By Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri
TRANScending Barriers isn’t your average nonprofit. An Atlanta-based re-entry program geared toward helping transgender individuals acclimate back into society after incarceration, it is a vital lifeline for the trans community it serves.
Although the US transgender population now exceeds 1.6 million, the trans community continues to face heightened levels of institutional and societal discrimination. Add other intersectional identities, such as race, into the mix and that discrimination increases.
Black trans people have an unemployment rate of 26 percent, two times that of the overall transgender community, and four times that of the general population. As a result, over 40 percent of the Black trans community has experienced homelessness for some period of time. Forty percent homelessness exceeds the general population more than five times. Further, more than 34 percent of Black transgender households report an annual income of less than $10,000. That percentage is twice the rate of the greater transgender community (fifteen percent), four times that of the Black population (nine percent), and eight times that of the broader US population. These circumstances often compel Black trans people to resort to engaging in illegal activities to support themselves and to survive—and at times, leading to arrest and incarceration.
Following time served, Black trans people often face a severe lack of resources to assist them with re-entry into society. This shortage of support oftentimes leads to their return to the prison system.
On April 17, 2017, TRANScending Barriers was born from the need to break this vicious cycle. The mission of the organization is clear: to empower the transgender and gender nonconforming community in Georgia through community organizing with leadership building, advocacy, and direct services so that lives can be changed and our community is uplifted.
Zahara Green, co-founder of TRANScending Barriers, knows firsthand the challenges of re-entry. Green, a Black transgender woman, found herself in and out of jail and prison from her late teens to mid-twenties. Each time Green was released, she struggled to transition into society, and would ultimately end up back in the system. In 2013, however, upon her release from prison, Green was sent to the Atlanta Transitional Center. There she learned job and interview skills, as well as how to enroll in school. Green’s experience at the Atlanta Transitional Center opened her eyes to the necessity of re-entry programs. She was released from the Center in 2014 and, three years later, started TRANScending Barriers along with co-founder Dionne Kettl. “We started our advocacy understanding that there were so many trans people being released in the state of Georgia,” Green says. “And recognizing that there was no organization providing these types of services for individuals, especially anybody that was directly impacted by the justice system.”
The statistics reinforce TRANScending Barriers’ call to action: upon release, Black trans people are confronted with high rates of discrimination in housing and employment. Twenty-six percent are unemployed, while 50 percent of employed Black trans people continue to face workplace harassment, discrimination, and staggering levels of poverty and homelessness. Nearly one quarter of Black trans persons have either faced eviction or have been denied housing due to transphobia. For most, without the proper identification and documentation, securing safe employment and housing is a seemingly never-ending issue, especially when incarceration records are taken into account. While many other re-entry programs help formerly incarcerated people to obtain identification, very few possess the knowledge and cultural competence to assist trans people with updating their gender markers on their IDs, a significant hurdle to successful re-entry for members of the trans community.
TRANScending Barriers, on the other hand, diligently works to provide trans people with the tools to not only re-enter, but to successfully re-enter, society. The organization helps those recently released from jail or prison to obtain their much-needed gender-marker changes and IDs, as well as assists them in securing safe housing and employment. Also crucial is TRANScending Barriers’ job interview and work skill training, which readies participants to re-enter the workforce.
Green, who is now a pre-law student at Clayton State University in Georgia, is a testament to how re-entry can allow trans people to quite literally transcend barriers and break the cycle of incarceration.
But even with the organization’s successes, there is still much work to be done. “We envision to [grow] considerably in [terms of our] service, support, and advocacy for our community,” Kettl says of the future of TRANScending Barriers. “We are actively working toward safe and secure housing and shelter, job fairs, proper care, and following of policy in Georgia’s jails and prisons in the hope that, in the future, these will not be pressing issues and obstacles for our community. [At the end of the day], we would like every trans, non-binary/gender nonconforming, and intersex individual to know that you are not alone in your journey. You have friends, family, and community that will receive you with open arms, and that will love you, support you, and cherish you.”
To learn more about TRANScending Barriers’ work, visit transcendingbarriersatl.org.
