http://truthoutsidehart.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/a-statement-on-accusations-made-around-camp-trans-2010/

A Statement on Accusations Made Around Camp Trans 2010

In Regards to Recent False Allegations Made Against Me

August 8^th, 2010

It was brought to my attention Friday evening that false allegations that I had allegedly written a letter implicating people at Camp Trans in involvement in potentially illegal activities, and allegedly planned to deliver it to Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest) but did not, and allegedly abandoned it when leaving Camp to somehow be found by someone who then propagated this information throughout Camp Trans, leading to allegations being made that I intended to snitch on attendees of Camp Trans.

I can not emphasize enough how false these accusations are, how hurtful they are, how damaging they have the potential to be, and how disgusted and angry I am that someone would either fabricate a letter and falsely attribute it to me, or falsely state that such a letter attributed to me existed. I am also angry and disgusted that they would then take actions that threaten my personal safety, credibility, place in communities, and well being, the safety and well being of the community, potentially make members of the community vulnerable to state repression. These false allegations only could serve to further escalate tensions at and outside Camp Trans in a year that the community has been torn apart by deep rifts, rifts that need to be addressed, but only after tensions have had a chance to deescalate, and everyone has a chance to step back and consider what happened.

On an ideological level, snitching is reprehensible. It destroys trust, damages our communities, refuses to respect a diversity of tactics, strategy, and opinions, and opens up members of our communities to state repression. My many comrades across the continent should hopefully realize that I, as someone who has long been devoted to Camp Trans, several radical communities, street medicing, and even more importantly prison abolition and a future stateless world should realize that snitching is entirely abhorrent to me, and is something I would never do in any circumstance, no matter what my personal ideological, tactical, or strategic disagreements with any person or any hypothetical action are. There are ways to have legitimate disagreements and to work them out. Snitching is most definitely not one of them.

While the ideological refutation should be enough, on the practical level, vague, unsubstantiated rumors began to spread Thursday afternoon, and I was gone by Thursday night. During that time, I was never privately alone; all my time was spent with friends or quite visible in public space. As such, it would have been impossible for me to write any letter of the sort and have it be unnoticed until after I left Camp. As an avid proponent of security culture, any time I have ever had an inkling of some kind of illegal or clandestine activity, I have immediately expressed the importance of silence and the absolute need to avoid gossip and rumors. Everyone must remember to keep such information to themselves. That being my position on the matter, had I heard any rumors being circulated at Camp, I would have immediately ended the conversation. To be clear: I am not privy to any such
information. My only other discussion with two other people involved with organizing Camp Trans that our only response would be if someone outside of Camp directed an accusation at Camp, which we would of course refute as antithetical to the purpose of Camp Trans and that no Camp Trans attendee would ever take any such action.

I also ask people to consider the alleged circumstances. Why would someone make such serious allegations in written form, and either abandon them to be found and spread around the community that not only are they a part of, but also that would have members targeted by such allegations? I think it should be obvious that this is far more likely to be the setup for a false allegation of snitching (“snitch-jacketing”) than any attempt at snitching – given community standards, and the very real threats to one’s place in community, credibility, and personal safety in being known to be a snitch, no one would set oneself up to be found out in such an obvious way. However, this serves the purposes of someone making a false allegation very well, despite the risks to both the person snitch-jacketing me and also to people who may be implicated by it. I became a target for this when I left Camp Trans Thursday night. My reasons for leaving when I did, with a trusted friend, were that I felt that I could no longer contribute as an organizer or medic, that the space had become hazardous to my emotional and physical well-being, and that I had become one of many focal points of tension in the community. My leaving was intended to not only protect my personal well being but to also hopefully reduce tensions in the community. Clearly, the fact that I am not there to defend myself in person was involved in choosing this tactic – I cannot demand the letter to be produced and shown to me to prove that it is not my handwriting, or to resolve the question of its existence. Given the alleged content of any letter that was fabricated, it is obviously to be hoped that the fabricated letter no longer exists. While it is impossible to have good, solid, clear, and frequent communication with an event that occurs in the woods, that fact that these allegations have been made clearly reflects that my leaving did not reduce tensions nearly as much as I desired.

This is quite clearly an attack on my credibility, place in communities, and safety by whomever originated these false allegations, and anyone who propagated said false accusations knowing them to be false. They not only have already caused me emotional harm and stress, they have brought stress on my friends and comrades who are supporting me, brought further stress on a community that has already developed deep rifts, and these allegations greatly increase the likelihood that these rifts may never heal, which is certainly not my desire. As a trans person and as someone who spent five years attending Camp Trans and four year organizing it, I am quite aware of how important and valuable a trans-centric space is, and literally experienced an incredibly deep sadness as I saw the community tear itself apart, and watched Camp cross the point where constructive, productive discussion of what was going on in the space and dynamics involved could no longer occur. Because this false allegation makes it ever more difficult for those discussions to occur, even if I was not the one targeted by them, I would still find them to be a horrible act for whoever originated them to take.

What is needed at this moment, for my credibility and well-being, the credibility and well-being of people targeted by either a letter that does not exist or was falsified, and the credibility of people who passed on these allegations believing them to potentially be legitimate is for the person who created this falsehood to step forward or be uncovered, and held accountable for their actions. I strongly encourage my statement to be spread widely, and especially to anyone who is passing along these allegations. While in this case, passing along these allegations is harmful, due to their falsehood, people who pass along these allegations in good faith are doing what they believe to be best for multiple communities, and should not suffer because of it. It is most important that we hold whomever made the initial false allegation and anyone who passed it along knowing it to be false accountable to not only the Camp Trans community, but to any other communities they are a part of, all communities I am part of, all organizations I am involved with or have trusted comrades in, and to all communities that these allegations have reached. Snitch-jacketing is a very, very serious issue, as serious as snitching itself, as it has the same potential to destroy communities and endanger people.

As far as to the matter of issues that occurred at Camp Trans, the existence and spread of this false allegation point to several things. First of all, that the issues at Camp Trans concretely effect many places and communities, some with only the most indirect of connections to Camp Trans, and that discussion not only of the issue of this false allegation but of other issues that arose will and has spread to other communities. While I am uncertain of what exact motivations would lead anyone to threaten my credibility, place in communities, and safety, take large risks involving other people, and risk the very continued existence of a community that so many people have found to be vitally important over the years, I feel obligated to point out that misogyny, trans misogyny, and femmephobia that I experienced played into some of the conflicts I had at Camp, and I think that these, and other oppressions, played into conflict in the actions of all sides of very serious disagreements about not only the purpose and strategy of Camp Trans, its past, present, and future relationship to Michfest, and responses to threats to the community from outside the community, and also larger issues of community, forms of organization, strategy, what tactics are appropriate in which circumstances, ideology, and identity. Legitimate disagreements can indeed be had on all of these issues, and they need to be discussed in a constructive and calm fashion, not in the way that caused tremendous emotional harm and stress to everyone who attended to Camp Trans this year. The fact that tensions have gotten this bad that someone was motivated to take the extreme action of falsely accusing me of being a snitch and the fact that I and other people left Camp Trans due to concerns about our personal safety clearly show that in a very important way Camp Trans 2010 was a failure, as much as it greatly saddens me to say that. I believe people need to give their opinions and analysis of what happened at Camp and how to prevent similar events from occurring in other communities, but that these need to be done after Camp ends, and tensions have time to lessen as much as they will both by the end of a very intense space and people being geographically separated. I hope that by refuting these false allegations that conversation and analysis can still productively occur.

In closing, I would like to reiterate both the seriousness of these accusations, the potential both they and snitching have to do enormous harm to many people and communities, and the categorical falsehood of the accusations. I would also like to thank my trusted comrades and friends who have already, upon discussing the matter with me, seen the self-evident falseness of these accusations, and have supported me emotionally, and by offering to spread this statement with their support far and wide.

In solidarity,

gayge