Dr SM Rodriguez (they/them)

On Feb. 4, 1999. Amadou Diallo an African immigrant was shot 19 times in a hail of 41 bullets by NYPD, claiming his wallet was a gun. As organizers we hit the streets. African, immigrant, Black (also African) & others, all knew it was the same system of oppression

The asylum-seeking process before Trump was unfair, confusing, and evil. Obviously, his administration has been committed to making it worse since day 1. But the sheer maliciousness behind each and every step they take to doom some of the most vulnerable people in the world is disgusting. 6/

I witnessed this insanity today. 7 cases I observed in a row went as follows:

1) Russian Asylum Seeker > DHS Lawyer motioned to "pretermit" their case and send them to Uganda.

2) Pakistani Asylum Seeker > DHS Lawyer motioned to "pretermit" their case and send them to Uganda.

1/

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

"Seen from this vantage, Good’s killing is not a 'mistake' but a reflection of how the agency is designed to operate...Abolishing an agency that teargasses two-year-olds and shoots mothers in the street isn’t radical. It is basic human decency."

Black folks and immigrants have long lived in a "perogative state" when it comes to law enforcement, and maybe pundits at the largest national outlets should recognize that their past support for punitive policing and immigration enforcement laid the groundwork for the current moment.

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

“Abolish ICE” isn’t radical, it doesn’t go far enough.

Latest in @theguardian.com written with my friend @victorerikray.bsky.social.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A phenomenal event and speaker ✨

❄️📖Looking for poc sci-fi, epic fantasy, or magical realism novel recommendations for winter 📖❄️
(no YA or marvel-vibes, but ++ if queer or disabled)
Happy to exchange books 📚

Fantastic write up of a recent collaborative event between LSE Gender and LSE Law 🔥

Final event of the term! See you at Oxford? (Or online!)
Very much looking forward to thinking with these two fantastic discussion groups 📖
Register here to attend:
www.law.ox.ac.uk/content/even...

@oxfordcrim.bsky.social @lsegender.bsky.social

Today there was an attempted ICE raid in Bensonhurst & community members showed up. Even though NYPD collaborated with ICE by trying to disburse the crowd; community members stood their ground & ICE left without kidnapping a single person per the rapid response groups I'm on. We protect us!

Our LSE Fellow R. Sánchez Rivera has published a new article in Oxford Intersections! 🥳

Read it now ➡️ academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

I told profs at my phd program that I didn't want to work at an "R1" directly after grad because I cared deeply about teaching and was very concerned the incentives at certain institutions would push me to ignore my pedagogy practice in order to try and keep my job. Truly no regrets.

Starting now! 🥳

@lselaw.bsky.social @sumimadhok.bsky.social @smrodriguez.bsky.social

Looking forward to presenting on this esteemed panel!
The piece I'll present is queer & Black feminist sociolegal theory & has been on my mind for a really long time due to experiences I've had lately with the criminal justice and social welfare systems in Jamaica, as well as ethnography in Uganda.

Department of Social Policy | Available positions Jobs available in the Department of Social Policy

📢 Still time to apply!

We are looking to recruit an Assistant Professor (Study of Crime/Criminal Justice and Social or Public Policy) whose core research examines crime and/or criminal justice with a demonstrable research interest in social or public policy.

More info here: buff.ly/Nxdn9c0

"Haunting the Criminological Imagination: Abolition as Diasporicised Method" - Verryyy much looking forward to discussing my new work with Oxford Crim in December.
See flyer for details and register here forms.office.com/pages/respon...
✨
@ox.ac.uk @oxfordcrim.bsky.social @lsegender.bsky.social
✨

📢📢 Job advert 📢📢
LSE is hiring an Assistant Prof in Criminology and Social Policy to begin in Sept 2026!
🎡✨ London is calling ✨🎡
Applications due 2 November 2025
@lsesocialpolicy.bsky.social

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

📍

Respatialising the global imaginary of gay rights: resisting Africana epistemicide and forging Solidaristic Imaginaries This article critiques the global imaginary of LGBTQ rights, arguing that dominant metrics of state-based human rights frameworks, what I term the Gay Rights International Movement (GRIM), reproduc...

What if queer justice isn’t about inclusion, but about fighting disposability and* dreaming otherwise?
This piece joins African feminism, Black trans studies & diasporic queer theory to resist Africana epistemicide & the GRIM imaginary of human rights. Now out <3
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Dispossessive rights: coloniality and trans-exclusion in zero-sum politics The idea that rights are possessions that are given and lost is so ubiquitous within the dominant discourse that its metaphoricity is forgotten. This amnesia naturalises possessive individualism, a...

My new article addresses the claim that the rights of trans women 'clash' with the rights of cis women. I examine the coloniality of the concept of rights underpinning this idea, exploring the erotics of sacrificial feminism and zero-sum politics in general... 🧵 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Submissions to our call for proposals are due October 3, 2025!

On April 6-7 2026, we will have the in-person conference and on April 8 it will be entirely online. Online attendees will have access to some in-person sessions, pending presenters' consent to being recorded.

#decolonialconference

que descanse en paz y poder
🕊️🙏🏾✊🏾
So many lessons learned by my early inspiration, Assata Shakur. I've been meditating on her words especially often lately, as I work her prison writings into a book chapter. Can't explain what she has meant for my organising and thinking...

Many did and wrote about the insightful and incredible experiences. Keep reading, the evidence abounds.

Very much looking forward to this! Thank you for sharing ✨

Really curious abt how other academics decide how many speaking & service engagements they accept per term. Does anyone have a strategy or do you just follow vibes? 🫣
(I have always followed my heart but I'm so low capacity rn that I know I have to balance inspo events and the need for a cut off)

Job Opportunity!

University of California Berkeley - Assistant Professor - Global Black Geographies - Department of Geography

networks.h-net.org/jobs/68992/u...

Trump Just Took a Major Step Toward a Nightmare Scenario for Trans Americans Under the Guise of “Public Safety.” Don’t Be Fooled. If we don’t change course soon, it will be too late.

A Trump order seeks to impose involuntary confinement on homeless and mentally ill Americans.

Trans people are already at a higher risk. But a nightmare scenario of mass confinement hangs over the order - the right defines trans people as inherently mentally ill.

slate.com/life/2025/08...