinian and queer activists who coined the term “pinkwashing” to refer to Israel’s attempts to brand itself a queer-friendly nation and tourist destination. Sarah Schulman, in a  Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, offers this definition: “The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics ‘pinkwashing’: a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” As Israel advances its occupation of

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Palestine, the shift to present Israel as a model of modernity and a haven for gay lives is contrasted with what are positioned as uncivilized and homophobic Muslim neighboring communities. Israel is promoted globally as a queer tourist destination because of the nation’s gay rights, including full participation in the military and marriage. Gay rights, in this framework, functions as a shield and a form of legitimation. Pro-gay policies are used to distract audiences from identifying human rights violations, to signify a state as cosmopolitan and liberal, and as circulated by Israel, this strategy also works to suggest that Palestine and other neighboring states are uncivilized, backward, and not worthy of sover- eignty or international support.

Although this could be a potentially challenging parallel for some audiences, we argue that current circulations of gay rights in educational discourses follow similar pathways. Although uneven, the last decade has seen a number of rapid changes surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) lives in schools including anti-bullying policies; an increase in school-based Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs); pro-queer uses of social media, including the It Gets Better Project and archive; policies supporting “out” LGBT teachers; LGBT-inclusive curriculums; and trans-supportive policies and practices, such as the establishment of gender- neutral bathrooms. By no means are these changes widespread or uncontested. Yet, the gains of the LGBT movements in education—including visibility, policy, cur- riculum, and climate—were almost unimaginable a decade ago.

Absolutely, considered through one frame these gains are successes. However, when these shifts are viewed through a wider landscape—specifically, the increased privatization and the criminalization of schools and communities—these “gay edu- cational wins” seem less clear-cut. As this article will chart, although more LGBT teachers are supported through local and state laws to be “out at work,” a broader context of school privatization and attacks on labor that have reduced the number of unionized teaching positions and eroded workplace rights prompt us to ask: What good are “gay educational wins” to our nation’s increasing numbers of at-will, temporary, and precarious school employees? And, what does a focus on narrowly defined gay successes obscure?

Pinkwashing and precarious work—“part-time employment, self-employment, fixed-term work, temporary work, on-call work, homeworkers, and telecommut- ing”—are contemporary phenomena that are both possible through a constel- lation of social, political, and economic shifts. Central to the last three decades of economic and political restructuring, often referred to as neoliberalism, has been the demonization of public institutions, the push to “downsize” “big govern- ment” and, somewhat contradictorily, the buildup of a carceral state. Since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, there has been a bipartisan sentiment to reduce the

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

financial burden of government, to have “smarter” government, to try, para- phrasing Reagan, to “get big government off the backs of the working people.” Yet, when some politicians and their supporters describe shrinking “big govern- ment,” they mean cutting specific components of government, typically social services for the poor and people of color, while drastically inflating spending in other areas. Indeed, in their discussion of the reframing of the welfare state into a neoliberal state, Rebecca Bohrman and Naomi Murakawa outline the inter- connectedness of these seemingly divergent frameworks. “[W]elfare retrench- ment and punishment expansion represent opposite trends in state spending, but they rely on the same ideology. This ideology holds that the liberal welfare state corrodes personal responsibility, divorces work from reward, and lets crime go without punishment; consequently, the lenient welfare regime attracts opportu- nistic immigrants and cultivates criminal values.” To be anti-big government in this climate is to oppose offering welfare benefits to those with drug felony convictions, but not to oppose the establishment of the Department of Home- land Security; it means blocking spending tax dollars on public schools that educate the poor and children of color, but not on the prisons that will house the children failed by our educational system. These shifts are not coincidental or arbitrary; rather, they are the hallmarks of neoliberalism, which pursues the wholesale remaking of nation-states and economies through the intertwined practices of deregulation and privatization, thus, supposedly fueling the rise of a now unencumbered free market—which, of course, leads to the decimation of the public sphere. In this sense, neoliberalism in the United States has been forged not through coups or military might, but, as David Harvey states, through the “long march” of corporations, media, think tanks, and other powerful forces that have sought not only to change economic and political policies but the cultural understandings that ground our relationship to democracy and everyday life itself. Indeed, from pursuing deregulation and privatization to engaging in a permanent war economy to building a prison nation, these changes in economic and political spheres have prompted transformations in the “private” sphere as well, including how we understand our identities, families, emotions, and relations to the state.

Neoliberalism, in other words, is the context for this queer political moment, in which rights and resources are selectively offered, and identity discourses are used to legitimate the dehumanization and punishment of others. These frameworks of neoliberalism and pinkwashing are the larger ideological structures that shape queer lives within schools. Just as activists and scholars track the use of gay rights discourses in Israel that shield broader human rights violations from view, we argue that it is critical to examine what other economic, political, and social practices are rendered

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less visible through the state’s focus on attacking bullying in schools. And, centrally, it is vital to ask whether these state responses that criminalize bullying actually make a material difference in the lives of young people in schools and communities, or if they increase communities’ vulnerability?

) ) ) Inefficacy of Legislation and the Erasure of Complex Roots of Harm

As highlighted at the start of this article, LGBTQ young people experience persistent aggressive violence in schools, with numerous reports also highlighting the interpersonal violence that nongender-conforming and nonheteronormative students experience in schools, perpetrated by peers, teachers, and other mem- bers of staff. As another snapshot of this violence we offer just a tiny representa- tion from one of the many groundbreaking and comprehensive reports authored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). According to the national  School Climate Survey conducted by GLSEN,

● . percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, . percent reported being physically harassed, and . percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation;

● . percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, . percent reported being physically harassed, and . percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression;

● Nearly two-thirds (. percent) of students reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (. percent) felt unsafe because of their gender expression.

These findings are supported at the local level through numerous smaller-scale surveys and ethnographic research.

Further, these high rates of interpersonal violence are precipitated and shaped by forms of structural or state violence. A  national study of LGBT students of color, Shared Differences: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students of Color in Our Nation’s Schools, also developed and sup- ported by GLSEN, identified how erasure and marginalization of LGBTQ youth of color is built into schooling:

Few LGBT students of color had access to LGBT-inclusive curricular resources in school. Less than a fifth of students had been taught about LGBT-related people, history, or events in their classes, or had such information available in

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

their textbooks (% each). Furthermore, only % reported that they could access LGBT-related resources in their school library. Less than a fifth of all LGBT students of color (%) reported that their school had a comprehensive policy to address in-school harassment and assault, which provided specific protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.

This research highlights the role that the state plays to create conditions that exacerbate the potential for interpersonal violence. For example, lack of access to LGBTQ adults, teachers, and administrators who have been educated about LGBTQ rights and lives, LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and other resources create environments in which interpersonal acts of homophobia or transphobia are rife. These linkages between structural and interpersonal violence are almost always absent from media representations of anti-gay bullying and rarely present in the legislative responses. In fact, wider community and social practices and norms, although tough to legislate, are rarely addressed in the media coverage (or the resulting legislation) focusing on gender or sexuality motivated bullying. Instead, the school, the teacher, and the students become the units of analysis and intervention.

As is clear from the snapshots of research and media coverage we present, violence is a problem and queer youth are targeted, and yet the question is framed narrowly: If not anti-bullying laws, then what? We suggest that the state’s criminalizing responses mask the complex roots of queer violence and distract audiences from understanding the importance of structural factors that facilitate and naturalize violence targeted at queers. These anti-bullying laws overwhelm- ingly work to transfer structural factors that perpetuate and reward heteronor- mativity into individual pathologies and also suggest that the way to address homophobia is to punish individual perpetrators. The majority of responses to harm in school do not make connections between forms of structural violence— including the lack of LGBT teachers and curricula—and forms of interpersonal violence.

In a related area, a number of scholar activists have come out in opposition to hate crimes legislation arguing that not only is there no evidence that the existence of hate crimes legislation functions as a deterrent to reduce biased acts of violence, but that hate crimes legislation supports a culture of punishment that distracts us from understanding how LGBTQ and other folks have found themselves punished through hate crimes legislation. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a national organization that works to ensure that all people are free to self-determine gender identity and expression, in a statement opposing hate crimes legislation, states:

The evidence . . . shows that hate crime laws and other “get tough on crime” measures do not deter or prevent violence. Increased incarceration does not deter

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others from committing violent acts motivated by hate, does not rehabilitate those who have committed past acts of hate, and does not make anyone safer. As we see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained, caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence in prisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a main perpetrator of violence against our communities.

In a culture of pervasive homo- and transphobia, hate crimes laws, like anti-bullying laws, are seductive with their promise to punish perpetrators and distract us from an examination of the complex roots of harm. Activist and journalist Liliana Segura argues that politicians who voted in favor of the Matthew Shepard Act, the 

legislation that amended the  Hate Crimes Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity, many of whom also voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, used their vote as an opportunity to “appear tough on crime while also appearing to support gay rights.” Further, as social justice lawyer Andrea Ritchie has identified, anti- bullying laws are “mini hate crimes laws” likely to both reflect and reinforce dominant sets of power arrangements.

In fact, recent research highlights that queer youth, the targets of hetero- “norming” violence in schools, are also more severely punished in other institu- tional settings. Angela Irvine’s research with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency demonstrates that queer youth are disproportionately repre- sented in juvenile justice systems:

At least  percent of the population in juvenile detention is LGBT. Dice the numbers according to gender and the statistics get worse:  percent of girls booked into detention sites across the country disclosed lesbian or bisexual sexual orientations or otherwise failed to conform to expectations of how girls should behave. Like kids of color, LGBT youth are punished more often than their straight peers.

Not only are LGBT youth overrepresented in justice systems, Irvine’s multistate research shows that LGBT youth are targeted for harsher sanctions at every level of the system:

[LGB] and gender non-conforming youth in juvenile detention were twice as likely to have a history of home removal by a social worker, placement in a group or foster home, or homelessness when compared with their straight peers. They’re also twice as likely to face detention in the juvenile justice system for running away, prostitution, sex with someone of the same gender, and minor offenses like loitering and truancy. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (but not gender non-conforming) youth are also more likely than their straight peers to face detention for a violent offense. The harshest disparities show up in punishments for running away:  percent of gay and bisexual boys are detained for running away compared with  percent of straight boys, and 

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percent of lesbian and bisexual girls are detained for running away compared with 

percent of straight girls.

Not only is there no evidence that anti-gay bullying laws, like other forms of hate crimes legislation, will act as a deterrent toward bias-related harm, this criminalizing response circulates in a landscape where LGBT youth are already disproportionately punished by state entities tasked with ensuring our collective safety and security.

) ) ) Strengthening a Punitive and Racialized Regime

Another “gay win” frequently identified is the increase in both the focus on bullying in schools and the resulting attempts by schools to institute anti- bullying regulations. The rationale for anti-bullying laws, often presented as necessary to protect children, is seemingly hard to contest. Yet, as previously noted, instead of excavating the heteronormativity, trans- and homophobia in schools and communities, state responses to bullying define the problem nar- rowly and posit punishment and criminalization as the response. Anti-bullying laws suggest that if we removed the few bad kids that are causing problems, schools would be safer for queers. However, these initiatives are not capable of identifying and addressing social inequality. For example, a  Gallup survey showed that  percent of those polled are not supportive of adoptive rights for gays and lesbians, and  polls showed that  percent of Americans oppose marriage for gay people. Attitudes like these indicate the prevalence of social anxieties about queer people. In particular, nonnormative forms of gender identity and expression continue to receive punishment.

Without acknowledgement of the structural and institutional context—forms of state violence—the individuated anti-bullying laws and other punitive sanc- tions operating in schools will target those who are already suspect within national logics of race, class, gender, and other marginalizing categories. For example, school suspension rates for African Americans, and in particular for African American boys, are significantly higher than for their White counter- parts. As summarized in a  article in an Educational Researcher article that surveyed all available national research on disciplinary sanctions,

Males of all racial and ethnic groups are more likely than females to receive disciplinary sanctions. In , only % of Asian Pacific Islander females were suspended, compared with % of Asian Pacific Islander males. Expulsion data from that same year showed that White females were half as likely to be expelled as White males (p � .), and similarly, Black females were half as likely to be

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expelled as Black males (p � .). Black males are especially at risk for receiving discipline sanctions, with one study showing that Black males were  times as likely as White females to be suspended.

These gendered and racialized practices of removing students from their educational settings—the most dramatic educational sanction available—start in preschools, as indicated in a  survey of  states’ prekindergarten programs., 

It is important to note that available data on school suspensions and expul- sions shows that these practices do not improve youth academic or behavioral performance, and suspensions are not reserved for acts of violence or actions that might be perceived as dangerous. In their review of the research on the reasons for suspensions, Losen and Skiba found wide variations among the reasons stu- dents were suspended nationwide and identified that suspensions were not the result of violent and “serious” behavior. In one state-wide study, “only % of all out-of-school suspensions were issued for disciplinary incidents that are typically considered serious or dangerous, such as possession of weapons or drugs. The remaining % of suspensions fell into two categories: disruptive behavior and other.” Excessively punitive school disciplinary measures that disproportion- ately target the most marginalized in school contexts made national headlines in , highlighting the educational cost to young people when they are pushed out of school. Within this landscape, it is not a stretch to predict that anti-bullying laws will be unevenly implemented and that certain students will continue to be disproportionately targeted and punished.

Although all laws are intended to prevent future harm, the measures that are most powerful generally have sanction and punishment components. For exam- ple, in  California made bullying illegal with the passage of passed “Seth’s Law,” yet the final version of the bill was stripped of all language mandating counseling or restorative justice practices. Rather than being proactive, the law is retroactively punitive, involving “spot checks” of schools to see if they are in compliance. New Jersey’s  anti-bullying legislation tightened relationships between schools and local law enforcement, forcing schools and officials to report incidences more quickly, to create school-based anti-bullying specialists, and to increase penalties for bullying. It also provides for a Crimestoppers telephone line, “to make reporting easier, but [which] also ups the ante by involving law enforcement rather than resolving issues in the principal’s office.” Because schools are sites of surveillance that are neither race nor gender neutral, these laws entrench extant relationships to law enforcement. Criminalization in and outside of schools is a process of racialization, through which youth of color are normalized as those who are “bad” and “in trouble.” These laws falsely assume

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that law enforcement is free of violence or bullying, yet police and other security forces are often key perpetrators of sexual and other forms of violence. Finally, this turn to criminalization as a response to homophobia and punishing gender normativity augments a carceral system that is deeply flawed, fundamentally shaped by racism, and actively reproductive of heteronormativity and gender conformity. Thus, it is a “solution” that fails to effectively address the immediate problem of anti-queer school-based violence, which we argue is exacerbated by new forms of privatized schooling.

Many schools and communities across the United States are making tentative turns towards approaches to harm in schools that do not reinforce a carceral or punitive logic. In schools, these practices are often framed as restorative or transformative justice practices and include peace circles, peer juries, motiva- tional interviewing, safety labs, and other forms of relationship and community building. Rather than punishment or isolation, the overarching goals for restor- ative justice practices are to try to heal the whole community from incidents in which people were harmed and, ideally, to help prevent the same sort of harm from happening again. These programs are underfunded and underresourced in schools, but are nevertheless emerging across the United States because parents, teachers, and young people know that punitive responses not only do not work to address harm, but actually harm young people and communities.

) ) ) Costs of Privatized Education for Queers

An often unexamined linkage is that between violence targeting LGBTQ youth and the shifting working conditions of public school personnel. Although public education has always been more promise than practice, with access and resources restricted and denied for many, today it is clear that the system itself is under assault. We have discussed how anti-bullying legislation, enacted to address the real problem of violence against queer youth—and often claimed as a success in the movement for LGBTQ rights—distracts attention from other structural forms of violence. In this section, we explore the effects of public education privatization on queers, and specifically youth who experience anti-LGBTQ harm in their public schools, using our home location, Chicago, as an example.

In , the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union, reported that between  and  it lost over ,

members and predicted that by  it will lose a total of , teachers and other workers. These numbers were released as the NEA held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., an event previously popular among Democratic

 ( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

politicians, but which President Obama decided to skip, prompting speculation about the dwindling clout of organized education labor. Indeed, between – and – the number of largely nonunionized charter schools increased from  to  percent of all public schools, and this growth continues

despite reports that suggest negligible gains, if any, by students enrolled in charter schools. Charter schools, initiated first in Minnesota in , were created to pilot innovative educational reform in “high need” areas. Charters are public schools that, depending on state legislation, have flexibility surrounding the school calendar, curriculum, assessments, qualifications of teachers, compensa- tion for school personnel, and more. What is central to our point is that in most states employees at charter schools, including teachers, are nonunion workers and are not protected through any form of collective bargaining. In the over 

years that charter schools have existed in the United States, their presence has created parallel public school systems and the original goal of using these schools to improve or “reform” traditional systems has been abandoned.

Chicago offers an example of the effects of the national trend of expanding charters. The number of charter schools doubled in the city between  and , and in ,  percent of Chicago schools were charters and contract schools, and there are plans to open more, all privately run, while closing public schools with teachers who are able to become members of the Chicago Teachers Union. Although there is an aggressive move by the American Federation of Teachers to unionize workers at charter schools, the overwhelming majority of teachers at charter schools locally and nationally are not unionized, and in Chicago these teachers are prevented by law from joining the Chicago Teachers Union. It is no surprise, then, that Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who inaugurated his tenure in Chicago by privatizing the city’s garbage collection services, has now turned his attention to privatizing education by committing to the expansion of charter schools. A nonunion workforce is flexible, docile, and cheaper.

The increase in charter schools started prior to the  presidential election, but the Obama administration’s Race To The Top (RTTP) legislation of 

supported and accelerated the development of privatized education settings and organizations: RTTP linked state funding for education to the approval of charter schools. The backdrop for this funding scheme and the ongoing loss of unions and unionized workers is globalized free enterprise that endorses the worldwide replacement of public systems with private sector solutions.

Privatizing public spaces and institutions has long required the production of disposable identities as targets for anger and disgust. In dismantling welfare and public education, the targeting and dehumanizing of benefit recipients calls the

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

legitimacy of a public institution or program in question and asserts the impor- tance of market-driven regulation. In current education policy, the image of the lazy, negligent, unionized female teacher has emerged as a figure to despise.

Beyond the educational work site and the profession of teaching, the workplace picture is grim. In January , the Bureau of Labor Statistics released  data on rates of unionization in the United States “falling to . percent of the American work force in .” As queer employment activist and lawyer Richard Blum notes, the current labor reality is anti-union and anti-worker.

Unions represent less than  percent of private-sector workers and fewer and fewer public sector workers. The few unions that remain often find themselves bargaining over how much will be cut. Where there are no unions, there is no one in the institutional role of shop floor watchdog, whether that “shop floor” is in a factory, an office, a restaurant or caterer, a school, a hospital or nursing home, a theater, or anywhere else that workers work. Arbitrary and abusive conduct, no matter how illegal, has no institutional check where there is no union.

We’ve taken the time to present a snapshot of the employment context for today’s education workers as a reminder that schools are increasingly sites of unprotected and temporary labor. Are teachers and other adults likely to advocate for queer youth and take other, often related, unpopular positions without rights to due process? Our own research indicates that they may not, leaving schools without “out” LGBTQ teachers and staff, advocates for queer youth, and facilitators for Gay Straight Alliances and other clubs supportive of youth exploring gender and sexuality. For example, in one Chicago charter high school with many LGBTQ-identified staff and faculty members, after the Board of Directors instituted a policy that forbade employees from talking about their “personal lives” at school, the lesbian advisor to the Gay Straight Alliance removed herself from that position. No other employee could be found to take on the role, and the previously active student club was disbanded.

From our experiences working and teaching in urban public schools and learning alongside both new and veteran teachers, we know that teachers are not lazy and incompetent workers who care little about children. What we observe is teachers negotiating the challenge of isolation in their profession, working hard to not let standardized tests dominate their curriculum, and struggling to support students who are growing up in communities devastated by decades of poverty, policing, and disenfranchisement. Yet, even with these conditions, we recognize

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that teachers are not unlike other workers. Employees in all sectors are often fearful of engagement beyond their daily tasks. Teachers, who already work long days—research shows that Chicago’s teachers work nearly  hours each week— are reluctant to take stands on potentially controversial issues, worried about not being hired or promoted if they are “out” or “too gay,” and concerned that their principals might single them out for retribution; if they work at will, they will have little or no right to due process in these cases.

Yet, employment protections do not guarantee that teachers will speak out against compulsory heteronormativity, or include LGBTQ curriculum in courses. In our work assessing teacher education and social work programs in Illinois for inclusion of LGBTQ lives in policies, in content in curricula and an LGBTQ presence on campus, we know that teacher educators feel poorly prepared to address sexual orientation and gender identity, and that many programs include little or no information in these areas. In this context, it isn’t surprising that teachers may find addressing heteronormativity, homopho- bia, and related topics in their classrooms difficult. For us, this reinforces the fact that the employment protections offered by labor unions are crucial: they offer a measure of protection and collective support that create working conditions that would increase the possibility that workers could support social justice.

Although our discussion focuses on queer lives in schools, always through an intersectional lens, good working conditions built through collective bargaining have the potential to shape justice struggles and affect many communities. Although queer lives and views may be inflammatory in schools, there is an abundance of research showing that Black and Brown youth, disabled and immigrant children, girls, and others who have been rendered vulnerable socially suffer in educational, as well as other institu- tional settings and that they and queer youth are targeted for punishment and other abuses at rates disproportionate to their numbers. As we write this article, a report issued jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP in January  details the harsh punishment, from paddlings to arrests, meted out to African American students in Mississippi, with youth subjected to police interventions for “offences” including peanut fights, flatulence, and dress code violations. The research has not yet been completed that will show how “right to work” laws that make it difficult for labor to organize, and shape how education employees feel able (or not) to identify and amend unjust school conditions. Yet, it seems safe to claim, that students will benefit when school employees have workplace protections that foster speech, independent thinking, and advocacy, not fear of job loss.

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

) ) ) From Equality to Liberation

The increased legitimacy and limited success of LGBT rights-based movements in the United States (and beyond) motivate us, and other allies, to step back and engage in a critical assessment of LGBT and other social justice organizing. By legitimacy, one example is Hillary Clinton’s contribution of a video statement to the It Gets Better Project online archive, “Tomorrow will be better,” and her statement in Geneva, in December , that “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” at which time she announced a new $ million “global equality fund” for LGBT people worldwide. Just a few months later, in June , Clinton made a special statement of support for gay people in honor of the LGBT Month that President Obama had just made official. By Decem- ber , blogs were buzzing that soon Clinton would also endorse gay marriage.

Clinton’s statements and actions, through one framework, denote a gay success. Lesbian and gay lives are on the agenda of the U.S. Secretary of State. But, simultaneously, these steps toward recognition and legitimacy are the moments when LGBTQ movements must step back and assess: what are our goals? Equality—or full participation in the status quo—or liberation and collective transformation? We argue that over the last  years the focus of mainstream lesbian and gay organizations in the United States, although never monolithic, has been assimilation, characterized by a prioritization of issues such as full and equal participation in the military and marriage. Along with many other grassroots justice organizations across the United States, including Queers for Economic Justice, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Gender JUST, we question this focus. Although marriage brings with it a host of benefits, this access is offered at a moment when fewer individuals receive any state support or protection. Readers, we are sure, can name the markers of our crumbling public sphere: Ongoing struggles to access quality and affordable health care; the decimation of unions and concurrent explosion of contingent and “just in time” workers without any benefits; the eradication of public housing and challenges to rent control; the continued denial of child care and parental leave benefits. And who can forget drone strikes? Beginning in , strikes by the driverless aerial vehicles initiated by the Obama administration and endorsed by the U.S. Secretary of State Clinton have killed thousands of civilians, including children, in Pakistan, Yemen, and other parts of the world, even as these attacks have been described as a “mass torture” of residents of these and other countries. For us, the narrow goal of equality pursued by mainstream lesbian and gay organizations signifies acceptance of an unequal and unjust world.

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This trade-off, of goodies for some and crumbs for many (against the back- ground noise of drones), has never been more apparent than in schools. With stalled and impoverished conversations of the state’s abandonment of any form of wealth redistribution for K– public education, frontal assaults on teacher’s unions, bipartisan support of the privatization of schools through charters, consistently “disproportionately” high suspension and expulsion rates for Black and Latino/a students, LGBT educational justice movements are being officially invited to partially participate, and to de facto legitimate this “new normal” in education. It is at these moments, when those outside the dominant paradigm are promised access to power, that critical engagement and analysis are vital. As Audre Lorde noted, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” Her statement and work remind us to link our permanent war economy to movements for queer rights and the emergent “pro gay” domestic policies to practices beyond our borders. In particular, as one of our sites of organizing and research is the public school, we apply this lens to public education. Gay equality might mean a network of strong and punitive anti-bullying laws, but an agenda of queer liberation and transformation trans- lates into building up democratic and well-resourced public schools in flourish- ing communities that are invested in challenging heteronormativity and other injustices.

The importance of critical engagement and reflexivity is heightened as select gay and lesbians are afforded political and economic privileges. As an example,  opens with a report that David Blankenhorn, a conservative “traditional- marriage” activist who is a member of the Institute for American Values, is reorienting the work of his organization from opposition to “gay marriage” to broad-based pro-marriage advocacy that “bring[s] together gays and lesbians who want to strengthen marriage with heterosexuals who want to do the same.” A platform document issued by the Institute shifts attention from the immorality of queers to the impoverished values of the poor, noting that, “marriage is rapidly dividing along class lines” and asking, “What economic policies strengthen marriage?” and “What marriage policies create wealth?” Rich queers who want to marry, this formulation implies, aren’t the problem they were previously identified as; instead, the destroyers of “American values” are the economically unstable who increasingly choose not to marry. Again, assimilation is the goal for organizations such as the Institute for American Values; gays who get with “traditional” programs of wealth accumulation and gay marriage are just fine.

Recent work in queer theory that locates sexuality in practices of citizenship, statehood, and nationalism points to the demand for assimilation as a retraction of rights and, more important, as an acquiescence to deeply problematic

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

constructions of the state. “The collaboration between heteronormativity and patriotism allows for certain forms of queerness (or sexual ‘deviance’) to be incorporated into the project of national reproduction while others are rendered continually abject, unworthy, or unable to be assimilated into either hetero- or homonormative citizenship.” Following this logic, if you support the military, are prepared to “cover” and pass as if you do, or engage in marriage, home ownership, two-parent families, monogamy, and massive consumption, and in other “coverings” of difference or indicators of alignment with normative ways of living, you are worthy of incorporation into the state and might even be eligible for some social protections. If not? Oh, well, too bad—your family forms, living arrangements, and more will now be disparaged and framed as unworthy of support.

These trajectories towards state power and protection are not new and LGBTQ activists must continue to engage in a close examination of interrelated social movements that have faced similar tensions. We can point to the domestic violence movement as a telling example: Why—with thousands of shelters for women, training for police on how to recognize domestic violence, and eight professional journals that publish scholarship on violence against women—are women, particularly those of color, still harmed by men? Why are our prisons and courts overflowing with poor people—including our Black, First Nations, Latino/a, noncitizen, and queer neighbors—and yet people do not feel any safer? And how is it that the multiple and overlapping forms of violence that affect many marginalized women—particularly transwomen and Black, Latina, First Nations, queer, and disabled women—do not count as an alarming national epidemic of violence and ongoing harm?

) ) ) Building Queer and Just Futures

Because the state offers limited support of select gay lives, it is vitally important to examine what is masked or erased by moves toward assimilation and the accrual of limited rights. Our previous examples highlight how increased em- ployment protections for gay teachers and anti-bullying policies are more com- plex and less clear as successes when these gains are analyzed in a wider landscape. We have argued in this article that we must acknowledge the ways that youth are harmed by anti-LGBTQ bullying, that they need assistance, including social services, in the immediate moment; and we must also link these painful and damaging individual experiences to social structures, including heteronormativ- ity, misogyny, and transphobia, that foster violence. Further, we have used

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intersectional framing to insist that anti-bullying legislation is not just ineffec- tive, it supports institutions that reflect and reproduce racism, gender confor- mity, and class oppression. Bullying is pervasive; it is rampant in our schools and on our streets, within our places of employment and throughout our legal and judicial systems, and conveyed daily in our media and through corrosive dis- course that labels some young people, in the United States and across the globe, “terrorists,” and others “fags,” “dykes,” and “intrinsically disordered.” The violence is real and rife; addressing bullying demands immediate action, and also systemic analysis. Without this, our remedies are more likely to be flawed: Anti-bullying legislation advances criminalization as a response, but this neither addresses the root causes of harm nor creates safer schools for all, including queer youth. Short-term solutions that mask the real damage and potentially expand the problem are not solutions at all.

Because the stakes are so high, it is critical that we remember the strength of coalition politics, and of inter- and intra-movement organizing: Our strategies are more powerful when we listen to and work with each other. LGBTQ liberation work includes challenging what the state frames as a “gay” issue (e.g., marriage or bullying), and insisting that good working conditions for teachers are good learning environments for teachers, as the Chicago Teachers Union argued as it built toward its successful  strike, but also flourishing living conditions for queers. In other words, LGBTQ justice depends on justice for others; our oppression and our freedom is linked.

Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall—these uprisings and affiliated justice move- ments, invoked by President Obama in his  inaugural address, pushed back against the politics of patriarchy, White supremacy, and trans- and homophobia that structure our everyday lives and institutions, from schools to courtrooms, and fought to see these systems dismantled. To continue this work today is to not settle for the status quo or the crumbs offered but to put “our queer shoulders to the wheel,” to quote Allen Ginsberg, exercising our radical imaginations and working together to build the world we need.

In our schools, we might start by remembering and teaching the complexities of our radical queer history: The communist, pacifist strategist of the Civil Rights Movement, Bayard Rustin. The fabulous Harry Hay, who used skills he learned through labor organizing and in the Communist Party USA to co-found the Mattachine Society, the Gay Liberation Front, and the Radical Faeries. And Sylvia Rivera, the transgendered Latina sex worker involved in the Stonewall uprising who spoke powerfully against police repression and police brutality. And Adrienne Rich’s life of resistance, exemplified by her refusal to accept the  National Book Award as an individual, instead claiming the award with her

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

other fierce, queer artist, and activist nominees, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. These people remind us of the power of community, and of the importance of learning across locations of struggle.

Yet, our work extends beyond teaching about and learning from our queer elders and predecessors to include yet-to-be imagined tactics developed in the moment. We are enlivened by and try to see queer justice organizing in schooling as a part of a contemporary flare up of radical anti-racist, feminist, anti-capitalist queer scholarship produced by thinkers tied to racial, economic, and queer justice organizations such as Communities United Against Violence in San Francisco or the Transformative Justice Law Project in Chicago, that interrupt the politically narrowing moves of mainstream gay and lesbian movements, including the march towards “gay marriage.” We are also energized by networks of youth, parents, and teachers from Los Angeles to Atlanta, who are speaking out and pushing back against punishing and undemocratic schools, communi- ties, and organizations. The work can seem daunting and the interconnections endless, but many of these groups—including the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union that is committed to racial, gender, and economic justice, and democracy in action for its members; and New York’s Audre Lorde Project, organizing to make commu- nities safer and stronger for LGBTQ youth of color—offer rich, radical visions and models that should inform our efforts to build queer and just futures.

We close with a caution and a return to the use of queer as a verb: The apparent clarity and unassailability of demands for equality in education and everywhere else is an illusion. A queer vision must recognize the rightness of Audre Lorde’s reminder that humanness is never simple; we are linked to each other. This understanding pushes those invested in LGBTQ lives to move beyond equality, which is necessary, but never sufficient, as a goal for our social justice struggles.

N O T E S

Acknowledgement: We work alongside many, within and outside organizations, only some of which are referenced in this article. We are humbled and enlivened by these communities, always generative, and look forward to continued pleasures, challenges, and labors.

. Our name order reflects a publishing rotation and not an authorship hierarchy; this is a cowritten article.

. Rebecca Cathcart, “Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns Town,” New York Times, February , , http://www.nytimes.com////us/oxnard.html.

. Ramin Setoodeh, “Young, Gay and Murdered,” U.S. News, July , , http:// www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek////young-gay-and-murdered.html.

 ( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

. It Gets Better Project, “What is the It Gets Better Project?,” March , , http:// www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/.

. Bully Police USA, “What is a School Bully?,” March , , http://www.bullypolice.org/. . Education Law Center, “Bullying,” March , , http://www.edlawcenter.org/issues/

bullying. html. . Matt Friedman, “Senate Pass ‘Anti-bullying Bill of Rights’ in Wake of Tyler Clementi’s

Death,” New Jersey Assembly, November , , http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/ //nj_assembly_ passes_anti-bullyi.html.

. Lisa Miller, “Cyberbullying Law Shields Teachers From Student Tormentors,” WBEZ: National Public Radio, February , , http://www.npr.org//// /cyber-bulling-law-shields-teachers-from-student-tormentors.

. Bully Police USA, “Georgia,” March , , http://www.bullypolice.org/ga_law.html. . Dean Praetorious, “Jamey Rodemeyer, -year-old Boy, Commits Suicide After

Gay Bullying, Parents Carry on Message,” Huffington Post, September , , http://www.huffingtonpost.com////jamey-rodemeyer-suicide-gay- bullying_n_.html.

. Tony Gonzalez, “Stunned Community Looks for Justice After Gay Teen’s Suicide,” Tennessean, December , , http://www.tennessean.com/article// NEWS//Stunned-community-looks-justice-after-gay-teen-s-suicide; Jason Shaw, “Ohio gay teen beaten in class,” October , : http:// technorati.com/lifestyle/article/ohio-gay-teen-beaten-in-class/.

. Julie Cannold, “Teen Says Bullies Beat Him, Sues New York Schools,” CNN Justice, June , , http://www.cnn.com////justice/new-york-bullying- attack-blind.

. Cheryl Armstrong, “Heartbreaking School Bullying Complaint,” Courthouse News Service, June , , http://www.courthousenews.com////.htm.

. Armstrong, “Heartbreaking School Bully.” . Colleen O’Connor, “Colorado Parents of Transgender st-grader File Complaint Over

Restroom Ban,” Denver Post, February , , http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ ci_/transgender-fountain-st-grader-banned-from-girls- bathroom#ixzzMCIfuO.

. Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” in Black Queer Studies. A Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ), .

. Jason Horowitz, “Mitt Romney’s Prep School Classmates Recall Pranks, But Also Troubling Incidents,” Washington Post, May , , http://www.washingtonpost. com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also- troubling-incidents////gIQAWOKFU_print.html.

. Horowitz, “Mitt Romney’s Prep School Classmates.” . Eric Rofes, A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status

Queer? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Inc, ), .

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

. We use “queer” in two ways—as an adjective and as a noun that can, and here does, refer to all sexualities and gender identities that are outside and challenging of normative, binary categories. We also invoke the radical form of queer that Mary Bryson and Suzanne de Castell, Cohen, and others have urged, as a verb, or a stance and tactic that assumes and honors human complexities and demands action toward ending oppressive social systems that limit our gendered, sexual, and creative lives. Mary Bryson and Suzanne de Castell, “Queer Pedagogy: Praxis Makes Im/Perfect,” Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation  (): –; Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.”

. Cathy J. Cohen, “Race and Queer Theory in the Age of Obama,” Lecture, ICI Berlin, June .

. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, ), . . Sarah Schulman, “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing,’” New York Times, November , ,

http://www.nytimes.com////opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays- as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r�.

. Suzanne Eckes and Martha McCarthy, “Teachers’ Privacy Rights: A Legal Memorandum,” Quarterly Law Topics for School Leaders  (): –.

. “At-will” is an employment status that means an employee can be terminated without notice, at any time, for any nondiscriminatory reason. Further, employers can change terms of employment at any time. National Conference of State Legislatures, “The At-Will presumption and exceptions to the rule” (): para. – , http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/labor/at-will-employment-overview.aspx.

. Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owens, “Precarious Work, Women, and the New Economy: The Challenge to Legal Norms,” in Precarious Work, Women, and the New Economy, ed. Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owens (Oxford: Hart, ), –.

. Rebecca Bohrman and Naomi Murakawa, “Remaking Big Government: Immigration and Crime Control in the United States,” in Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-industrial Complex, ed. Julia Sudbury (New York: Taylor and Francis, ), .

. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press ), .

. Joseph G. Kosciw, Emily A. Greytak, Elizabeth M. Diaz, and Mark J. Bartkiewicz, “The  National School Climate Survey: The Experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Students in Our Nation’s Schools,” GLSEN, http:// www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/.html.

. Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, and Bartkiewicz, “The  National School Climate Survey.”

. C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ); Lance T. McCready, Making Space for Diverse Masculinities: Difference, Intersectionality, and Engagement in an Urban High School (New York: Peter Lang, ).

 ( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

. Elizabeth M. Diaz and Joesph G. Kosciw, “Shared Differences: The Experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students of Color in Our Nation’s Schools,” GLSEN, January , : , http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/ news/record/.html.

. Liliana Segura, “Do Hate Crimes Laws Do Any Good?” Alternet, August , , http://www.alternet.org/story//do_hate_crime_laws_do_any_good/? page�entire; Dean Spade, “Keynote Address: Trans Law and Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape,” Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review  (): –.

. Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “SLRP on Hate Crime Laws,” (), http://srlp.org/ our-strategy/policy-advocacy/hate-crimes/.

. Segura, “Do Hate Crimes.” . Andrea Ritchie, “Arrested Justice: A Conversation on Black Women, Violence, and

America’s Prison Nation,” Experimental Station, Chicago, IL, December , . . Kathryn E. W. Himmelstein and Hannah Bruckner, “Criminal-Justice and School

Sanctions against Nonheterosexual Youth: A National Longitudinal Study,” Pediatrics  (): –; Angela Irvine, “LGBT kids in the prison pipeline,” May , , http://thepublicintellectual.org////lgbt-kids-in-the-school-to- prison-pipeline/.

. Irvine, “LGBT kids.” . Ibid. . Susan Page, “Poll: Attitudes towards gays changing fast,” USA Today, December ,

, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics////poll-from-gay-marriage- to-adoption-attitudes-changing-fast//.

. Rebecca L. Stotzer, “Violence against Transgender People: A Review of United States Data,” Aggression and Violent Behavior  (): –; Shannon E. Wyss, “‘This Was My Hell’: The Violence Experienced by Gender Non-Conforming Youth in U.S. High Schools,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education  (): –.

. Russell J. Skiba, Robert S. Michael, Abra Carroll Nardo, and Reece Peterson, “The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment,” Urban Review  (): –; U.S. Department of Education, “Elementary and secondary school survey ,” (); Skiba et al., “The Color of Discipline.”

. Anne Gregory, Russell J. Skiba, and Pedro Noguera, “The Achievement Gap and the Discipline Gap: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Educational Researcher 

(): . . In one study of  states’ prekindergarten programs published in , boys were

expelled at a rate over more than . times that of girls. African Americans attending state-funded prekindergarten were about twice as likely to be expelled as Latino/a and Caucasian children, and more than five times as likely to be expelled as Asian-American children; William Gilliam, “Prekindergarteners Left Behind:

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

Expulsion Rates in State PreKindergarten Programs,” FCD brief series No. , May :, http://www.fcd-us.org/PDFs/ExpulsionFinalProof.pdf.

. Gilliam, “Prekindergarteners Left Behind,” . . Daniel J. Losen, and Russell J. Skiba, “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and

Racial Justice,” The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, National Education Policy Center, Boulder, CO, October, .

. Losen and Skiba, “Discipline Policies.” . Ibid., . . Losen and Skiba, “Discipline Policies”; Alan Schwarz, “School Discipline Study

Raises Questions,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com//// education/discipline.html; Himmelstein and Bruckner, “Criminal Justice and School Sanctions.”

. Jens Erik Gould, “Seth’s Law: Can a Bullied Boy Leave California a Legal Legacy?,” Time, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/,,,.html.

. Winnie Hu, “Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot,” New York Times, August , , http://www.nytimes.com////nyregion/bullying-law-puts- new-jersey-schools-on-spot.html?pagewanted�all.

. Damon T. Hewitt, Catherine Y. Kim, and Daniel J. Losen, The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, ).

. Amanda E. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Colorline in Classrooms and Communities (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, ); Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, ); Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools and the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ).

. Beth Richie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Male Violence and the Build-up of a Prison Nation (New York: New York University Press, ).

. Jane Hereth, Mariame Kaba, Erica R. Meiners, and Lewis Wallace, “Restorative Justice Is Not Enough: School Based Interventions in the Carceral State,” in Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline, ed. S. Bahena, P. Kuttner, and M. Ng (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review, ).

. William H. Watkins, ed., The Assault on Public Education: Confronting the Politics of Corporate School Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, ).

. Greg Toppo, “USA’s Top Teacher’s Union Losing Members,” USA Today, July , , http://usatoday.usatoday.com/news/education/story/--/Teacher- unions-education//.

. Toppo, “USA’s Top Teacher’s Union.” . National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast facts: Charter schools,” The

Condition of Education 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id�. . Gary Miron and Brooks Applegate, “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in

 States,” Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), June, , http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Think_Twice/TT_Miron_CREDO.pdf.

 ( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

. Pauline Lipman, “Neoliberal Urbanism, Race, and Urban School Reform,” in The Assault on Public Education: Confronting the Politics of Corporate School Reform, ed. W. Watkins (New York: Teachers College Press, ), –; Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, ), .

. Anistasia Ustinova, “Charter-School Growth Fuels Chicago Teacher Fears,” Bloomberg Business Week, September , , http://www.businessweek.com/news/ --/charter-school-growth-fuels-chicago-teacher-fears.

. Becky Vevea, “The Proportion of Privately Run Chicago Public Schools to Increase,” WBEZ, December , , http://www.wbez.org/news/proportion- privately-run-chicago-public-schools-increase-.

. Mike Klonsky, “We’re Public . . . No, We’re Private,” In These Times, July , , http://www.inthesetimes.com/article//were_public_ . . . _no_were_private/.

. Linda Lutton, “ New Chicago Schools in  Years . . . Again,” WBEZ, May , , http://www.wbez.org/news/education/-new-chicago-schools--yearsagain- .

. U.S. Department of Education, “States Open to Charters Start Fast in ‘Race to Top,’” December , , http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/// a.html.

. Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University, ).

. Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press Books ).

. Because  percent of all teachers are women, we flag that not only is the attack on teachers an attempt to weaken or dismantle labor unions, it is also a gendered assault, as a  editorial in Rethinking Schools highlighted: “The decimation of teachers’ unions and tenure structures seems aimed at forcing K– teaching back to the era before teaching became a profession, when young women—barely trained and constrained by regulations enforcing their clothing, living situations, and drinking—taught for a few years before they got married.” “Rethinking Schools Editors, The New Misogyny: What it Means for Teachers and Classrooms,” Rethinking Schools  (Summer, ): para. , http:// www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/_/edit.shtml.

. Steven Greenhouse, “Union Membership Rate Fell Again in ,” New York Times, January , , http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/ people/g/ steven_greenhouse/index.html ?inline�nyt-per.

. Richard Blum, “Equality with Power: Fighting for Economic Justice at Work,” A New Queer Agenda (): para. , http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer- agenda/equality-with-power-fighting-for-economic-justice-at-work/.

. Therese Quinn, “‘You make Me erect!’: Queer Girls of Color Negotiating Heteronormative Leadership at an Urban All-Girls’ Public School,” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education  (): –.

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

. Robert Bruno, Steven Ashby, and Frank Manzo, “Beyond the Classroom: An Analysis of a Chicago Public School Teacher’s Actual Workday,” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April , , http://www.ler.illinois.edu/labor/ images/Teachers%Activity-Time%Study%%%%-Final.pdf.

. Stacey S. Horn, Pamela Konkol, Kathleen McInerney, Erica R. Meiners, Connie North, Isabel Nuñez, Therese Quinn, and Shannon Sullivan, “Visibility Matters: Policy Work as Activism in Teacher Education,” Issues in Teacher Education 

(Fall ): –. . Himmelstein & Bruc̈kner, “Criminal Justice and School Sanctions”; Tamar Lewin,

“Black Students Face More Discipline, Data Suggests,” New York Times, March , , http://www.nytimes.com////education/black-students-face-more- harsh-discipline-data-shows.html?_r�; Irvine, “LGBT kids in the prison pipeline.”

. “Handcuffs on Success: The Extreme School Discipline Crisis in Mississippi Schools,” January , http://naacpms.org/wp-content/uploads///Handcuffs-on-Success.pdf.

. Statevideo, “Tomorrow will be Better,” YouTube video, :, October , : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v�zXBpWGCDtY.

. Alex Alvarez, “Hillary Clinton Tells Diplomats in Geneva that ‘Gay Rights are Human Rights,’” MEDIAite, December , , http://www.mediaite.com/online/ hillary-clinton-tells-diplomats-in-geneva-that-gay-rights-are-human-rights/.

. Annie Pei, “Hillary Clinton’s Gay Pride Month Message: ‘We Will Not Rest Until Equal Rights Are a Reality,’” MEDIAite, June , : http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary- clintons-gay-pride-month-message-we-will-not-rest-until-equal-rights-are-a-reality/.

. Paul Constant, “Hillary Clinton Will Soon Support Gay Marriage,” SLOG News and Arts, November , , http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives//// hillary-clinton-will-soon-support-gay-marriage.

. Queers for Economic Justice, http://qej.org/. . The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, http://srlp.org/. . Gender JUST, http://www.genderjust.org/. . New American Foundation, “Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative,” http://

counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones/; Robert Greenwald, “U.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Report and Video,” Huffington Post, December , , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us- drone-strikes-are-caus_b_.html; Ayobami Olugbemiga, “The Mass Torture of Drone Strikes,” Washington Times, December , , http://communities. washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/elections-fastbreak//dec//mass-torture- drone-strikes/; Adam Salazar, “Clinton Wants More Drone Surveillance Technology to Find Kony,” Info Wars, August , , http://www.infowars.com/clinton-wants-more- powerful-drone-surveillance-technology-to-find-kony/.

. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (New York: Crossing Press, ), .

 ( Therese Quinn and Erica R. Meiners

. Mark Oppenheimer, “In shift, activist enlists same-sex couples in a pro-marriage coalition,” New York Times, January , : para. .

. Oppenheimer, “In shift,” para. , . . Kathryn Edin, and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put

Motherhood Before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . Anna M. Agathangelou, Daniel M. Bassichis, and Tamara L. Spira, “Intimate

Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire,” Radical History Review  (): –; Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ); Duggan, Twilight of Equality.

. Agathangelou, Bassichis, and Spira, “Intimate Investments,” . . Richie, Arrested Justice. . Will Saletan, “Gland inquisitor: Pope Benedict’s anti-gay tendencies,” Slate,

November , : para. , http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/ human_nature///gland _inquisitor.html.

. Alan Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Book, ), .

)))

Therese Quinn is Associate Professor of Art History and director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She writes about the arts and cultural institutions as sites for democratic engagement and justice work; contributes a regular column to Yliopisto, the magazine of the University of Helsinki; and is a founding member of Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE, create.bogspot.com). Her most recent books, all collaboratively written and edited, are Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons (Routledge, ), Sexualities in Education: A Reader (Peter Lang, ), and Teaching Toward Democracy (Paradigm, ).

Erica R. Meiners is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Education at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of several books about educational, queer and anti-prison justice struggles including Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice (), Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons and the Making of Public Enemies (), and articles in AREA Chicago, Meridians, Academe, Social Justice, Women’s Studies Quarterly and No More Potlucks. Her work is supported by funds and awards from national and local organizations such as the Illinois Humanities Council, Woodrow Wilson Foundation for Public Scholarship, Atlantic Philanthropies and the U.S. Department of Education. She is a member of her labor union, University Professionals of Illinois, and actively involved in a number of nontraditional and popular education projects.

From Anti-Bullying Laws and Gay Marriages to Queer Worlds and Just Futures ) 

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