Even though transgender-themed TV shows like Transparent and Pose have achieved mainstream popularity, trans people still face huge barriers to employment, housing, and safety. In fact, many trans people of color say that their lives are harder than ever before. In this first episode, "I’m Seeing My Liberation Right Now," hosts Myrl Beam (Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Minnesota) and Andrea Jenkins (Minneapolis City Council) investigate how trans activists are grappling with those contradictions - and what they’re doing to change the system.

Guests include LaSaia Wade, founder of the Brave Space Alliance, Diamond Stylz of Black Transwomen Inc., Gabriel Foster, founder of the Trans Justice Funding Project, Rickke Mananzala, former Executive Director of FIERCE, and Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.

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Donate to Brave Space Alliance and Black Transwomen Inc! 

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Learn more at bit.ly/transcriptspod.

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Myrl Beam, senior project scholar, producer, and oral historian for the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project.

Sound design: Ariana Martinez

“Villian,” by Jupiter Gray

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Special thanks to:

Erisa Apantaku