The hospital, adorned with graffiti that reads “Trans Lives Matter,” and “Queer Freedom,” looms over a small corner of the beach. Some residents are advocating for a playground to replace the building, which threatens the de facto nude status of the beach by introducing children within eyesight.

 “It’s always been a queer beach,” said Victoria “Queen of Riis” Cruz from under her sun tent. “We’re born naked,

Victoria ‘Queen of Riis’ Cruz enjoys an afternoon at The People’s Beach, the queer Jacob Riis Park beach in Queens she has frequented since the 1960’s. Photo by Annie Iezzi

everything else is just an asset.” 

 Cruz has been frequenting The People’s Beach  since 1963. She said that convalescent patients from the hospital used to frolic with the beachgoers, enjoying the healing power of the ocean.

 The queer community and the nude community at The People’s Beach–with much overlap between them–have initiated petitions to #saveriisbeach. The beach would be closed during the demolition, and likely impacted moving forward, dependent upon the future development of the plot.

 Veronica Kirschner, a nudist who has enjoyed Riis for more than 10 years and who initiated a petition to make Neponsit Hospital a scenic landmark, worries about decreased privacy and increased police presence. She said that last week, she was harassed by park rangers demanding identification while she sunbathed in the nude.

 “When we come together in community, we are spectacular,” she said, regarding organizing efforts to mitigate harm from the demolition.

 Another petition, Protect NYC’s queer beach, has been circulating on Instagram, courtesy of Pony Knowles. An Instagram account, riis.beach, that posts historic and contemporary images of life at Riis, has also been instrumental to community mobilization. On that platform, concerned beachgoers organized a “save Riis beach” community Zoom to share information, skills, and ideas. More than 60 members of the LGBTQ+ community attended in support, and a second Zoom meeting is scheduled for Friday.

A memorial to the late Ms. Colombia, a beloved New York City queer icon, hung on the barbed-wire fence at The People’s Beach in Jacob Riis Park in Queens. Photo by Annie Iezzi

The effort to save the beach is as much rooted in its history as its present. Many worry about the destruction of a memorial to the late Ms. Colombia, a beloved NYC queer icon, that has long adorned the barbed wire fence between the hospital and The People’s Beach. A colorful wind spinner pokes out between the wires, twirling amidst blooming fake flowers and an homage rainbow dress.

 Queer beachgoers are especially concerned about the closure of the beach, community safety, and the possible diminishment of queer gathering space.

 “Riis Beach, particularly this corner in front of the abandoned hospital, is a safe haven for queer, trans and nonbinary folks, and it’s important that it remains that way,” said trans-inclusive sex educator Cristina Pitter.“The abandoned hospital reflects the way that marginalized people are also abandoned, so finding sanctuary here alongside this building goes hand in hand.”

 Pitter said that park facilities and accessible bathrooms could be constructed on the empty lot. Others on the beach said they would like to see a community or holistic healthcare center erected there, and some suggested that a privacy sand dune would suit the plot well.

 “One can only hope that New York City will have a proper infrastructure in place to build, protect and advocate for marginalized communities in this space,” Pitter said.

 Constructed in 1914 as a tuberculosis hospital, and officially known as the former Neponsit Nursing Home, the iconic Queens building has housed medical facilities since its erection. In 1998, the hospital made headlines in its last iteration as a nursing home, when the city relocated all its residents without warning and in the middle of the night, citing unsafe building conditions.

 Last spring, during a turbulent storm that hit the Rockaways, a chunk of corrugated metal flew off the hospital’s roof and into the driveway of a nearby house. According to Robby Schwach, the Deputy Chief of Staff under City Councilman Eric Ulrich, this active decay kicked off the city’s most recent move to demolish the hospital.

 “It would be crazy to keep paying money to maintain it, when it is falling apart,” said Schwach, who is also a community liaison for the office. He says that City Health and Hospitals, which owns the property, has selected the architecture firm Urbahn to design the demolition.

 Urbahn hopes to present a demolition plan this fall and could have “shovels in the ground” by spring, Schwach said. The city will also host a community meeting to hear the concerns of beachgoers and neighborhood residents alike. According to the original deed, if the plot is not used for a healthcare facility, it will automatically become a city park, but whether or not that park’s playground will abut The People’s Beach remains undecided.

The post Hospital Demolition Plans Worry Queer and Nude Beachgoers appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Katherine Franke is a Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University. She’s considered to be one of the “nation’s leading scholars writing on law, religion, and rights” and has written books on topics such as abolition and reparations. Now, Franke is joining a different distinguished group of Americans, she and her partner have decided to sponsor an asylum seeker, a young trans woman from El Salvador. They will take her in and be responsible for her until she is given permission to permanently reside in the country.

The woman, Ana, not her real name,  was being held in Tijuana when Franke met her. She was with a group of Columbia students volunteering with Al Otro Lado, an organization the provides legal assistance to migrants on both sides of the border when she met Ana and heard her story.  Ana told Franke about severe abuse she fled in El Salvador and then endured in Tijuana when she was sent there by the U.S. government. She says she was beaten and terrorized by drug cartels and the Mexican Federal Police.

“She had been into the clinic a couple of times, one of the other lawyers there had done an intake with her and had just been completely flattened by the story,” Franke explained. “We sort of took her under our wing when we were there, and get her ready as possible before she was put into detention.”

Sponsoring asylum seekers is not an answer to the number of people who are trying to enter the country, but it has been a method of welcoming refugees from into the U.S. from other parts of the world in times of crisis. Traditionally, sponsors were not private citizens like Franke – it was religious groups. According to a report from the Catholic church, they resettled 1.1 million refugees in the United States between 1987 and 2016.

Under a Trump administration policy (“Remain in Mexico”) that started in late January, Central American migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, are sent back to Mexico once they reach the U.S. border, to wait while their asylum claims are processed. In March, when Franke met Ana, it was projected that nearly 100,000 people  tried to cross to the U.S. – Mexico border just in the month of March.

Sponsoring asylum seekers is not an answer to the number of people who are trying to enter the country, but it has been a method of welcoming refugees from into the U.S. from other parts of the world in times of crisis. Traditionally, sponsors were not private citizens like Franke – it was religious groups. According to a report from the Catholic church, they resettled 1.1 million refugees in the United States between 1987 and 2016.

Franke did not become a sponsor through a religious organization, but instead through a non profit called Showing Up For Racial Justice. The group runs a program that supports “folks on the caravan by connecting them with volunteer sponsors in the U.S. in order to give them a chance to get out of detention and plead their case for asylum,” according to their website.

It was clear to Franke that Ana was facing incredible odds, and Franke was reminded  of the case of Roxana Hernandez, another trans woman who died in ICE custody in 2018. After weeks in Tijuana, Ana’s number was called – she would be moved to the San Ysidro, San Diego, CA., Customs, and Border Protection processing and detention facility – the same facility that held Hernandez before her death.

Franke decided to become Ana’s sponsor, responsible for her legal resettlement in the U.S. – she filled out the paperwork and will be responsible for everything from finding her a place to stay, to help with medical care, and bringing her to court appointments. When Ana entered detention she had Franke as a sponsor and a man named Jose Campos as her attorney. Campos spent the first week of Hernandez’s detention trying to find a way to get in contact with Ana. They hoped that because Ana had what so many did not – representation and sponsorship – that she would be processed and released quickly. Instead, she has been detained since she was taken from Tijuana.

“The biggest reason why we want to get them out of there is that they’re not being recognized as trans women, they are being put in with the men,” said Meredith Vina over the phone.

Vina is a trans woman living in San Diego. She and her wife Eleanor are both retired, and they have been able to visit Ana in detention.

“For example, we went to see Ana* today and she was in a room with five other men. Now, fortunately for her, we talked to her and we said: ‘Are you okay? Do you feel safe?’ And she said that the men were respecting her and actually respecting her pronouns so far.”

Vina not only visits Ana in detention – she is also sponsoring a trans woman seeking asylum from Central America.

“The way I got involved – It was just all these caravans coming up to Tijuana, and having friends getting involved in going down there and bringing supplies,” Vina said. . “Getting to the point where we said ‘How can we get these people to the United States?’”

The post Professor sponsors trans woman refugee appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The post LGBT Community Rally For Voters Who Support Their Community appeared first on Pavement Pieces.