Tourmaline (activist)


Tourmaline is an activist, filmmaker and writer based in New York City, currently the 2016-2018 Activist-in-Residence at Barnard Center for Research on Women. She is a transgender woman who identifies as queer. Tourmaline is most notable for her work in transgender activism and economic justice, through her work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice. In 2017, she edited the book Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, with co-editors Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. The book is part of a series called Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture by MIT Press.

Early life

Tourmaline grew up in a feminist household in Massachusetts. Her mother is a union organizer and her father is a self-defense instructor and anti-imprisonment advocate. Her sibling Che Gossett is a scholar studying AIDS activism and anti HIV criminalization work.
Tourmaline and Che went to a bilingual elementary school in Roxbury where "the teachers were abusive," and later attended suburban schools where they "went from living in poverty to going to school with wealthy people like Mitt Romney's kids."
Tourmaline moved to New York City for college in 2002 and has lived there ever since.

Education

Tourmaline attended Columbia University. She received a B.A. in Comparative Ethnic Studies. While at Columbia, she served on the President's Council on Student Affairs, a group which sought to advise the president on professors intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students amidst the MEALAC Scandal. She was also a chaplain's associate and a member of Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge. In addition, she taught creative writing classes at Rikers Island in New York.

Activism

Tourmaline has worked at various organizations dealing with transgender activism, economic justice, and prison abolition. She served as the Membership Coordinator for Queers for Economic Justice. At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, she served as the Director of Membership. She has been a featured speaker about transgender issues at GLAAD.
Along with Critical Resistance, Tourmaline organized a campaign with low income LGBTGNC that prevented the NYC Department of Corrections from building a $375 million jail in the Bronx. Tourmaline has done prison abolition work through a video series, titled No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition, with Dean Spade.
Tourmaline has also performed work as a community historian for drag queens and transgender individuals around the Stonewall Inn rebellion, observing how archives and repositories rarely prioritize saving transgender artist materials. Instead, Tourmaline has stated that these materials are typically "accidentally archived." Tourmaline has combated this with contemporary trans focused projects, including Tumblr blogs, such as , and podcasts.
Tourmaline was featured in Brave Spaces: Perspectives on Faith and LGBT Justice, which was produced by Marc Smolowitz and screened as a Human Rights Campaign event.
In January 2016, Tourmaline publicly supported a protest of the A Wider Bridge reception at the National LGBTQ Task Force's Creating Change conference in Chicago, which was intended to honor the leaders of Jerusalem Open House, the Israeli LGBTQ center. The protest, which turned violent, was characterized as anti-Semitic by opponents, although it featured a Shabbat service and was co-organized by the group Jewish Voice for Peace.

Films

Tourmaline has made numerous films about trans activism. STAR People Are Beautiful People, co-produced with Sasha Wortzel, documents the life and work of Sylvia Rivera and STAR. Her next work, also co-produced with Wortzel, Happy Birthday, Marsha!, explores the life of activist Marsha P. Johnson. Trans women played every major role in the film and queer and trans activists volunteered at the event.
In October 2017, Tourmaline alleged that filmmaker David France plagiarized her grant submission to the Arcus Foundation to create the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which debuted on Netflix on October 6. Tourmaline and collaborator Sasha Wortzel were applying for a grant for financial assistance to release their short film, Happy Birthday, Marsha. This claim was supported by transgender activist Janet Mock. France denied the allegation. Independent investigations launched by both Jezebel and The Advocate exonerated France and concluded that Gossett's allegations against him were without merit. The debate has brought up questions around cultural appropriation, who owns archival footage, and what constitutes an original creative idea.

Honors