In 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a nonprofit collective that provides free legal help to low-income people and people of color who are trans, intersex, and/or gender nonconforming and works to build trans resistance rooted in racial and economic justice. He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. In 2015 he released Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, an hour-long documentary that follows a local queer-community controversy and examines the concept of pinkwashing (watch free here).During his residency, Dean presented an interactive public workshop at OSU-Cascades, exploring the theme “Art, Survival, & Transformative Social Change.” Participants examined art that has fueled and been created by contemporary social movements and considered the relationship between art and political development.