Portland Outright’s Community Survey is a youth-led and designed project to hear from LGBTQIA+ people across Maine about the impacts of criminalization and policing on our community. We are a Portland-based, youth-led organization with big visions and goals of collective liberation, so we are opening this survey up to LGBTQIA+ people of all ages, across Maine.

We began researching and developing this survey in fall 2019, as a way to begin imagining what might be possible beyond policing in Maine. We kept working on it virtually during COVID-19 as a way to stay connected and keep imagining together. We are launching it now, in June, to honor and continue the work of LGBTQ+ people who have fought back against state violence and police brutality.

We, the members and organizer of Portland Outright, witness and experience criminalization everyday in our community. We see it happening in the role of SROS in our schools, policing of homelessness LGBTQIA+ people, and police abusing their power over marginalized communities. We see it most vividly in violence against Black trans people and disproportionate criminalization of queer and trans people of color, in both our membership and broader communities. Over the years we have participated in countless conversations, tables, and reforms that did not consider or center the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people, leading to further harm and delayed justice. We hope this survey will help us better understand and identify the specific ways policing and criminalization is being experienced by our base, to create immediate interventions and long-haul systemic changes.