We talk a lot about how the Internet can be used as a tool to draw attention to stories that would otherwise fall under the radar. Afterlives, a new podcast from Iheart's Outspoken Network, spotlights one of those stories. Afterlives examines the life and legacy of Leileen Polanco, a transgender Afro Latina who tragically died at New York City's Rikers
Island Jail. Lealeen's death was totally preventable, and this new podcast sets out to investigate the systems of power that led to her untimely passing, as well as how her story sparked national movements for change. As we're seeing more and more legislation policing how trans people exist, including how they show up online, this story is more important than ever. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe. Here's Afterlives, the Lalene Polanco story. Episode one.
After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just a heads up, The following episode discusses transphobia, racism, mental health, suicide and violence.
Take care while listening.
Studdy sing It, Sing It?
Wait, let me sing It?
First, you'll never see me again, so no one not sing it. Okay, let's see me again.
That last voice, that's Leileen Polonko. She's singing Cry for You by the Swedish musician September.
Let her finish, Let her finish.
Leileen's niece, Aliyah is the one goading her on, trying to get her to beld it out for the case would come on.
I want to You'll never see me again.
I first learned who Laiyleen was back in June of twenty nineteen. A friend and fellow activist texted me a four sentenced New York Post article about a trans woman who had died hours earlier in a cell on Rikers Island, New York City's notorious Gel Complex. We had few details at the time, even Leileen's name wasn't public yet, but the little information we did have was enough for us to know we lost a member of our cherished community, and we needed answers. I'm a journalist and an activist.
I know some people find those descriptors at odds, but for me, story telling and social justice.
Go hand in hand.
Throughout my career, I found it important to prioritize stories of trans people, specifically trans women of color.
Like myself.
Our lives, our joy, our struggles, and our truth. A difficult part of that truth is that many of us are dying. There is growing concern in this country and fear about deadly attacks against transgender Americans, particularly trans women of color. As more information surfaced about Laileen's death, something shifted in me. Here was an Afro Latina whose story felt like it touched so many systems of power that affect trans women. I connected with her, I mourned her, and I wasn't alone.
Hundreds gathered in New York City Monday to demand justice for l'ileen.
Rest in power. The recent death of a twenty seven year old woman on Rikers Island is raising questions about.
The way officials there hold people in solitary confinement.
We have a full investigation going on.
Leileen Palanco could have been released from Rikers if she was able to post her veil of just five hundred dollars. Matter, trans matter, every kind of gone for one of us.
We I'm stronger.
It's been four years since Leyleen's death on Rikers Island, four years since she was left unattended in solitary confinement, four years since her family and friends first shed tears over her loss and turn those tiers into rage, that rage into action. We'll discuss her death and what led up to it in detail on this podcast, but before we talk about how we lost Laleen in the many ways the criminal justice system failed her, before we dig into the remarkable ways her legacy endures today, I want
you to know about her life. I'm your host, Roquel Willis, and this is Afterlives, Episode one. Laileen Layleen was born on October fourth, nineteen ninety one, in the Dominican Republic. Her family moved to New York when she was two years old, first to the Bronx and then just outside of the city to Yonkers. And if there's one thing you need to know about Laiyleen, it's that she was the life of the party.
Leilein loved today and she loved to sing. She was just happy to be alive.
That's Leileen's older sister, Milania Brown. They were born about three years apart. The two of them were always close. Leileen brought out a spark in Milanya. She was full of energy and always up for an adventure. Milania says she could always count on her, whether she needed a confidant or just a good laugh in the dr Milania remembers how freeing it felt for them to take baths in the rain. When they moved to the States, they'd go on family outings, taking boats around the New York Harver.
They loved watching Pixar movies with their brother.
Solomon. Toy Story was Leileen's favorite.
She also loved animals and dreamt of growing up to be a vet. Most of all, Milania and Leileien like to joke around.
We found this doll somewhere and my mom.
Was like freaked out about the doll because it looked like a real baby.
She says.
Their mom r Sally's said get rid of that doll, but they didn't.
Instead, we used to put the door in the middle of the street and then we will hide behind the cars and people would like just stop and freak out, and like you know, we would just be cracking up watching them, and then they just throw the doll to the side, and then we'll do it again.
And then their mom always encouraged them to play outside, even if that doll prank wasn't exactly what she had in mind for the most part, their family got on pretty well. They had their routines, their traditions. Our sullies would play ballads and Spanish throughout the house, and she dragged them to church every Sunday.
Leileen and I used to be like, oh my god, not again. We just went. My mom would be like that was a week ago, Like we was just there.
This was Leileen's world as a child church choir, climbing rocks outside the house, a close nuclear family led by a strong woman. As she and her siblings got older, Layleen's sense of identity developed too.
I started realizing that I really had a sister. She started loving flowers and I like to get dirty.
And she was more like ill. No.
Solomon and I always knew, we just never wore the type to like flat out ass. When she feels comfortable, she'll come and she'll talk to us. I remember one day we was just playing Mortal Kombat, which was like one of our favorite games, and laden the game and Solomon's like, because you were about to lose. I remember that fight, and Lailen's like, no, I pulsed the game
because I got to say something. And then that's when Leileen came out as being gay Solomon, and I was like, really, like, this is why you pulsed the game, because I mean we already knew that, like.
I'm pulsed the game.
That was when Leaileen was twelve, But about a year later, Layleen started to express herself and her identity in other ways.
Leileen was just like, well, can I use your stuff?
It was Halloween, which had always been one of Leileen and Milania's favorite holidays.
And she's like, your stuff, let me go get it.
And she comes back with my clothes, my brawl, my pants, my shirt, my shoes, everything, and she's like, can you help me like put it on. I was like, okay, fine, Like you know, I helped her get dressed. We stuffed so much tissue, and I remember I'm telling Hi, I'm like I feel like I'm stuffing you like a turkey. And we was just cracking up and I fly into her hair and she went outside. She came back inside
like okay, I'm like, so, how do you feel? And she was just like, this is who I'm supposed to be.
Layleen has two birthdays in her sister's eyes. The day she was born into the world and that Halloween night, when she expressed to Milania for the first time in her own way that she was a trans woman. Milania still goes all out for Halloween to celebrate her sister, spiders, zombies, a six foot witch outside of the house. Even Layleen's mom gets in on it, and she's always hated Halloween.
As Leileen got older, she grew into herself more and more, and something that made her film most alive was music.
Growing up, Le'lein was into house music.
Leilein started dragging me into her world and what she liked, and then I started liking the house music. The house music will only be played really like between her and I.
If I'm going.
Through something or she's going through something, We'll put like the craziest, loudest house music and we'll just dance it off.
As a teenager, Leleen's love for house music often led her to clubs and parties in New York with other queer and trans people of color. She wanted to get her life and meet more people like her, and she didn't care if that meant staying out all night and dealing with her mom getting angry at her the next day. At a club in the Bronx, she met a trans woman named Leslie who offered to help her get access to her her own replacement therapy. She became a mother
figure to her, and a new world opened up. Layleen became more embedded within the trans community and New York City's iconic ballroom scene. Yes, she had some family who affirmed her transitis, but through ballroom she found a second family, a chosen family who understood her experience as their own and encouraged her to step into herself in ways she never had before. Layleen discovers home in the House of
Extravaganza after the Break, We're back with After Lives. After growing up in Yonkers and coming out to her family as a trans woman, Layleen Polanco would find community in New York City's ballroom scene. Ballroom is a community rooted in queerness, gender expression, performance, and solidarity, and the community as we know it today has roots that trace back to Harlem. In the nineteen sixties, black and LATINX LGBTQ plus folks gathered for extravagant so called balls, complete with
runway categories, competing houses, and vogue battles. These events were organized as an alternative to existing drag balls that traditionally excluded and discriminated against black and brown people. Layleen finding community through ballroom is no surprise. It's a world where people living on the margins can center themselves and their lived experience.
The category is puts Queen first time in Drags at.
Table, Coming Pretty Girl, nineteen eighty six ticket.
These folks you hear are walking categories as part of balls recorded in the nineteen ninety documentary.
Paris Is Birding.
In case you didn't know, this film opened the door for mainstream audiences to understand ballroom culture. To school, Layleen walked categories like realness, face, and body, and she would win. My Milania said she always played it cool and confident, though she never acted surprised when she took home the trophy.
To put it.
Plainly, Layleen was that girl. Layleen was a part of the House of Extravaganza, the premiere LATINX house.
In the scene.
You're listening to a clip from the two thousand and six documentary How Do I Look? Extravaganza has become one of New York's most famous houses and one of the longest running.
The House of Extravaganza was founded in.
Nineteen eighty two, this is Sydney Blou.
My pronouns are he, him, his, and girl. I always like to add that extra one. I'm a writer, TV writer, producer, a journalist. I've been in the House of Extravaganza for oh my goodness now four years, and I've been in the ballroom scene for eleven.
Sidney is also the author of the forthcoming book Undeniable, A History of Voguing Ballroom and How it changed my life and the world.
In those early days, it was actually very hard for the House of Extravaganzo. There was a kind of protective sense, you know, that people had over the scene. They felt very threatened. Yes, it was a heavily Latin house, but it was also very much like kids living.
On the pier.
You know, people who were homeless, people were doing survival sex work. Some people didn't have as much money as the other houses. They had to really really keep coming and keep turning it in order for people to finally accept them. And then once they did, it was you know, the rest was history. I mean, the house just really started to take off.
By the time Lealen joined the house as a teenager, it was fully on the map. It had been featured in Paris with Learning, and it's members choreographed and dance in Madonna's nineteen ninety hit single Vogue. Vogue was a seminal moment when ballroom broke into the mainstream, but it wouldn't be the last. This song and the members of Extravaganza helped set the stage for ballroom to make huge waves in pop culture, from music to language to TV. But ballroom isn't all about the balls in the odds.
When Leyleen joined the House of Extravaganza, it was a centerpiece in the queer and trans community in New York. She became a beacon for many trans women and girls around her. Now that's a legacy, Honey.
In my mind, I am in the same house as Giselle, Alicia Extravaganza, the other of Extravagans. Like I'm in the same house as Leileen Extravaganza.
That's India.
More like sharing this proximity to them made me feel great, made me feel valuable.
She's an actor and model, well known for her role as angel Evangelista in pos, the FX series about ballroom culture in the eighties and nineties in compliance with the SAG after a strike at the time of our interview, India and I didn't discuss pos, but we spoke about her personal experiences in New York's ballroom scene, experiences that mirror her character's journey in many ways.
I was surviving a young transpersons, trying to stay safe, have a home and money in my pocket. I didn't feel welcomed in many environments that should have been home for me, or like that should have been school for me. So like I ended up sort of surviving on the streets. I took a lot of risks to survive, you know, to have money in my pocket, to be able to support myself.
India's character on Poe's joined the fictional House of Evangelista because she desperately needed a chosen family, housing, and support while she was doing sex work, and in real life, India joined the House of Extravaganza as a way to connect with New York's queer community and to be around people like Leyleen.
And I think about Leileeen. I think about her as somebody that brought people joy. I see Leileen also as somebody who was really proud of being trans and loved other trans people as well.
They never developed their own personal relationship, but India always admired her.
When you're a kid, there's always like some people that you sort of look to in your understanding of what's beautiful. She sort of like aspired to be like them. Leileen was one of those girls. She was Dominican and I'm Dominican, and she just reminded me of like my culture.
And she didn't have just charm, she had sex appeal.
Leileen was one of the women that was sort of a reflection for what it looked like for me to grow into a confident and beautiful and secure woman.
Leileen, India, and Sydney were all members of the House of Extravaganza at different points in its history. Whether or not they knew each other personally, they share a bond because they've shared a family.
The Huse of Extravagance is one of the few houses in Ballroom that's still a family. We literally have a cookout every summer. Grandma Coco, who's one of our OG members, she cooks all the food and there's fried chicken and beans, rice and mac and cheese and potato salad and.
All of that.
It's truly like a co generational space. There's so many people who I know, I can call upon, or who have my back, or who can just teach me about life. I know Leileen was part of that mix, and there was a sense of her really being part of the family in that way.
The House of Extravaganza and other ballroom communities have always been vital spaces, a way for black and brown LGBTQ plus folks to survive and thrive. Still, so many trans women of color, like Leyleen, lack the support systems they deserve to live long and fulfilling lives, and they, like all trans people, experience disproportionately high rates of unemployment, incarceration, and violence. Ballroom has always been a form of versus
distance to these realities. Just because people say sligh or no shade doesn't make the world safer for us.
I do find that a large part of the culture of ballroom has become so mainstream to the point where the people who now participate in using our language also have become some of the people who reject and defame trands and queer culture and people.
But this doesn't take away from the fact that these spaces and this community are meaningful. Layleen was an Extravaganza for pivotal years of her life, it meant a lot to her, and she followed a long standing tradition of adopting the house's name as her own. Layleen Extravaganza Cubalette Polanco. Queer culture is more consumable than ever, but queer people and specifically trans women of color, remain at risk. Layleen
was at risk as she entered adulthood. She was turned away from job opportunities, she struggled with her mental and physical health. She turned to sex work as a way to support herself, and it would be a sex work arrest that would ultimately lead her to the place she would lose her life, Rikers Island. That's Coming after the Break Welcome back to Afterlives. In Layleen's mid twenties, her
vibrant life took a turn. She struggled to find and keep consistent work, spent less and less time with her family, and decided to engage in sex work to make ends meet. One day in August of twenty seventeen, Leyleen was arrested by undercover NYPD officers who were targeting sex workers. The city claimed around this time that arrests like these would end a small victory in the long battle to decriminalize
consensual sex work, but the arrest happened anyway. Eventually, Layleen ended up in front of a judge and a bill of five hundred dollars was set on her sex work case. That's despite the fact that in the months before Layleen's Dancourt District attorneys had made promises about eradicating bill for low level crimes. The city even had an alternative system in place to handle sex work cases so that sex
workers could avoid jail time. We'll get into why and how later in this series, but the decision to set bell on Lalen's case would crucially impact her life. Unfortunately, she couldn't afford to pay and was sent to Rikers Island. Rikers is an isolated island in a city of eight million. The jail complex rests on over four hundred acres of land in New York City's East River. The average gel population is six thousand people on any given day. Its
buildings are old and dilapidated. Extreme temperatures are norm as is moldy, food and fece smeared on the floors. Pieces of straight HIPing and broken light fixtures that line the hallways are often used to create weapons. Pealsymakers have called the conditions at Rikers Island a humanitarian crisis. Once Layleen was there, her troubles only got worse. Her mental health deteriorated, She got into several fights and was moved into solitary confinement.
JEIL officials were made aware of a key detail about Leyleen's health that she suffered from a seizure disorder, and this alone should have kept her out of solitary. Still, that's exactly where she ended up. Leyleen was in Riker's custody for fifty two days before her death. Nine of those days were spent in solitary confinement.
Now, remember the girls and I spoke about it.
Her sister Milania didn't even know she was at Rikers, never mind being in solitary.
And they're like, we missed her and we just don't feel right. And I'm like I don't feel right either.
I was the only one.
You guys feel the same thing. And my daughters is like, yes, something is not right.
On June seventh, twenty nineteen, while locked away in a solitary confinement cell, Leyleen had a fatal seizure. Officers were supposed to check on people in this unit every fifteen minutes, according to jail protocol, but large periods of time would pass without anyone checking on her. When there were signs something was wrong, no one took action. Staff gathered outside her door, staring into it, but no one went inside. At one point, they left her unattended for forty one minutes.
Forty one minutes, completely alone, despite being at high risk, forty one minutes with no checks for signs of life. At approximately three forty five, after medics were finally called to enter her cell, she was declared dead. Why did no one help her? Why was she even in Rikers?
Really?
Why did system after system fail to fulfill promises of progress. I've been thinking about Layleen's case ever since I got that text from a friend with the New York Post article. It was just hours after she died. Within a few days, I was speaking at a rally in Layleen's honor with the mic in my hand. My sadness and fatigue turned into anger. Layleen deserved to be alive. She deserved more. Black and brown trans people have been in the war
since we were born. Over six hundred of us grieved together at that rally in the middle of Pride month, nineteen. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the seminal queer militant uprising that sparked the modern fight for LGBTQ plus liberation. Millions of visitors were flocking to New York City for World Pride. Our community was more visible than ever, and yet here was another one of our sisters taken from us. Holding all of this has always
been hard. These competing truths can feel like alternate realities. I wanted to address that feeling more directly, so I created the Trans Obituaries project. Back in twenty nineteen, I was the executive editor of Out magazine and wanted Lealen's story and the stories of other trans women lost that year elevated in the annual Out one hundred issue. It's the magazine's best known feature, honoring the year's most influential LGBTQ plus people.
I remember then we did this photo shoot for the cover.
Here's a Milania, Layleen's sister again.
It was very it was beautiful.
It was actually Leileen's birthday. Yes, Layleen's friends and family gathered at her mom's house in Yonkers, where Leyleen grew up.
We had her urn with her ashes in it. We bore her a cake, and we celebrated her.
At one point during the cover shoot, Leayleen and Millenia's mother, Our Sally's, opened up a suitcase filled with Layleen's belongings. Everyone come through, trinkets, toilet trees and all t shirts.
Everything you could name was in that like luggage and were shocked. I remember we was all like digging and I was like, oh, I want this, I want this, And I ended up taking like her New York shirt. I have it like in a bag upstairs because I want to keep like her scent and everything. I would like open it a little bit, just smell, and I close it back up so I don't lose.
I'll never forget that day, seeing the love that Layleen left behind and filling her spirit surrounding us. After the magazine came out, I watched Malania grow as an outspoken activist on behalf of her sister. She shared Layleen's story with larger and larger audiences, even at one rally packed with fifteen thousand people. I listened as politicians talked about her sister's memory and witness law's path in Layleen's name over the last four years, Layleen's story has unfolded in
ways I could have never imagined. But as much as death has the power to build movements, it also shatters. In the immediate aftermath of Layleen's passing, family, friends, and community organizers formed a united front. But over the years, the loss of Laileen has sunk in more fully.
After she died, I picked up the mic three days later and I just didn't stop.
Milania and others have had to reshape their lives without her.
I never had time to grieve my sister.
Time has passed, but not without forming scars.
I think that's when reality really kicked in that Leileen wasn't going to come back home.
Layleen's family has moved out of New York since that photoshoot. This time around, I visited Malanya in Connecticut.
We needed to get away, We needed to get far.
I met many of Lalen's family members and friends back in twenty nineteen, but since then, people have removed themselves further from the public eye, farther from New York. There have been riffs in their relationships. Folks have experienced other losses too. While we reached out to several members of l'yleen's origin and chosen families for this podcast, we weren't able to speak with everyone. Layleen's story is harder for many to revisit today, but I always knew it was
worth returning to. Much of my career has been fueled by the losses of people in my life and those I didn't know whose stories drew me in, whether it was transtenes loss to suicide, victims of police brutality, and of course other transistors of color. Layleen's life and story will forever be a part of me. Her death has stayed with me, in part because so many issues compounded to lead her to that cell. Because her death happened
in state custody, I had hope for accountability. There were and are leaders and systems that we could blame, that we could even try to change. Some things have changed for the better in the last four years, but we've also witnessed the US become a much more hostile place
for trans people. What happened to Leileen tells us a lot about our world, about trans rights and the injustices of our legal system, about how we treat people who are most marginalized and most in need of support, She died because of systems that still exists today, and while progress has been made in her name.
There's a lot more work to do.
That's what this series is about.
No real spoilers in the story.
If you google Alien's name, you'll find these details. What we're doing in this podcast is breaking it down system by system and looking closer at.
The reasons she died.
We want to restore her humanity as we tell the story and look at the ways this loss and legacy has affected our world, even if you've never heard her name. That's all coming this season on Afterlives.
Stepping foot on Rikers Island has been widely acknowledged a potential death sentence.
Was her trans this actually a cause of her death?
We found out that the answer was yes, it absolutely was.
I had every opportunity to be dead and am still here.
They have an interest in stopping youth from becoming trans adults. They have an interest in essence, in eradicating transniess.
We just want to live our lives.
We don't want to be sitting here over explaining ourselves to you over and over again.
Just let me be.
I want to work, I want to have a home, I want to drive a car.
I want to be happy too.
Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives. You can find this episode and future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a writing and review to let us know what you think. After Lives as a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken Podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. I'm your host and creator Roquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is
our senior producer and scriptwriter. Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering by Daisy Makes Radio Productions, story editing by Aaron Edwards and Julia Ferlan, fact checking by Savannah Hugiley. Our show art is by Mackai Baldwin. Score composed by Wisei Murray. Our production manager is Daisy Church.
Executive producers include Me, Raquel Willis, and Jay Brunson from The Outspoken Podcast Network, Michael Alder June and Noel Brown from iHeart Podcasts, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans and The Cats Company
School of Humans