Sylvia Rivera Law Project

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is a collectively governed organization founded in 2002 that provides free legal services to trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. SRLP has been a leading organization articulating a racial and economic justice–centered trans politics.

SRLP was founded by Dean Spade in August 2002. Spade’s initiation of the project emerged, in part, from his arrest for using the bathroom in Grand Central Station in February 2002. After news of his arrest spread, he received emails from dozens of trans and gender-nonconforming people across the United States who had experienced discrimination and police violence. Organizing around the arrest built on existing momentum in queer and trans communities responding to the June 2000 murder of Amanda Milan ...