Pride Month Advocate Spotlight: Erin McLaughlin

Interview with Erin McLaughlin, On the Rise community advocate and co-coordinator of On The Rise’s Trans Access Program (TAP)

In all of her work with survivors and with unhoused folks, Erin McLaughlin is incredibly connected to how relationality shapes who and what we trust—and our access to safety, dignity, belonging, and ultimately, survivor justice. With a strong background in abolitionist and anti-carceral organizing, Erin initially moved to Boston for law school hoping to find her role as a lawyer in our movements. However, her value of relationships and building long term trust with clients brought her passions for advocacy and systems change to a much more relational role at On the Rise. Erin’s care ethic treats survivors and clients as the experts on their own lives, and she connects people to the resources and pathways right for them. Through On the Rise’s Trans Access Program (TAP), her combined knowledge of systems advocacy and her intimate understanding of barriers for queer and trans community truly shines through. Erin is the inaugural recipient of JDI’s Advocate of the Year Award, and we are so grateful for her work!

REN:

Tell me a little bit about yourself and any identities or communities that are important to you?

ERIN:

Oh, where to start?

Okay, I started off in Greensboro, North Carolina, and moved up here about six years ago. I identify as a queer trans woman, and I mostly move in those similar line circles of queer and trans folks. I have been doing human services work, either directly with trans people, specifically some of like support for folks who are incarcerated, and now, most recently, with folks who are currently unhoused.

Moving to Boston for law school and finding a different role in queer anti-carceral organizing

REN:

Tell me about how you kind of ended up coming to Massachusetts, and how it's been for you finding community here [and] making that huge move.

ERIN:

I moved up here with my partner six years ago, and I thought I was going to be a big shot movement attorney, so I had gone to law school, and I did a lot of experiential learning. I did more internships and externships than I think anyone would normally do, because I realized I did not like the classes and wanted to do a bunch of different types of work. And I realized that [being a lawyer] was not the role I was supposed to have [in] support of movements. I just did not find my soul and passion in that. And so I ended up doing a shift with this organization that I had been involved with a bit called Black & Pink which was this anarchist anti-carceral group that started off like pen pals and then grew into something like a lot bigger, shifted into there. And so a lot of my circles have been around this sort of Black & Pink also being like a specifically queer, anarchist, and anti carceral group. And so a lot of my social circles have revolved around this sort of radical queer experience, living in Boston and being engaged in this work or work like this, whether it is work or just sort of mutual aid and organizing outside of your 9-5.

REN:

I remember reading that you were part of Black & Pink for a while as well. And can you tell me a little bit about radical queer organizing, what brought you to that? What [exactly] does that mean to you now that you've done that work in so many different kinds of capacities?

How Erin’s trans identity strengthens her commitment to systemic change

ERIN:

It means a lot to me. Some of this is gonna be fresh off the dome, but what it means to me is that I think is…[as] someone with a trans identity, it sort of creates this sort of midlife alienation: in a way that you realized that you [have] always been [trans] but couldn't put a finger on it.

And you have to reconcile that experience in one of two ways: you either

1) decide to buy into the systems extra hard, or

2) you come to this realization that these systems end up largely being discriminatory

against you and against all of the folks that you care about, right?

There are ways that my life has been severely impacted by my trans identity, not only in my life and in the lives of those around me who I work with, [but] especially those who hold other marginalized identities [who] have different positions intersectionally, [in] racial demographics especially. And I think that it forces you to take on a radical perspective in terms of, how do I accept the way that I have been treated by society, in the ways that I was ostracized in different ways, especially growing up in the South.

And how do I try to make a world that is better for me and the people I care about now, and people who come along after?

REN: Absolutely, yeah, and is that kind of what initially brought you to law school?

For Erin, undoing carceral systems and logic is key to radical queer organizing

ERIN:

I got in a lot of trouble [in my] early years for fighting. I was fighting a lot, you know. And that's just the general anti-queer perspectives that other groups had, and that never really stopped. I just grew to understand it in different ways. And so by the time I got into college, I had stopped with the fist fighting, but I had started with the fighting against systems that I realized were creating those [anti-queer] attitudes and others, right? The quote, be gentle on individuals and, like, ruthless on systems, you know?

But I think I got into this sort of, like on-campus student organizing and protests. I thought maybe if I could figure out the right way to present information to people, that we could start to sway the public into dismantling these carceral systems, because I think [carceral logic] ends up being [how] a lot of our identities and societies are framed by: the idea that it's ethical to lock a human being up in a cage. My identity as a radical queer person has always been focused on what I see to be underlying systems that contribute to homophobia and transphobia, which tends to be things like our carceral system, or our economic inequality, or issues like that.

REN:

Absolutely. Would you anti-carceral and abolitionist organizing is where you got kind of your movement start, and also like, what are the ways that you like to engage with movement now?

ERIN:

For a little bit… Greensboro has a huge issue with, like, a housing crisis, right? And it has an active local organizing sphere, trying to support and uplift unhoused folks. And so I would try to contribute to that a lot, tangentially, in my school’s YDSA, and there's a group focused on assisting unhoused folks, and then, in addition anti-carceral work. So those two key points were things that got me more interested.

Erin’s role in movement is relationship-building, forming companionship with clients

But then it was anti-carceral work where I started to more formally engage in these systems through Black & Pink. And I [tend to focus on] my particular skills [where] I have developed a keen awareness of what a gentle persona is and how that can be, crucially necessary for people's lives. That's sort of something that you miss as a trans person, is you most often go through heavy sections of your life without actually having another person there who can be a gentle figure, who can provide that sort of, like, empathy and companionship, right?

To sort of walk with you and try to understand what you're going through, and try to, like, build that relationship with you, you know. And I think that is sort of what drew me to different like pen pal projects, was this idea of, like building those relationships with people who often don't get to be seen in an empathetic, who often don't get to be seen as a whole, people who exist outside of one particular fact of their lives, you know. And so I think in that way, that's what's drawn me to doing, like residential work, where it really felt like I got to form those deep, connected relationships with people who oftentimes weren't able to have that.

And especially now, a lot of our unhoused folks go throughout so much of their days, and it's hard to find someone that's safe to trust.

REN:

Especially when you are literally trying to survive or you are systemically disenfranchised, on every single level, there is both a propagandized version of you that reduces you to the violence you experience and reduces you to the very fair reaction to that violence.

ERIN: Right, exactly.

REN: But it also minimizes someone completely to that, yeah, like just those things. I think there's this movie I love called Nimona, have you heard of it?

ERIN: I have heard of it. I haven't had a chance to see it.

REN: It's very trans, it's very queer. It was dropped by Disney and Netflix picked it up. But in a lot of ways,it’s about how people with marginalized identities get monster-ified in a lot of ways. It feels like a very good metaphor for the ways that especially right now, we're seeing different communities villainized by any action that they take.

The question at the center of the film is “am I a monster? Am I a monster because I'm simply reacting to violence, or is this like inherent to me?”

I really love what you said about having a gentle persona, and getting to be that person who sees someone wholly and most of your work feeling really relational, ultimately. And I also think that that is something that feels really missing, oftentimes, from organizing spaces, or movement spaces where you are speaking- where you are fighting ultimately, or speaking some kind of truth to power. Can you tell me a little bit about what it's been like to do the work that you're doing now? In terms of getting to build relationships with the people you work with, especially during times that feel so urgent?

Erin’s care ethic with clients is rooted in earning trust, not in leveraging her advocate expertise

ERIN:

A lot of it ends up coming down to like a practice demeanor. I think a lot of folks have this idea caring can by itself- or that [caring is] a natural thing that a person does. And I think that is like, patently untrue.

REN: Caring is a learned behavior that you need to learn and practice how to do, especially in a society that devalues it.

ERIN: And so I think a lot of it ends up being the longer that I'm in it, and the more that I intentionally learn how to present myself in a way that is empathetic, caring and understanding, right? To boil it down, a lot of it comes down to letting yourself be gentle and curious with someone and to seek to understand them as a human being, and that from there, the things that you learn about, the words that you say, the body positioning, the way that you interact with folks.

I heard a story about one of the loca more radical healthcare orgs that when they started, the originator made everyone [on the team] wash the feet of all of the unhoused folks who would come in for services, because that was the way of thinking: “okay, yes, you are someone who has this particular set of skills and understanding and experience.” But that does not make you, by virtue, actually better than the person that you're working with. Your job is to actually overcome those systems that privilege you against this person, to overcome those in that person's eyes, to be able to like work . And so I think a lot of it is figuring out the best way to present yourself as someone who is worthy of this person's trust. As someone who will walk with them instead of trying to leave them where they want to go. If that makes sense.

Advocacy at On the Rise gave a name to the work Erin had been already doing for years

REN: No, it absolutely does make perfect sense. Tell me more about, like, what it's been like at On the Rise, and what it's been like making a career shift from law school.

ERIN:

In some ways it's a career shift, and in some ways it is a very logical continuation, funneling up. So I have been at On the Rise almost two years now, just a few months shy of two years. On the Rise just sort of puts a name to a lot of the core skills, learned behaviors, and the positionality that I think I had already begun to adopt and realize was needed in any of the work that I did.

For example, there’s an idea around radical legal tactics that focuses on approaching the individual as equally knowledgeable about the important circumstances surrounding what you're working on as you are–despite being the attorney. And I think that in and of itself echoes a lot of where you are coming from. It is trying to remove yourself from a position of authority and de-emphasize the hierarchy that outside of that work might like be forced upon you to and that this also emphasizes letting it be driven by the person who is seeking services.

You are someone who is looking to engage in a partnership, like the attorney is someone who is looking to engage in a partnership with the client. And so instead of it being like the attorney called all the shots, they present it to the client who makes an informed decision about what to do. And that comes down to things an attorney might not think are feasible, and that is a sort of radical lawyering position to take.

On the Rise’s particular approach to working with unhoused communities

And I think that that is effectively the same thing as any of the work I do at On the Rise as being self-directed by the person who's unhoused. Because it's not like when someone comes in, there are other service providers that say, “Okay, you're going to sit here and we're going to go through 50 different housing applications with you, right?” And I think On the Rise’s position is something that is very different. And the reason why I particularly came here, as opposed to just any other place, is that it's more about: even if everything in [an advocate’s] experience would lead me to believe that the clear category that this unhoused person should choose to pursue if they come out with x y z… The client has the right and more knowledge and understanding about their situation than I do. And so I should really put aside my own biases about what's most important and walk with them to like x y z, you know, even if that's outside of what I would if I could choose for them to be most important.

I think these two things are actually very connected, and doing the work in an organization like this gives more leeway, because in a lot of ways, the legal system isn't built for an attorney to actually understand and treat their client as a whole person. In the legal system, the client is something to be managed and adjusted for getting the best outcome.

REN:

Yeah, absolutely, I think the same can be said for a lot of the systems that advocacy interacts with, like the medical system.I think part of why trans people experience so much medical violence is because any kind of aberration from being the perfect patient, which can include things like having experienced abuse, which means that you have to address both like, physical and mental health, or behavioral health symptoms. It reminds me a lot of the medical emphasis that prioritizes a patient that can be cured. It ends up becoming how can you fit a client or the person who's receiving service into a box–even though it really sucks that life affirming and life necessary things are viewed as services for a client.

Tell me about what it means to be working with survivors specifically through the lens of homelessness. I think it's really wonderful to me when I get to hear someone talk about the ways that housing justice specifically is survivor justice and is like, paramount to it.

No right to shelter in MA is a major issue for unhoused survivors

ERIN:

Absolutely. If you are a survivor who is seeking to be able to safely distance themselves away from someone causing harm, housing and equal access to like, these sort of concrete means for daily living is absolutely paramount someone being able to do that. There are a lot of folks who come in with relationships they are seeking to flee from that start to take place in the shelter in which they live. And because there is no right to shelter in Massachusetts anymore, and because we do not have shelter capacity anymore, it means that you are essentially stuck between choosing that or choosing the street, regardless of whether it is 15 degrees or 105 outside, right?

Your choice for safety is invariably mitigated by the fact that society has deemed it unimportant for you to have access to a bed. So a lot of it means being flexible, creative and empathetic in trying to work with the person on what they need. So because a lot of it is going to come down to them safety planning around what are we going to do, given the fact that you would like to be able to continue to sleep inside, how are we going to get you to still have that option when there is like an abuser who is living in that shelter, and it comes down to the person then has to make this moral and ethical choice of “would I rather try to make this partner using abuse unhoused”–because nobody wants to do that.

Many of our folks would be highly reticent to try to put this other person out on the street. So they have a hard time going to staff about it, like going to shelter staff about it, to seek these sort of, any sort of protections, or anything of that nature, which also stems from not having any sort of right to shelter, not having enough beds in Massachusetts, right? Because it forces two people who should not be fighting over who can have the right to sleep indoors into this position where now they're fighting over who has the right to be indoors.

Trans survivors face unique barriers to housing privacy and safety, as name changes in MA are legally required to be published in the newspaper

Especially for our trans population, one of the “fun” [sarcasm] parts about changing your name, is that there ends up being a high likelihood that you have to publish it in the newspaper. I've guided a little over a dozen trans folks in publishing their name, and I've yet to find any reliable way to avoid that, even no matter what the person has survived, I can put down the details of what happened, right? The court may still say no, but we'd really rather prefer you publish in the newspaper, because, you know, “trans people are scary and should be publicly managed” [sarcasm].

It really comes down to this idea that being transgender is a form of deceit and fraud that it needs to be published. And so it comes down to that. So it really intersects housing justice, along with even the minutia of legal processes. And just trying to live and have like, the right to be yourself as a trans person are always going to be complicated by the lack of resources and additional requirements being put on survivors.

The Trans Access Program at On the Rise integrates access throughout staff, clients, and the entire organization

REN:

Yeah.I feel like I remember when I changed my name, having to do that. It's deeply, deeply dehumanizing to say you have to declare yourself. Especially when changing your name has he potential to be such a tool of privacy and should get to be. Can you tell me about what it's been like to work specifically with trans and nonbinary individuals and about your work with the Trans Access Program?

ERIN:

So the work is sort of twofold, right? Because there is the Trans Access Program itself, and then there's also just the way that On the Rise, intersects with and works with trans folks. And I think work with trans folks is largely a matter of creating accessibility for trans people. And I'm using that term very intentionally, because it is a matter of creating accessibility. You can't just say, “okay, trans folks are welcome here, right?” And just like, hang up a big sign on the door that says, “Yeah, everyone, come in.”

That doesn't necessarily mean that your space is accessible or safe to trans people. This doesn't mean that the services that you offer are actually going to be equally enjoyed by transgender people as well as cisgender people, and this doesn't mean that the rest of your population is actually going to suddenly now be open and completely understanding of trans folks and so on the rise does this very specifically in very concrete ways.

Over time, we figured out what are the most common needs that are special to a trans person who is seeking services that they would need for day to day life as an unhoused person? Right? So we do things like,

• we help get folks binders.

• We help get folks talking tape.

• We help get folks like, all sorts of different, like, affirming things that they actually need we have.

We started a separate little closet, because we let folks get clothes. And then we found out that all of our, you know, transmasculine folks, like all of our trans men, might not want to be wearing the dresses that could donate it by folks in Cambridge. And so making sure that we are getting also masculine clothing, again, creating new altering services that we provide to make sure that they can be equally enjoyed.

The Trans Access Program was also a recognition that we can do better in terms of making sure that our [shelter] participants completely understand why we're doing this and why it's important to do this, as well as seeing how we can adjust and make the lives of trans folks in Greater Boston even somewhat more manageable. [We do that] by helping train local shelters and service providers in what it is like and why they need to actually work with trans folks, because not everywhere approaches it the way we do.

And that's another thing that I find to be incredibly special, and why, again, I'm working it on the rise, and maybe not just anywhere that works in this field. So what that has been in the past, we did a lot of trainings with local shelters, and we had our own trans population become like key players in these because we feel like it's important to scale up our trans folks, and also that, you know, it keeps us grounded. And actually will say, like it keeps us grounded in the messaging, because it's not just us as staff who are talking about what we think it is important. It is the people who are actually being impacted day by day, explaining, this is what it means to be me. This is what my experience is going through life here, and this is how you can, like, fulfill your mission in what you do for cisgender folks.

For me, this is also meant in the sort of analysis I've come on to help co lead TAP [Trans Access Program]. It's also meant putting on these essentially monthly presentations to our own participants and like our own staff, about what it is to be trans and why it is important that trans folks feel accepted here, and like are accepted here. And so it's also been wonderful to learn a lot of lessons around what it's like to build solidarity with cis[gender] unhoused folks in sort of approaching and understanding and like navigating through all of the media that any person encounters, whether they're housed or not. That is, you know, talks about how “evil” and “dangerous” trans folks are, and what it's like to sort of break that down and help create these more open and honest conversations. To create, yeah, again, to create solidarity and create community.

Coming to trans identify and finding trans community

REN:

totally, that's amazing. Can you tell me about how you came to understand yourself as trans, and what trans community means to you?

ERIN:

yeah. So I think my own, my own general story, I think like

ERIN:

I realized in a way that I could not rationalize away from during COVID [lockdown], you know, where I think that's where a lot of us ended up being at home alone in our heads, where we were like, “Okay, now there's something here that I gotta, I gotta figure out.” But of course, then once you start realizing that, and you get that lens to look through your life, you realize that it was there all along, you know, and I think I was generally aware [I was trans] since I was about 16. It was something that I had told other people in my life before I actually started doing anything about it in a lot of ways

To even tie it back to anti-carceral work, when I was 17 or 18. In a transphobic society, identifying as trans itself is a crime morally and often legally, often in terms of the resources you can have. I had internalized this idea that this conception of who I might be was so horrible to be this intense moral failing and thing I needed to hide, and coming to terms with that, and trying to accept the ways that wasn't true gave me a unique perspective when I was talking, and it made me very good at talking to people who currently incarcerated in ways that recognize their humanity–because other people had to do more work in breaking down this idea that, like, “oh, this person did something society said was wrong. This person stole this, this person did that.” And breaking that down, I was already primed to say, I don't have the same morals that society does. I don't share the same values that society does. And so I think that was a very early way that it came about for me.

Then the way that I found trans community, I think I've also had the experience that I know a lot of us have, where years down the line you realize that everyone you were friends with was trans. All of us came out of the woodwork. Throughout my time in even, like middle school, high school, college, any of the boys I thought I was friends with were not boys that whole time. And so I think sometimes it's in that way where, like the thing that exists in me sees the thing that exists in you, and like we form that bond without ever discussing it, until years down the line.

And then I think now it's very much like here's another way to explain it. When I interact with a lot of people, it almost always feels like there is a pane of glass between me and the other person, and that almost always exists as the way that I can tell that the other person is moving cautiously, carefully around, the fact that they can tell through my voice, my demeanor, my whatever, that I'm trans, and they don't really know what to do about it, because they're thinking objectively, “how do I be supportive, and how do I be affirming, and how do I be a good ally? But also, how do I treat her as like a human being?”

And you can feel that, it feels like a pane of glass between you. Trans community means that sometimes I like to go to a place where I can just be around other people where there isn't like separations between us, where I can talk to them and not feel like they are going through all these things in their head, or that they are working really hard over time to get my pronouns right, because you can see when someone's making that struggle, too.

But you know, trans community means having a space where you're allowed to go, where you can tell that people aren't doing that, and they just accept you and they understand.

REN:

Yeah, definitely. What else informs who your people are? What makes someone that you find kinship or co-conspiracy in?

ERIN:

The folks that I get along best with always tend to be folks who are either, either outwardly radicals. I worked and have done like organizing with, like sex work support groups, like in terms of allyship support groups, and for folks who are currently in that mode of economic engagement, and like other forms in which people end up becoming generally ostracized, right? So a lot of my friendships and close relationships are, in a way, like effects of intersectionality and solidarity, because it's, you know, yeah, that sort of recognition and that sort of mutual collaboration, does that make sense?

REN:

it absolutely does. What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing that you don't get to do necessarily in your job?

Recovery spaces and trans recovery community

ERIN: So one of the other things, and I think this is something that also is and also is not largely tied to the trans experience. I'm a person in recovery, right? And these things are just statistically, a lot of the trans folks here that any of us are going to run into are going to be people in recovery. A lot of the trans folks that any of us are ever going to interact with are going to be survivors. And these things that become not explicitly related, but oftentimes related. And so a lot of what I do ends up being like community building in recovery spaces. So I mean big shout out to The Phoenix. I go there most days, and that is a home, a gym, but on the face of it, but also largely a like sober support community that is aimed at providing a space that isn't a church basement where meetings are held for folks in recovery to meet and, like, engage with each other. And so that ends up being another space where, again, I also befriend a lot of the trans folks who go there And so I think that that is one big thing, like one of the bigger things that I end up doing outside of my explicit work.

REN: thank you.