visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. 

 grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.

Criminal Queers

The story of Rita Bo Brown, a working-class butch from rural Oregon, an
anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, ex-prisoner and member of the militant, underground George Jackson Brigade, active in the 1970s in the Pacific Northwest.

 is a portrait of revolutionary Rita Bo Brown, a white working class butch from rural Oregon who became known as “The Gentleman Bank Robber” in the 1970s for combining her butch style of dress with a polite way of demanding funds from bank tellers. The film moves between everyday moments with Bo in and around her current home in Oakland, California, and historical retelling of the events of Bo’s extraordinary life through interviews with Bo and her collaborators, archival materials, and rare social movement ephemera. 

 weaves together personal and political perspectives on 20th century social movement histories, including queer liberation in the 1960s; militant, underground activity with the George Jackson Brigade in the 1970s, a revolutionary prison abolitionist group; political prisoner support work in the 1980s, and prison activist work into the present day. Bo Brown is a model for how to lead a life of committed activism while maintaining a sense of humor and humanity.

Categories

Prison Abolition