#violently pushing back trans protestors’
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Potentially the last day ever of peace (talking to parents this weekend)
#surely there’s no way that hearing ‘I am uncomfortable with the way you were visibly defending Nazis and violenc#violently pushing back trans protestors’#and be mad at US#like surely they are gunna be like yeah that was shit of me#at the VERY LEAST#the best case scenario is dad quits being a cop#worst case is we cut each other out of our lives#most likely scenario everyone is angry and crying but nothing gets resolved#anyway#nazi ment#bean.txt
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Trans people are oppressed yet riot when a woman tries to protect minors from irreversible treatments and surgeries. 🤦🏻♀️
Trans activists violently attempted to siege Mexico City’s Congress on Tuesday after an initiative was introduced to ban minors from accessing “gender affirming” surgery.
The initiative was first introduced by América Rangel, a representative from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), on February 9, and sought to both prohibit the interventions as well as punish medical providers who do not comply with the law.
Rangel is alleged to have been the target of the activist aggression, posting that she believed the activists were specifically attempting to get to her.
In disturbing footage circulated on Twitter from both inside and outside of the House of Congress, a hoard of screaming trans activists were seen smashing their way into the historic building by beating and breaking the glass window panels open. The building was further insulated by decorative cage-style doors which had been locked shut, but the activists managed to dislodge several of the bars and create a pathway for them to enter.
Victoria Sámano, a trans-identified male who had been directing the protest, was the first to jump through the entry, pushing his way through the security guards trying to defend the building and getting into a physical altercation with some of them. Other activists quickly followed Sámano’s lead, and began forcing their way through the passage they had created in the bars.
Once inside the building, more damage was done as the activists painted graffiti on the walls and destroyed windows. Activists got as close to their target as the doors of the Congressional hall, but were blocked by security personnel.
The protest was ultimately quelled by riot police, who responded to the scene and used fire extinguishing gas to disperse the activists.
Sámano took to Twitter and uploaded a video of himself complaining that the guards had fought back, and suggesting that the activists had simply been peacefully demonstrating for their rights when they were brutally attacked without reason.
“We were only demanding our rights and they started beating us, they hit me in the legs. Here are the marks of how they beat me for this city. [Representatives] are more important than trans people,” he says in the video.
According to some Mexican news outlets, the parliamentary coordinator for Morena, the left-wing governing party, has assured protestors that their deputies do not plan to file a criminal complaint for the damages caused to the building.
But, dissatisfied with the response from the Congress, América Rangel has filed her own report with the Prosecutor General’s Office of Mexico yesterday.
In a video uploaded to Twitter, Rangel said she had filed a criminal complaint against the demonstrators who sieged the Congress.
“I have just filed criminal complaints against the people who assaulted the Congress of Mexico City and tried to attack me,” Rangel said in her video. “Specifically, [I] have precisely identified three people, of whom we have already given all the evidence to the Prosecutor’s Office. We also request that the investigation be carried out to find the others. We hope that the authority does its job and does not cover up if there are people from Morena behind all this. There can be nothing and no one above the law.”
Trans activists in Mexico are known for being particularly aggressive and staging aggressive or hostile demonstrations against those they disagree with.
In July of 2022, a transgender politician violently disrupted a government conference aimed at tackling human trafficking after becoming offended at the implications abolitionist policies would have on trans “sex workers.”
Maria Clemente, a trans-identified male politician elected to Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies last year, called the suggestion that the sex trade be abolished for the protection of women and children “hate speech.” To a critic, Clemente said: “I am a woman, and I am a whore! It’s my job and and how my family eats! I love it!”
Clemente was later exposed for having allegedly lied about being in the sex trade after his ex-husband issued a scathing rebuttal of his public persona in a public letter he posted in an effort to demand Clemente finalize their divorce.
Months later, trans activists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico staged a “coup” of one of the women’s washrooms on the campus in apparent retaliation for a lesbian pride mural having been painted nearby.
The activists claimed the mural made them feel “unsafe” and demanded another gender neutral washroom be established near the Samuel Ramos Library. Less than 24 hours later, the activists took over the largest women’s restroom in the building, littering the walls with threatening vandalism directed at women who are critical of gender ideology.
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In honor of the glorious pride month (Coming up soon), please enjoy these Miraculous Pride Headcanons!
Inspired by this post by @transvoltronhc
You a TERF? Fuck off, beeyatch!
Marinette- The Pan Trans Queen we all Need 🏳️⚧️
She/Her- Pansexual/Polyamorous
Every time Marinette inhales, a terf gets punched
Every time Marinette exhales, a trans kid gets a flag
She and Nathaniel supply the face paint
She’s very vocal at pride and gets super violent with protesters
Marinette: *Punching protester while her friends cheer* I don’t wanna see your disgusting face here ever again, you filthy pig! Same goes for the rest of you!
Terfs go to protest, walk away covered in bruises and with a tiny crush on the bluenette
Got into a muscle-flexing contest and won first
Dyed her hair the colors of the pan flag and walks around with a brightly colored, bedazzled trans flag cape
Supplies juice boxes and cookies for the pride kids
She and Marc pass out colorful binders, flower crowns, and starter makeup kits
Drag Queens and Kings LOVE her and are always giving her hugs whenever she walks by / She’s even been commissioned by them to make outfits for their next shows. The audience loved them
Alya- The Badass Pansexual Pirate 🏴☠️
She/Her but is not opposed to They/Them
Actually has dressed like a pirate with a sword the colors of her flag. Anarka was so proud
Will punch TERFs with their Pan bestie any day
Ships random people
Leaves many girls swooning as she walks by in her thigh high leather boots
Alya: Sorry ladies, I’m spoken for. *Kisses Nino*
No one dares to flirt with her because she’s out of everyone’s league
One protester made a transphobic comment about Nino, and Alya immediately hit em with a frying Pan
The chaotic aunt of pride
Death drops are flawless!
Hands out phone cases they painted the colors of different pride flags
Born This Way is her anthem
Has many pride-themed superhero tank-tops ‘Super Gay 4 Super Girl’ ‘I’m Bi Man’ ‘Deadpool was at Stonewall’
Nino- The Insanely Cool Bi Trans Guy 😎🏳️⚧️
He/Him
Marinette made him a bedazzled cape so they could match
Mari and Kim’s brother in Transness
Dresses in hoodies no matter how hot it is
One of the mom friends. / Everyone wants to be adopted by him. / He once put everyone on baby leashes so they wouldn’t wander off
Everyone refers to him as “Trans DJ Jesus” because he wore sandals with a long curly wig one time. (To this day, no one knows why he did it)
Takes a five-minute break to Vogue with the drag queens
Supplies the music while skateboarding. He blasts every gay national anthem known to humankind
Alya, Adrien, Marinette, and Kim are very protective of him. Once, a TERF pushed him to the ground. Alya, Marinette, and Kim beat up the TERF while Adrien treated his friend to some ice cream
Adrien- Shit! We lost the baby! 🏳️🌈😱
He/Him & She/Her- Bigender/Bisexual/Polyamorous
Can’t stop, won’t stop wandering off because he’s never been to a Pride parade before
He was surprised at how accepting his father was. Although, it probably had something to do with Nathalie and Gorilla threatening to expose him as Hawkmoth if he didn’t let Adrien go
The class goes ballistic whenever she goes missing and will interrogate anyone
Myléne: *Interrogating a drag queen* Are you hiding him in your wig?! / Marinette: Get her out! She’s so frail! Her dad doesn’t feed her! / Nino: Found him! He was getting ice cream. / Myléne: ... You are free to go.
Nino has to put him on a baby leash every time
Drinks the most juice boxes and eats the most ice cream
Can’t tell when he’s being flirted with / Rando: Hey, cutie. / Adrien: ... My name is Adrien.
Bigender legwarmers, bracelets, and headbands
Dresses in pastels every year, and people just wanna hug him / He's happy to oblige and will hug anyone / Vows to hug the hate out of protesters
Every time Adrien smiles or laughs, a transgender child is accepted by friends and family and then gets a flower crown
Keeps getting asked if she and Marinette are dating. / Adrien: No, we’re just shopping buddies. (Secretly wishes for more)
A girl once asked if he was Cinderella when he wore a blue headband, and he immediately said yes. Now every week for Pride month, she dresses as a different Disney Princess
Nearly fainted when Marinette and Luka entered a flexing contest and Luka’s sleeves tore
Kim- Mari and Nino’s Bi brother in Trans Pride🏳️⚧️
He/Him & They/Them- Gender nonconforming
Kim: I’m a guy, I like blouses and heels, deal with it, people!
Kim/Mari/Nino: Bedazzled Cape Squad!
Muscle shirts and converse sneakers / Has a tank top that reads, ‘I flexed so hard the sleeves came off’
Got into a muscle-flexing contest against Luka and Marinette and got third place (No one beats Marinette)
Also can’t tell when they’re being flirted with
Alix and Max convinced him to dress in drag, and he went all out. Now he has the respect of many drag queens. And every pride parade, he wears heels and a huge wig
Gives everyone (Mainly Max) piggyback rides
Asked Max to be his boyfriend at one pride parade, and people thought it was so cute! They named that day, ‘Kimax Day’
Max- Not a Robot, I’m Agender 🤖
They/Them
Has many pride tank-tops and pins with puns / ‘Error 404 Gender Not Found’ ‘I Don’t Speak Binary Code’ ‘2/3 of the Invisible Trio’
Has Marinette paint their cheeks the colors of the agender and asexual flags
Has one of those digital backpacks with pixelated images on the front
Downloads Pride songs for Markov to blasts from their speakers
When they and Alix convinced Kim to dress in drag, Max may or may not have drooled a bit
Progress Pride Flag cape, socks, and nails
When protestors attack, Max goes all LGBT scientist on their butts, explaining the difference between gender and sex, what hormone blockers actually do, and how not every gay person has AIDS
Once beat up a sleazy protester for... Feeling Kim down there / Max: *Hitting protester with a baseball bat* If you ever do that again, I will fit Markov with a laser and have them slice your rotten dick off!
Marinette and Nathaniel helped them make pride bracelets with the sexualities and gender identities written in binary code. The pride nerds LOVED them
Nathaniel: Our Beautiful BiRomantic Son 🎨
He/Him
He and Marinette paint everyone’s faces before every pride parade
Painted an asexual heart on his Bi flag and wore it as a cape
Cuffed jeans, boots, tucked-in shirt, beanie, pride buttons / Paints pride flags on his denim jacket and shorts
Marc does his makeup, and he looks fabulous
His grandma teaches him how to fight in case of violent Christian protesters / Grandma: Sweetie, you’re Jewish and Bisexual, the world is gonna tear you apart. Learn how to give a mean left hook.
Once took over a face painting booth, now he does it every Pride Month
Enters the 'Crush a watermelon between your thighs' contest every time and always wins first
Saw couples cosplaying as Mightillustrator and Inverser, and cried tears of joy
He and Marc cosplay as couples at every pride parade. The fan favorites are Keith and Lance, Tweek and Craig, and Michael and Rich
CANNOT have too much sugar or he goes crazy and wakes up with no memories of what he did
The next day after an intense sugar high, people were saluting as he walked by and calling him ‘General of the Bisexual Battalion’ / He’s not complaining or questioning it / He has an army now and will one day take over all of Europe. Then the world.
Marc: The Rainbow Flag has Taken a Human Form🏳️🌈
Nonbinary- He/Him & They/Them
A True Pride Legend
Born on June 1st at a pride parade.
A singer helped deliver him, his cord was cut by a sword Lesbian, he was swaddled in a drag queen’s glitter cape, and their name was thought of by a drag king
This moment was so beautiful that many protesters cried and decided to join the parade
Everyone will literally stop what they’re doing just to get a picture with them / Everyone loves Marc!
Got into a splits contest and won
Makes flower crowns and knits rainbow flag scarves to pass out to everyone
Certified Mom Friend
Does everyone's makeup
Loses his shit when his shorter friends get lost in crowds
Hugs pride kids who were forced to sneak out or were kicked out of their homes then buys them ice cream / He and Nathaniel have adopted over fifty Pride kids who were kicked out of their homes
Joins Adrien in dressing like a Disney Princess. He SLAYED as Snow White
It may not seem like it, but Marc can throw a punch and fight with one hand right behind their back
Beat up a transphobic asshole for trying to “correct” a trans boy by forcing himself onto him. / They never did find the man’s body. In fact, all of his personal information was gone. Almost like he had never even existed... / Marc looks cute, but he can be terrifying when he needs to be
Alix: Two Out of 3 💚💜🖤🤍
She/Her & They/Them
Leaves many girls swooning as they skate by
Devious little shit
She doesn’t beat up protesters like her classmates. She pranks them until they cry / One year, they all ended up covered in rainbow glitter and pink feathers / Adrien and Rose help them make glitter bombs to throw at protesters, then they run away giggling
Wears sarcastic Pride shirts and black shorts with her roller skates
She and Jalil come out to their father every June
Alix: Father. I am AroAce! / Jalil: Also, I am gay! / Alim: Kids, I know. You’ve been doing this every year. / Jalil: Well... Thank you for being an ally!
This is the only time she’ll wear makeup / She wears it like war paint. Only it’s rainbow
Drinks the most juice out of everyone
Ships people with Alya. SHIPPING BUDS!
Myléne: Smol Asexual Bean ♠️
She/Her
Goes all out for Pride Month / Rolls around in glitter with Rose and Sabrina before every parade
Dyes her hair all rainbow / Wears a ‘Shakespeare was Here’ shirt with her asexual flag skirt
Has also beaten up homophobes and transphobes
Is the most vocal when it comes to putting those assholes in their place. Ivan has to hold her back sometimes
After an acephobe after they made certain comments (You ace folk know what I’m talkin ‘bout) She roundhouse kicked them / Every protester knows not to mess with the bohemian girl
Will blast The PROM soundtrack at max volume from her phone
Cosplays as musical characters. Veronica Sawyer was a fan favorite
Part of the “Where the Hell is Adrien?” Squad
Ivan: My Girlfriend is Stronger than Me, and it’s So Hot 💪😍
Prefers He/Him but is cool with other pronouns - Questioning his gender so isn’t using any labels right now
The responsible auncle
Mari and Alya’s partner in Pansexuality/ He can’t help if everyone is attractive, he just can’t!
Looks like he can kill you, but is actually a cinnamon role. Myléne on the other hand...
Has let Marc do their makeup and nails, and looks gorgeous!
Did drag. Slayed. Rocks those three-inch heels.
Tank tops and shorts club
Like Marinette, no one dares to flirt with him. Not because he’s out of their league, but because they’re scared of his girlfriend
Dyes his blonde tuft pastel pink every year
More pacifistic than her friends are when it comes to protesters, but if the right buttons are pressed, hell shall be raised
They join Alya and Alix in shipping random people
Rose: The Lovely Lipstick Lesbian💄
She/Her- Breaking lesbian stereotypes est. 2004
The kind aunt who supports all of her niblings
Has been going to pride with her dads since she was born/ One of her dads is a retired drag queen
Wears her rainbow fairy wings every year
Has a lesbian flag with dozens of girls' phone numbers written on it. / Doesn’t wear it anymore now that she has Juleka
Throws fistfuls of glitter at protesters and yells at them, “LIGHTEN UP!”
Sprinkles glitter on pride kids and tells them to sparkle
Marinette helps her make rainbow unicorn plushies to hand out to children every year
Dresses as Disney Princesses with Adrien and Marc. Princess Squad!
Bakes cookies to pass around
Drag Kings and Queens love this girl! She’s cute, loud, and carries glitter everywhere
Butch lesbians learn not to flirt with her after their encounter with Juleka
To piss of protesters, she dipped Juleka and kissed her for ten whole seconds / Rose: I bet your husbands don’t love you like that. / Drag Queens: BUUUUUURN!
Juleka: The Gay Witch 🖤🏳️🌈
She/Her & They/Them - Total lesbian
Was there when Marc was born, and will never forget that day. (She has an impressive memory, even as a baby)
They swore they saw a rainbow when he was born
Dresses as a witch and wears red eye contacts to every pride event so she freaks out protesters
Has actually cursed them / They just bought the spellbook off of Amazon
Carries around a rainbow parasol
Carries Rose under every threshold she comes across
Is a lot louder at pride events than on regular days
She actually sang Girls Like Girls up on stage, and everyone went wild
Sometimes wears suits
When they saw Rose being flirted with by some butch lesbians, they went ballistic / Now the butch lesbians are terrified of her forever
She and Luka help out with painting her friends’ nails and dying their hair
Dyes her hair rainbow every pride month
Luka: The Responsible Hot & Chaotic Auncle 💖💚💙
Agender- They/Them, He/Him, She/Her - Polysexual/Polyamorous
“For me, gender is like silence... I’m just not into it.”
Doesn’t really care what pronouns people use for him
Wears dresses to every pride parade. Anarka and Juleka have never been so proud
Is always doing drag cosplay. Marc and Nathaniel have never been so proud / They had people gawking when they did Jessica Rabbit cosplay
Purposely bends over in front of people, while wearing leggings, skirts, skinny jeans, or short shorts. Marinette, Kagami, and Adrien got nosebleeds
Marinette/Kagami/Adrien: Luka's ass in those shorts is a Godsend.
Dyes her hair rainbow every pride parade
The minute June starts, they’ll get up in the morning, grab their Polysexual flag, and just run around the city
Has been coming up with Pride songs to sing at protesters. Many of the songs insult them. / Luka: Okay! This one goes out to the trash behind barriers, it’s called, “Please shut the fuck up, you homophobic dildos!”
Got into a flexing contest and won second, but at the cost of their sequined sleeves
Asked Adrien, Marinette, and Kagami to be his significant others at a pride event. They all said yes
Has carried Adrien and Marinette on her biceps, and Kagami on her shoulders
Adrien: ... I marrying them first. / Marinette: Get in the back of the line, blonde wonder! / Kagami: Both of you move to the back.
Kagami: While You Were Busy Being Hetero, I Studied the Blade 🗡
She/Her - PanRomantic/Polyamorous
Surprisingly, her mother was very supportive. She even bought Kagami a rainbow sword / Turns out, Tamoe had a few flings herself. 😉
Kagami came out to the whole fencing team by wearing a pansexual-flag print fencing mask. Adrien squealed all through practice
She didn’t quite understand what polyamory meant and was confused as to why she had crushes on Adrien, Marinette, and Luka at the same time
After a bit of explaining and reassuring her that it was totally normal and not being disloyal to a partner, Kagami came to terms with being polyamorous
Tamoe allowed Kagami to go to her first Pride Parade. On the condition that she take her sword to ward off protesters
She was so overwhelmed and wasn’t entirely sure what to do until she found Marinette, Luka, and Adrien in the crowd with their friends
The four of them hung out together and got closer
Believes Adrien in pastels is one of the purest things on Earth
When Marinette and Luka entered the flexing contest, Kagami had to keep Adrien and herself from fainting
When Luka asked her, Marinette, and Adrien to be his significant others she tried to resist the urge to jump and squeal, but couldn’t hold it in
Likes it when Marinette wraps her trans flag around her. It’s so warm
Chased off a protester and TERF with her sword. They said some shit about Marinette being ‘fake’, Luka being ‘greedy’, and Adrien being a ‘pansy’, and she just snapped / While screaming in rapid Japanese, she chased about fifty protesters away. Her SOs were so proud.
Sabrina: The Ginger Gent 👑🏳️🌈
She/Her, He/Him in Drag- PanRomantic
Rolls around in glitter, as is a Drag tradition
Dresses in drag. / The Ginger Gent is her drag king name and she’s got like a glam rocker theme going on
Sequined leather jacket, coiffed toupee, glitter makeup
Started doing drag when she was twelve. Her dad supported her wholeheartedly and even entered her in junior drag contests. She took first place three times
Sometimes puts on private drag shows for Chloé. (Nothing weird!)
Marinette helps makes most of her costumes
Luka’s partner in Drag / Together, they kick ass and still look glamorous
A makeup expert (Next to Marc)
Roger taught her self defense / If you're going to Pride, learn to fight
Has taken down thirty protesters, his hair still looks awesome, and there's not a sequin out of place.
Chloé: The Badass Polysexual Demigirl 💖💚💙
She/Her and They/Them
Not really that attracted to guys
Best dressed. / Marc/Luka/Sabrina: She wishes!
Only allows Marc to do their makeup, no one else!
She has her own float in the parade / She passes out rainbow boas
Taking names and kicking butt
Has actually choked a protester with their flag and they don't do a thing about it since they're the mayor's child
Chloe: It pays to have political power. / Marinette: In this situation.
Doesn't tell people, but they came to Marinette, Nino, and Kim about gender stuff when they were questioning their identity
The day was spent teaching Chloe about the trans spectrum until she found the gender that felt right to her
Whenever Chloe gets excited, she makes out with the first girl she comes across. / Many young female protesters started questioning things when the blonde's lips grazed against theirs'
#miraculous ladybug#lgbt headcanons#everyone is gay#happy pride 🌈#love is love#nathaniel x marc#rose x juleka#marinette x adrien x luka x kagami#kim x max#trans Kim#trans Nino#trans Marinette#brotp#lukadrinette#lukadrigaminette#lgbt pride#lgbtq#lesbian#gay#bisexual#transgender#pansexual#asexual#nonbinary#Aromantic#akuma class#polyamory
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Don’t tell people not to laugh.
Friends, today is not a day to be shamed of your joy and hope. Wave your flag HIGH. Some people would have you to believe you should hide your glee, your excitement or your elation at finally seeing the caravan of retribution, cosmic justice and old-fashioned “reaping and sowing” reach the gates of its own demise. You should not. The universe is doing what it’s doing and, acknowledging that as the only “justice” we can be sure to have, or hope for, is well-earned and beyond our control. But just in case you still feel a bit self-conscious about the universe’s timing:
Remember the children -as young as babies- in distress, traumatized from parental separation, with ID numbers written on their arms as they’re shipped around the US quietly on night flights, lodging in Best Western hotels while this administration claimed they are “keeping families together”. Remember how their family members -pre pandemic- were packed in cages so tight no one could even lay down and SLEEP and how lawyers went to COURT on their behalf to advocate for them having access to basic hygiene products and influenza medications.
Remember the "shithole" Bahamians (a former Caribbean free-slave society with "Black Leadership") that were denied temporary refuge in the US after a monstrous hurricane stalled over their island homes for nearly 3 days-destroying their entire habitat, food/water supply & livelihood. Think of all the Republican politicians & White Americans who then joined in to support and affirm this un-neighborly treatment, who hide their tax-free profits in their banks and HAPPILY vacation there each year but proudly expect the service of Bahamian people during their pseudo-Caribbean "getaways”.
Remember the Puerto Ricans 🇵🇷 (& Vieques, Culebra, USVI 🇻🇮) who were told they were too "Lazy" to deserve adequate FEMA relief; relief that was sitting in cargo bins and supply ships stuck in port for weeks while surviving families, children & the elderly scoured around the island for water & food. Remember how the big ‘White Man’ and his posse flew in on a PR gambit to cover-up administrative incompetence. How they forced the hand of local government officials to “erase” lives by agreeing to concede lower death counts. How he threw paper towels at human beings in need of food and water from across a room, delighted with the televised spectacle of groveling survivors to cover-up an ill-prepared disaster response. How he required literal “thanks and praise” for benevolently distributing resources which they are entitledto by law, then flew back to the states, lied on those same leaders and then told the citizenry (overriding the NOAA) the same monstrous hurricane was "changing course" to Western Florida and Alabama because he knows better about meteorological science.
Remember the families of Paradise California-having lost all their life’s possessions, standing in the ashes of torched forests, had to acknowledge the welcome of a man who couldn’t bother to offer condolences let alone research the name of the very town he traveled to for a photo op. How he then minimized their devastation by recommending those agencies and families "rake leaves" like the Scandinavians do-to combat a Climate Change phenomenon he believes is a hoax.
Remember Heather Heyer, who lost her life, run over by a speeding driver in a crowd-on film, who's mother wasn't offered so much as a condolence card for the loss of her only daughter during a protest against Nazis HE STILL WONT CONDEMN, that descended on her hometown to spew epithets, obscenities while terrorizing ethnic, religious and sexual minorities with old-fashioned torches one fine Friday evening. Remember how it looked and sounded to witness the chilling resurrection of the chanting ghosts in our country’s violent, barbarous history be welcomed in equivocal affirmation by a head of state, staff and colleagues.
Remember Khzir Khan, his wife and fallen son who are to this day still mocked, denigrated and roundly dismissed for their immigrant history and military service-to this country's ideals and imperialistic motivations in their own places of birth -whilst simultaneously offering up White soldiers and their families who served in the same wars as the epitome of American valor, respectability, 'legitimacy' and political currency. And how he later condemned his own Defense leaders as being hungry for war to satisfy a “military industrial complex”.
Remember the vile ‘mysogynoir’ directed at Rep. Fredrica Wilson (FL) by his Chief of Staff, himself a gold-star military father, caught blatantly lying about material facts he used to denigrate her concerning the death of a Black soldier and his grieving widow. How he defended a callous condolence call and gaslight an entire press corp to bolster an unpatriotic narrative of a Black soldier that "He knew what he was getting into"...and never apologized for it.
Remember the Trans women and men serving in the Miltary who woke up one random morning to read on Twitter that their hard work and dedication was now a distraction and “threat to cohesion” because their identity had become "too expensive" to sustain. This after being assured their jobs and “LGBTQ rights” would be honored beyond 2016. Remember the grift of inter-agencies, the re-allocation of Defense funds towards a border wall “Mexico would pay for” and the $84 Million in subsidies for erectile dysfunction medications for male military officers (in contrast to “overspending” claims on Trans hormonal care). Remember this vulgar scapegoating to satisfy a group of mysogynistic theocrats and non-profit “interest groups” self-defined by Biblical “principles” and simultaneously bearing the most false of witness against these their neighbors.
Remember the show hearings with Dr. Ford, a victim of sexual abuse, white patriarchy and the most acute manifestations of rich, male, Christian privilege, who was not be afforded a thorough background investigation into her abusers and the veracity of her case; who was eventually mocked and discredited by grinning Senators eager to affirm a petulant, entitled drunk of a pious Juris Doctor, just so he could rule in favor of a “Muslim Ban” from a guy who pledged a “total Muslim ban” before being sworn-in to office. And the irony of discrediting Ford’s testimony on ‘insufficient’ evidence while being employed as a result of 10 years of election campaigns exploiting fears of coming “Sharia Law” they claim mistreats women places like Iran and Afghanistan.
Remember the nearly $110 million dollars for a 2017 Presidential inauguration still unaccounted for but nevertheless was somehow needed to hire acts like The Rocketts, the “US Border Patrol Pipes & Drums”, celebrity season winners on “America’s Got Talent” or the high-priced “1st Calvary Division Horse Calvary Detachment”. Remember how he got an inauguration: through outright lies, mockery, demonization of Latinos, the Disabled, the American Indigenous (remember “Pocahontas”?) and Blacks/African-Americans…before insisting the public believe an easily refuted lie about crowd and attendance.
Remember the dead that are still being killed overseas in various theaters of war: the dead Kurdish people (a.k.a. our “allies”); the dead soldiers for whose lives someone received a $100K bounty payment from Putin; the dead migrant adults and children who succumbed to abuse, infection and disease in holding cells (pre-Covid); the charred bodies trapped in their neighborhoods from fires raging in the West; the traumatized and/or dead protestors shot by sanctioned White vigilantes in cities “protecting businesses”; Black/Latino men and women shot by law enforcement or the 72 y/o Buffalo man with a permanent brain injury pushed to the ground by a “task force” of colleagues dutifully walking away as his blood spills on the sidewalk; the 205,000 DEAD of Covid-19, a purported “Democratic Hoax” that would miraculously disappear by Easter 2020, yet could be sufficiently treated with ultraviolet lights, “injections” of cleaning solution and for which -according to this man- “no one” has died even from (including your friend or your family member). He calls them “no one”.
Oh, and lest we forget-he is said to have only paid $750.00 in Federal taxes as a BILLIONAIRE…in the 10 years. Not to mention having allegedly RAPED or SEXUALLY ASSAULTED over 25 WOMEN.
As you tell me and everyone else not to “laugh”, dismiss or revel in this President’s current status, or that of his staff and family, REMEMBER THAT.
-R
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Echos of Stonewall: The NYPD Still Hate LGBTQ+ and Black People 51 Years Later
(source: Scott Lynch/Gothamist)
I know a lot of friends and family are concerned about what I witnessed last week at the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives Against Police Brutality. First of all, I am fine. It did take me a while to write this all down because the entire incident was very frightening. I also want to acknowledge that the decisions that I made at the moment come from my distinct place of privilege as a cis, white gay man in support of the movement for Black Liberation. I was not directly affected by the police's actions at the march, and my heart, energy, and resources go out to those who were more affected by them.
From all accounts, the QLM drew tens of thousands of people and was entirely peaceful. I marched with several friends, up from the city hall area, though Tribeca to the West Village, and finished southbound through the Washington Square Park arch in the village's center. This is important because just north of the arch, about 15 minutes after I finished marching, the NYPD perpetrated their violence against the protesters who were ending their march. I would have been caught in a dangerous situation perpetrated by the police if my party had just been slightly behind.
As I left the park southbound with a friend, a horde of about 20 cops ran past us. We decided to follow them as they ran back north through the park. There was a crowd of protestors just north of the arch who were getting very audibly agitated. However, it was hard to see what was going on even as we propped ourselves up on concrete park benches to see what was happening more clearly. However, we could eventually see the chaos meer feet away from us and smell the pepper spray the police were using on what had been protestors who were peaceful for the rest of the day previous.
I wanted to enter the fray and use my white body and privilege to try to protect people. However, I had neglected to write a bail fund on my arm before heading out for the march, and I was wearing my contact lenses, which would have been really bad for my eyes if I had been teargassed or pepper-sprayed. I felt very ill-prepared at the moment about these mistakes. I'm an accomplished protestor, and usually, I prepare more appropriately. This being a pride event, I naively assumed that this march would not suffer from police brutality. This is a mistake I will not make again when I'm protesting for Black Lives Matter.
What I saw was needlessly escalated and violent as I left the park, and what I learned later confirmed what I saw. Apparently, two protestors were using a sharpie to deface a police van. However, because the police have no training to de-escalate violence, they sent hordes of officers to the scene. Many were wearing riot gear, and many were on bicycles, there were multiple squad cars (which I saw speeding up to the park as I was leaving), all being deployed to shove these protestors with their nightsticks, pepper spray them and push them down onto the ground.
This is, unfortunately, not an isolated incident in NYC during the current wave of protests. The NYPD is so poorly trained to deal with... anything really. What I saw on Sunday was helpful for me to witness, because it made me understand why the Black Lives Matter movement is looking for the complete abolishment of the NYPD ASAP. It was like the NYPD was an occupying militarized force dealing with violent insurgents: It was that bad. The police that I saw during the march looked tired and angry. They were basically chomping at the bit to insight some violence and bust some heads. When the cops were running past me on the way to the north end of the park, they almost had a gleeful and excited look in their eyes.
These actions are shameful, especially on the 51st anniversary of The Stonewall Uprising and the 50th anniversary of the first Pride March to commemorate the uprising. All the police accomplished was to radicalize another group of protesters who witnessed firsthand the violence perpetrated on Black Lives Matter protesters over the last month. I know that the whole incident galvanized me to further use my time and energy to fight for a more just and equitable world for the Black people in my city and country.
For more info about what happened, I'm including some helpful articles that cover the incident in more detail, and the news report from very mainstream NBC news, that doesn’t make the police look like the good guys here. A lot of friends are asking "why aren't I hearing more about this?" Well, here's your chance to read up on what happened and hopefully get more involved:
The Nation: 51 Years After Stonewall, New York’s Queer Liberation March Faces Police Violence
NBC: NYC's Queer Liberation March draws thousands, clashes with NYPD
Gothamist: Queer Liberation March Draws Massive Crowd: “No Barricades, No Cops, And Keeping Black Trans People Safe
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In June, a crowd of over 400 sex workers, activists, organizers and allies convened across from the Stonewall Inn to celebrate International Whore’s Day. Sex workers, who belong to a criminalized and marginalized community, gathered in celebration and in protest. Their demonstration made a statement—that, even in the face of ever-present policing and a new wave of harmful legislation, sex workers can and will gather out in the open to flex their political muscle. This was best articulated in a chant, near the end of the protest, for congressional candidate Suraj Patel.
Patel is challenging Carolyn Maloney for her 12th District seat in the upcoming New York Democratic primary. In addition to being a 25-year incumbent, Maloney is also a co-sponsor of FOSTA. FOSTA and its sister Senate bill, SESTA, were ostensibly designed to fight sex trafficking. Already, the legislation has resulted in numerous websites self-censoring, for fear that they will be held liable for “facilitating prostitution.” Rather than, say, providing resources to trafficking survivors, community organizers and sex workers report that FOSTA-SESTA has served to shut down platforms for advertising and screening clients, pushing sex workers into the streets and halting online communication and harm reduction.
Standing in the crowd of protest signs and red parasols, Patel got to hear hundreds of community members and allies screaming his name, as an organizer urged protestors to “show up for someone who stands up for us.” She continued, “Let’s show the nation you don’t need to throw sex workers under the bus to win an election.”
In a courtyard outside of his campaign offices, Patel described being completely overwhelmed by the crowd’s support. “I’m just a first-time candidate, I’m 34 years old—eight months ago I was a completely private citizen,” he told The Daily Beast. “So it’s strange to be honest with you, and a little overwhelming. A lot of people are counting on this campaign to win.”
While the hotel executive and NYU business ethics professor has gotten a good deal of press exposure for being the rare anti-FOSTA-SESTA candidate, he didn’t initially aim to align his campaign with sex workers’ rights. In fact, Patel says that he had no idea what FOSTA-SESTA was when he started out. He was quickly inundated with messages from constituents, asking him what he planned to do about his opponent’s pet bill. “Honest to God, the first few days we just ignored it,” Patel admitted. “We Googled it and were like whoa, probably don’t want to touch that, kept moving.” But as time went on, and the messages kept coming, he decided to revisit it, thinking, “Maloney’s a big champion of this thing, let’s at least look at it and see what it is.” His campaign spent two months working with various organizations, talking to sex workers and trafficking survivors, people who opposed FOSTA-SESTA and people who championed it.
“Not only are people being hurt by this, trans women especially, but it’s actually become harder to prosecute trafficking.”
“We realized there are a lot of people being hurt out there,” Patel recalled, adding, “Harm reduction is the number one principle that I want to start this campaign with. Legislating morality is way above my pay grade, and I do not plan to do it. Ever. But we have caused harm, by our own doing, and we have not solved the trafficking problem. Not only are people being hurt by this, trans women especially, but it’s actually become harder to prosecute trafficking.”
“Clearly this is like a Mike Pence-y, moralizing bill because sex trafficking isn’t even the largest form of trafficking!” Patel offered. “If we cared about trafficking, we’d talk more broadly about labor trafficking—and of course undocumented immigrants, who don’t have any recourse in the police and the criminal justice system. But we didn’t. And so clearly the motives were skewed, and Democrats fell for the trap, as they tend to often do.”
He continued, “So I think that it’s important that we offer an alternative to the actual problem they were saying they were going to solve, and then say, what you really were trying to do is moralize around sex work and stigmatize it further.”
Patel conceptualizes his fight against FOSTA-SESTA within a larger framework. He emphasized that the legislation affects “the most marginalized among us,” including but not limited to trans folks, people of color, and undocumented people. Talking about FOSTA-SESTA lends itself to a conversation about mass incarceration and harmful policing—and it is Patel’s belief that the diverse, educated, extremely liberal district he seeks to represent ought to be at the forefront of these debates. Or as he puts it, “If we don’t look at prevention instead of punishment here, across all kinds of criminal justice issues, not just SESTA-FOSTA, then who will?”
As a candidate who “plans to win,” Patel aspires to raise up the sex-worker community that has literally rallied behind him. “I get to move in places and hallways that sex workers don’t get to yet. And therefore, my allyship is one to elevate their voices, and destigmatize sex work.”
A day later, on a scorching-hot New York City Saturday, Patel was in Ridgewood trying to do just that. With Survivors Against SESTA, Patel’s campaign organized a town hall for sex workers and allies. It was billed as an opportunity for the community to ask Patel questions, share experiences and concerns, and generally hold space.
Two hundred people packed into The Dreamhouse, a DIY venue draped in chandeliers and gilded mirrors. For the event, the club was filled with chairs circling a makeshift stage. Lola, an organizer with Survivors Against SESTA, welcomed the crowd.
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On the phone a few days before the town hall, Lola stressed that Patel was a singular candidate. “We have a lot of conversations with various elected officials at various levels of office where they will seem to understand the issues that we talk about, and then just feel like they don’t have the political cover to support us publicly,” she explained. “And so that I think is what’s really different about Suraj, is that he’s not ashamed, and he’s actually actively and explicitly supporting the safety of sex workers.” In speaking up for sex workers, Patel has gained some vocal supporters. According to Lola, “We know a lot of sex workers who’ve canvassed for the campaign because of his positions on sex work. People have done a ton of spreading word about it on social media. I know people who registered to vote who were not previously registered to vote in Democratic primaries, just so they could vote for Suraj.”
While sex workers are still very much reeling from FOSTA-SESTA, Lola posited that the “devastating” legislation has also managed to catalyze the community: “Because of how swift that devastation was, it politicized a lot of people who weren’t previously politicized, and media also began covering the harm in such a way that in previous times sex workers weren’t really covered. So it sort of gave people more room to think about this issue critically instead of just having that immediate response of, ‘Oh, sex work is trafficking, all women are exploited, etc.’”
“Obviously we really hope that Suraj will win, we hope that he’ll be an advocate for us in Congress,” Lola concluded. “But at the end of the day, even if he doesn’t, this is a really big step in the right direction for us, because the entire campaign shows that you can support sex workers and still do OK, and actually get a really positive community response from it.”
Ceyenne Doroshow, the Founder and Director of the advocacy organization GLITS (Gays and Lesbians Living In a Transgender Society), explained why so many people were sacrificing a day at the beach to sit in a dark room in Ridgewood. “Our community is getting raped, beaten, murdered, and we have no way to defend ourselves,” she said, introducing Patel to the crowd. “Suraj, you’re our way.”
Doroshow joined Cecilia Gentili of GMHC and Womankind’s Aya Tasaki in a panel discussion that hit on the aftermath of FOSTA-SESTA and potential next steps. Gentili, who’s the Director of Policy at GMHC, “the world’s first and leading provider of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy,” spoke candidly about what she’s been seeing in the community: “Specifically right now in Jackson Heights, there’s been a tremendous number of violence against sex workers that identify as trans and are undocumented. And because they are sex workers, because they are undocumented, and because they are trans, these people are not comfortable with coming out in any kind of way.” She added that, “These people were doing sex work in their houses, in their places, and it was relatively safe for them. But because they are unable to advertise online, they have been forced to go back to the streets, where all these predators are going to them and stealing their money, violently approach them, rape them.”
“There was this girl last week that was stabbed five times. Five fucking times,” Gentili said, visibly emotional. “That’s how bad it is. That’s what SESTA and FOSTA is doing to the community.” As a transgender woman who was formerly undocumented, Gentili spoke on undocumented trans people who do sex work “because they make the decision to do, or because it’s the only thing that we can do. Because realistically, nobody offers many jobs to trans people, and there are not many jobs that a person without documented status can do here.” Trans people disproportionately engage in sex work, and are disproportionately targeted and policed for doing so. FOSTA-SESTA has only increased the danger. “I’m tired of us being stabbed, beaten, robbed, chased,” Doroshow offered. “And then we wind up being criminalized.”
Still, Gentili offered a note of hope: “I dreamt years ago of the days when a politician was going to be with me, talking about what sex work looks like for an undocumented trans woman. And check this out: it’s happening now, and it’s happening out of struggle.”
Tasaki, Manager of Policy and Advocacy at Womankind, formerly the New York Asian Women’s Center, echoed Doroshow and Gentili’s testimonies while also offering a tip to outsiders attempting to catalogue community harm. “What we are demanded by all of these funders and politicians is like, give us numbers,” Tasaki said. “Give us all of the proof. And it’s like, just trust us. Just listen to our stories. It doesn’t seem to be enough for leaders like Ceyenne and Cecilia to be like, this is happening in my community! Somehow still, the system is requiring us to bulk that up with numbers…These are the deaths. How many more do you need for you to believe us?”
During his remarks, Patel spoke out against Congress for failing to “talk to the people who are going to be most affected by that law,” and against FOSTA-SESTA, calling it “a charade of a bill.”
“Every small-thinking politician that wants to take a bipartisan victory back home,” he continued, “can stand around Donald Trump in the Oval Office and pat themselves on the back for coming out against trafficking when all they really did was make it very difficult for lots of people in this country to survive, and made it much more likely that they would be exploited.”
But Patel urged the attendees not to be discouraged by the massive number of votes in support. If he were to defeat a 25-year-incumbent, he wagered, politicians’ sense of self-preservation would probably kick in. “If we terrify folks by saying, we’re going to vote, and we’re going to vote in large numbers, and we’re gonna organize, and we’re gonna out-organize, you’ll be surprised to see how many more doors and conference rooms start opening up to working on repealing this, or coming up with a way to dramatically restructure it so that it exempts voluntary, consensual sex work,” he said.
He went on to push back against the idea that sex work is a niche issue, or one that wouldn’t appeal to the majority of voters. Instead of “otherizing” the issue, he suggested broadening the conversation to talk about mass incarceration, and labor rights, as well as humanizing the sex workers who have been negatively affected: “Putting faces to the violence and showing that these are real people is one huge component.” Plus, he added, “There’s an estimated 10 to 20,000 sex workers in this district. Which means that there’s, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of clients in this district.”
While Patel received a lot of applause on his vision and allyship, he also got pushback. During the Q&A portion of the event, a self-identified organizer questioned if the candidate’s support of the sex-worker community would extend beyond the campaign—even if he loses. As one of the first and few politicians to come out against the legislation, would he continue to be a face of the anti-FOSTA-SESTA movement? While Patel joked that, if things didn’t go his way, he would start by engaging in a lot of “self-care,” he continued, “I’m 34 years old, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“For me this isn’t work anymore, this is just what I like to do. And because of it, I’ll be right here with you guys all the way through. That’s a promise.”
The fact that Patel, who maintains that he wants to keep hearing from the community and evolving his positions, has yet to come out in support of full decriminalization, remained a point of frustration. One attendee explained, “What you’re saying right now, it’s great, and it’s awesome, and it’s just not enough. So I need to know that you’re going to keep listening to us, and continue that learning that you’re doing.” While she thanked Patel for coming and speaking with the community, and for opposing FOSTA-SESTA, she continued, “I need to say that I am really tired of being grateful for so little.”
The event ended with another chant, something Patel’s probably gotten a little more used to by now.
“Sex workers vote,” the crowd screamed. “And we’re voting Suraj in.”
via The Daily Beast Latest Articles
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Black Protests On Campus
This could easily be a post about feminism on campus as they have had a very similar history but after the many black student activist protests and terror-style administration coups and demands in the recent months, it’s necessary to look into it deeper. Since the late 1960s, college campuses have been plagued by hundreds of race-related protests. Despite all the administrative surrender to their demands, these demonstrations have continued and it could be easy to argue that they are crazier and more consequential now than they have ever been. In order to understand why, we first have to know how it all began. Black students have been part of the college landscape long before affirmative action. Nearly all were admitted into college because they proved themselves academically qualified, they could do the work and they never demanded special treatment, let alone entire departments catering to their racial identities.
Beginning in the late 1960s however, as a result of the black power movement, race baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and court decrees such as the Bakke decision, schools began admitting huge numbers of blacks. They were required to fill their classrooms with black students, to show everyone that their school isn’t racist. The problem though was nearly all of these students were completely unprepared for college work. So to get around this problem, universities offered a variety of academic remediation programs, such as blacks-only summer school “bridge” programs to teach the basics. When this wasn’t enough to bring black students up to speed, the administrations created a Black Studies Department to help them along, hiring only black faculty. These early outreach programs still invariably failed, since hastily recruited, fresh out of the inner-city street kids could not do the work despite remedial efforts and generous grading by liberal professors.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the agenda shifted from increasing the number of blacks on campus and expecting them to do as well as the other students to transforming the campus to make black students feel comfortable and to correct what is seen as ‘whiteness,’ such as the ‘microaggression’ of correcting a black student’s spelling. Diversity was now official orthodoxy, everywhere except for diversity of thought, and it was implemented top to bottom. Universities increasingly focused on retention, so students who once would have flunked out in real subjects now stayed on and even graduated, thanks to the invention of kiddy courses such as Black Studies, where as long as you raise your clenched fist, you pass. This cycle has continued ever since, and all it’s done has created even more entitlement from black activist students.
Intensified recruitment had failed to attract qualified black students and faculty to be involved in real subjects, so to meet quotas for non-whites, they lowered the bar even further. Since it is impossible to recruit enough competent black faculty to replace white faculty, as students often demand, the problem is solved by hiring black administrators who understand that their cushy jobs depend on keeping the racial grievance pot boiling. So they invent bogus explanations for black academic failure - structural racism, microaggressions, white privilege and stereotyping - anything but themselves of course. And to make matters even worse, further pressure for the removal of whiteness now comes from white students marinated in the “diversity-is-our-strength” dogma.
Consider a typical set of demands: University of California Santa Cruz administrators recently agreed to meet all four demands lodged by a black student group who overran a campus building and blocked the administrators in their office until their conditions were met. They warned UC Santa Cruz had four months to comply with these demands or “more reclamations” will result. After three days of protesting, Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to give all black students a 4-year housing guarantee to live in the Rosa Parks African American Themed House, bring back the building’s black-only lounge, pay to have its exterior painted “Pan-Afrikan colors” of red, green and black and force all new incoming students to go through a mandatory diversity competency training. The three additional demands are that the university purchase a property “to serve as a low income housing cooperative for non-white students,” that the university allocate $100,000 for a Black Studies department.
Black students at UCLA are demanding $40 million and their own “safe spaces” on campus as compensation for “racial insensitivity.” The first item on the list of demands calls for a physical location on campus to house the black only event planning, which would include “meeting/gathering/safe spaces” and to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty, and staff at our university,” adding that the endowment should also provide financial aid to “dismissed black students.” The list goes on to demand “cultural awareness training” for all incoming students, faculty and staff members. Lastly, it demands “guaranteed housing for black students for 4 years, including on and off campus housing,” arguing that securing housing is only difficult for black students.
Black students at American University demanded extensions on finals for all students of color and no penalization for previous exams. They gathered in a tunnel on campus and blocked traffic from getting through until their demands were met. They claim they will take over a student-operated cafe on campus as a “sanctuary for all people of color” for the rest of the semester. The ultimatum also targeted food service providers, accused the university of having a “white supremacist” curriculum because they read books written by historic white writers, and demands various forms of segregation. “Abandon the white supremacist and colonial curriculum.” Another pushed for segregated campus safe spaces, demanding “the establishment of separate resource centers for Black, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native Americans, Muslim, undocumented students, and queer and trans students.” The list also demands a tuition freeze and training programs for faculty to “deconstruct oppressive behavior in the classroom.”
There are two major factors driving these periodic upheavals. The first is the intellectual deficiency of these students. The second are the incentives for school administrators to give in. They would not protest if they were actually taking their education seriously, keeping up intellectually and studying credible subjects as whites and Asians tend to. It’s very rare you’ll see anyone studying real subjects or high achievers part of these protest groups. The wider the intellectual gap, the more frequent the protests, which can be seen as a kind of “self medication” for these students. After weeks of classroom frustration, it is euphoric to take over the white president’s office and watch him squirm when you present 25 non-negotiable demands. Thanks to social media, the cost for organizing a protest is about zero, and who can resist the instant gratification and media coverage that comes from waving homemade signs and chanting catchy slogans?
It is as if these students believed that administrators have special, almost magical powers that can cause dim students to succeed, so obtaining a degree just requires putting pressure on white functionaries. Campus protestors are unlike professionally run interest groups that have specific goals and negotiate their demands rationally. Protest feeds on itself, like thrill-seekers who must always find new excitement to sustain their high. That’s why after 40 years of this, nothing is still ever good enough, nor will it ever be. But why do school administrators tolerate this nonsense? Why not immediately call campus security and drag their screaming asses away? Mainly because these demands, no matter how foolish or expensive, personally cost administrators nothing.
Meeting black students demands is actually a bonanza any administrator who measures his status by the size of his budget. Building a cultural center, hiring black psychologists and sensitivity counselors, setting up new departments, adding yet more diversity and inclusion staff, all this means larger bureaucratic empires and even salary increases because of new responsibilities. Furthermore, an administrator who immediately caves in to even the most outrageous demands is likely to be applauded for “managing” potentially violent conflict. The solution is always to spend other people’s money, and college administrators are never fired for being wimps. Any hardliner who ordered arrests would be judged inflexible and insensitive to the plight of blacks on today’s "white supremacy” campuses.
Finally, black student protestors are the perfect useful idiots for radical administrators. For social justice warriors masquerading as a university scholar, having black students advance your agenda, often with the threat of violence, is a godsend. All the campus brouhaha is there to intimidate those who might resist today’s cultural marxism. And it does. Eventually this will end though. More pressure will come from outside, from state legislatures, trustees, or donors, all sick of this embarrassing behavior. What happened at the University of Missouri may be a sign of things to come: the university’s total surrender to of protestors caused thousands of parents to enroll their children elsewhere, and tuition revenue fell sharply.
This of course does not apply to every black student. There are many highly qualified black students and faculty achieving wonderful things on their own merit. But decades of pandering to demands, affirmative action, rewarding incompetency, this cycle has now led to today’s mania on campus, now unqualified previous students are teaching and guiding today’s unqualified students and they're proving to be the driving force behind today’s ridiculous black activist protests, such as the few examples above. These black protests and their terror-style demands will not end until our colleges return to admitting students and faculty on ability rather than to fill quotas. And this will not happen until we acknowledge the anti-education and anti-white mindset plaguing our black communities. Every year however we become even more determined to deny the obvious.
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On AntiFascism in the US.
I don't think antifascists in the US are really aware of what the situation in the US currently is and hearing the news from Berkley cemented this.
For people who aren't aware, various Nazi groups organised a Nazi rally and were predictably met with anti fascist resistance. There was a police presence, people were armed with sticks, poles, knives, shields and improvised armour. Several people were punched and soon after about 20 people were arrested and then AntiFa dispersed and ceded ground to Nazis, who remained for a bit longer and then also left.
And depending on how you saw it, it was either victory for AntiFa or a victory for Nazis. Wheter or not it was or how you saw it, one thing was clear. It displayed the weaknesses of the anti fascist movement in the US. Mainly a severe lack of organisation and a shallow goals mostly ammounting to 'meet them out on the field and beat the shit out of them'.
In any other, less fascist time, this may work better than it would now. But i feel that with the current state of affairs in the US, what we're risking is merely a repeat of 1920's-30's Germany.
During the violent and turbulent political and social climate of Germany at that time, the police was often essentially hand in hand on the field with Nazis and SA Stormtroopers. What we saw at Berkley according to reports by some was much the same.
A Weimar police officer with an SA stormtrooper.
Nazis at Berkley knew how to play up to the police and moreover the police in the US is more than likely to sympathise with them, given that the police in the US is absolutely packed with white supremacists, Nazis and other assorted fascists.
The police in the US are practically chomping at the bits to simply start shooting us in the streets. They're already killing people of colour by the hundreds each year, and that's while also pretending they did nothing wrong. What do you think will happen when all this pretense completely drops away and they're allowed to kill protestors en masse?
I don't know if open anti fascism in the US will work or flourish when we have the literal organs of the government against us out on the streets.
Nazis know this, they're on the same wave lenght, and this is something US anti fascists need to start realising.
You're not just dealing with a scattered bunch of Nazis out on the streets, clad in MAGA hats and Pepe pins.
You're also dealing with their police enablers who will use any justification to whip out the shields, batons and move in to disperse and beat the living shit out anyone they see, while the Nazis are safely tucked back, laughing at us as we're bleeding out on the ground and tackled by a squad of armoured riot officers.
You're dealing with the politicians they voted in who are right now trying to pass laws that will sabotage freedom of protest in the US by giving police more, and of course the victims of these laws will be antifascists.
Be sure, things are not okay and things aren't easy, especially since the anti-fascist movement in the US has been utterly declawed due to decades of political disenfranchisement and a media narrative that is decidedly against us.
Nazis and right wingers in the US have literal decades of community ties, they have the benefit of old and experienced organisers and furthemore they have the benefit of, on average, being financially stable. Nazis at Berkley were able to bus in dozens of Nazis from surrounding areas while the anti fascists at Berkley were unprepared and local.
We failed on an informational level, we were not able to find out about their plans, their forces or capabilities and then adjust our actions accordingly.
Furthemore Nazis and right wing organisations in the US, as i said, have the benefit of support from police departments, politicians and when push comes to shove, the military. Be sure about that, if it comes to that the military will open fire on anti fascists in the US.
For all intents and purposes the AntiFa movement in the US has only now really had the chance to cut it's teeth and it shows. Many AntiFa are absolutely ready to throw down, but throwing down is only one aspect and we, again, do not have as much experience in that regard.
There's a legitimate threat that anti-fascism in the US becomes mostly performative and when faced with an actual fight on the streets, it will fall apart.
Our support base is tiny and insular. The mainstream left leaning figures want nothing to do with us and the majority of US society doesn't pay attention, care, or see us as threats to free speech because that's how media frames the conflict between these two groups.
And this is something Nazis excel at, the control of information and how these issues are framed. When an AntiFascist punched Richard Spencer in the face it's not seen as resistance towards someone who is openly genocidal, they see an intolerant bully shutting down someone who by the virtue of free speech, has the right to say whatever the fuck they want.
Nazis know this, it is central to their frame of 'we're the victims, we merely wish to engage in a democratic process that is behoven to us from birth as rightful citizens of the United States'.
That's another AntiFascists don't have: reach.
Our terms and core beliefs are alien and unpalatable to the majority of Americans. Nazis abuse the already existing and inherent bigotries of the majority of Americans. They prey upon these insecurities and inculcated, centuries old cultural beliefs and work off of them to drum up support.
It is much harder for us to tear this shit down than it is for them to just work off of something that is already there.
Look at YouTube as a microcosm. Decidedly reactionary and fascist YouTubers have gigantic reach when compared to even the most popular leftists. They have weaponised memes to a frightening degree and will continue to do so. As fucking ridiculous as it is to say this out loud, memes have become a frontier OF propaganda in the US.
The leftists that we do have are under constant assault and many of them, especially trans people and people of colour, do not have a secure enough fallback to survive.
Nazis on YouTube are paid in literal thousands to rant out debunked propaganda for three hours. They will survive anything barring being completely and utterly cut off from the Internet. Their audiences are greater by far, an audience i have not seen any anti-fascist being able to emulate.
And on top of that their information is much more palatable and regurgitated far easier. We do not have that benefit, as i said, to dismantle pre-existing and heavily ingrained bigotries that fascists so easily exploit.
So we're losing the rhetorical battle as well, something that i think is massivley important, moreso than even just engaging them out on the streets. And of course mainstream media, in it's twisted visage of 'objectivity' is only proving itself to be a tool to enable fascists. So we can't rely on that either.
We need to somehow make our info more acessible, more palatable, we need to make our reach greater.
I think that aside from strenghtening our information game we would do well to focus on uplifting and strenghtening our own communities so that we have a reliable fallback. We need to help each other more than anything so that we can live to even fight.
And fighting isn't just phisically fighting. Not everyone is capable of doing that.
We need to also make sure that we uplift the voices that are the most marginalised in the United States especially, the voices of LGBTQ antifascists of colour. We should not allow for the discourse to be dominated by more white cishet voices to the point where LGBTQ folk of colour are shoved off to the background.
This shit isn't easy and we're currently not in an enviable position. Make no mistake these are extremely dire times. And honestly at this point i'm simply rambling and i just want to hear other AntiFa's opinions on this.
@justsomeantifas @class-struggle-anarchism
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Violence #10
cw: anti-blackness, white supremacy, violence, nazism
Recently during my AP/Honors US History class, we had a discussion about the recent protest at Berkeley noted for the violence that occurred (one Trump supporter pepper sprayed allegedly, some other citations I can’t find due to the fake news blubbered by white supremacist sites *cough* Breitbart). Unsurprisingly, I found myself at odds with other classmates; those who disapproved of the tactics used and instead pushed for peaceful large gatherings. An important note here is that the majority of students are white at my school, particularly my grade, and is unrepresentative of the local population; Latinx student population (6%) only represents 23% of the actual Latinx population in the local counties (26.15%).
I am now reading documents by white supremacists from the KKK for an upcoming seminar for the same class tomorrow. In order to power through, I am playing Young Jeezy’s “My President is Black,” the same song I found myself playing in the morning as I rode to school with a guttural sense of foreboding on January 20th. Some may say it’s my fluctuating, ambivalent mental health or the delirium of a lack of sleep, but futile laughter can’t help but roll of my tongue as a mix of disappointment and un-surprise mixes in an unpleasant cocktail.
I am often perplexed by the paradox that is often put in front of me when it comes to social injustice. I stare at these well meaning white faces who condemn white supremacists that we read about. The faces who ponder about what they would do if they were living at that time and desiring to have contributed to the abolitionist cause or the Civil Rights Movement. The faces who are yet to show up for black lives despite the plenty of promptings from Ferguson to Baton Rouge; from “All lives matter” to “I don’t see color” to “Not all cops are bad.” These faces who look back confused and or uncomfortable as I affirm violence committed for liberation.
What happened in Berkeley was necessary. Milo Yiannopoulos, a white gay literal neo-nazi was planning to expose undocumented students at the school; people who are seriously threatened by a Trump presidency. Previously at another college, Milo violently outed a trans woman by hurling slurs, misgendering her, and then promptly telling the entire audience that “the way that you know [she does not pass as cisgender is] I’d almost still bang [her].”
Larger than Milo, when confronted with such white supremacy— do you still want to flirt with the idea that violent response to this egregious injustice is somehow inevitable or invalid? That we should not be angry and upset that our lives are viewed as playthings to further a white supremacist agenda? That the people who we love, know, are friends with are literally at threat of being deported, denied access into the country, denied healthcare, denied hormones, denied their basic and fundamental human rights?
This is not to condemn or invalidate anyone who actively practices and or teaches nonviolent protest. If you’re showing up and targeting the right institutions and putting pressure on the right points, you have all of my support. However, if you are to tell me how to react to my oppression if you have not stood behind and for me and others as we combatted our oppressors, I would rather not engage or receive your misinformed and apologist input. You do not get to critique or police the way in which I or others choose to survive, since you sure as hell aren’t doing anything to help us.
Instead of showering disapproval on violent response to malicious white supremacy, how about you criticize and combat the violent state that is literally killing people in the street both domestic and international? How about the institutions that tear families apart through deportation and or mass incarceration? How about them?
Or how about the White protestors that everyone praises for dunking the English Tea into the Boston Harbor? How about the white protestors who harassed tax collectors? How about the Revolutionary War? How about the blood white people in the United States shed in order to secure their sovereignty? Yet, black and brown resistance is somehow the true enemy and aggressor?
So if you ask me- Is it okay to punch a Nazi? My answer is a whole-hearted yes. Furthermore, it is your duty to if you claim to stand with and for those who are at risk of hate crimes and injustice right now from both the government and civilian Nazis. I don’t care if you went to the Local Women’s March and flaunted your “clever” transphobic sign. Are you contacting your local government? Are you researching organizations near you to help? Are you donating money and resources if you can’t donate your time?
Let’s not forget that things did not just suddenly got bad. They have been bad since Columbus set a single toe in the western hemisphere. I am curious to know how you all measure “progress” and “things were better” when we live in the very area that amplifies and intensifies the destruction of culture and vicious gentrification of San Francisco and Oakland through venture-capitalist, techie start-up realities.
From “the future of progress and civilization depends on the continued supremacy of the white race” (Evans 1926) to "It's not just that they are leftists and cucks, it's not just that they are genuinely stupid. Indeed, one wonders if these people are people at all” (Spencer 2016), let us never humor ourselves to think that racism had suddenly reappeared with the inauguration of Trump. There is much work to be done, and invalidating a critical component of movement building and organizing is doing more harm if anything.
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The Transgender ‘Threat’ To Free Speech Is A Lie
Photo via Flickr / taedc
Transgender people are now being positioned by anti-trans activists as a threat to a core American value: the First Amendment right to free speech.
A t the end of March, a bright orange bus snaked its way around the east coast of the United States. Making stops in major metropolitan areas including Boston, New York City, and Washington, DC, the bus called itself the “Free Speech Bus,” and it displayed a harmful message that belied its seemingly innocuous exterior: “It’s biology. Boys are boys and always will be. Girls are girls and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all.”
The cultural tide has begun shifting toward acceptance of the transgender community; the effectiveness of outright violence and discrimination, while still prevalent, has lessened with the increased support from the general public. As a result, folks who want to do harm to our community have had to develop new strategies.
One of those tactics is to cast transgender people as a threat — as bullies rather than victims.
The effectiveness of outright violence and discrimination has lessened—so folks who want to do harm must now figure trans people as a threat.
Perhaps the most devastating example of this new strategy is the spate of bathroom bills sweeping state governments, in which trans women have been posed as a potential sexual threat to cisgender women and girls. The insidious orange “Free Speech” bus is another variation of this tactic that’s swiftly gaining momentum. Transgender people are now being positioned by anti-trans activists as a threat to a core American value: the First Amendment right to free speech.
The Free Speech Bus is a project of Citizen GO, a self-described “community of active citizens who work together, using online petitions and action alerts as a resource, to defend and promote life, family, and liberty.” The campaign was an offshoot of a similar anti-trans bus crusade that circulated in Madrid that was impounded for violating outdoor advertising mandates. Following the incident, Citizen GO rebranded the campaign, centering its focus not on the transphobic message that the bus displayed, but on what they believed to be a more heartrending issue: the denial of their right to free speech at the hands of “radical gender ideologues.”
When Transphobia Trumps Statistics
theestablishment.co
Citizen GO is a conservative Christian mirror of sites like Change.org. The organization, which seeks to politically activate primarily young folks and college students on the right, appears to have co-opted their tactics from progressive social justice movements. For example, Citizen GO emphasizes its adherence to “rationality” and “biology” as opposed to “ideological dogmas,” defining itself as a small grassroots collective, and developing its base through social media, petitions, and hashtags. In short, despite being rooted in the promotion of a privileged positionality — namely cisgender heterosexuality — Citizen GO likes to fancy itself the underdog, the oppressed.
This support of free speech is how Citizen GO justifies its intolerant views. Actions of protesters who came out against the bus and were, for the most part, acting well within their First Amendment rights to peaceful assembly and protest, are described by Citizen GO as violent, intolerant bullies. Painting themselves as the victim, Citizen GO writes, “All we ask for is respect for our views and the opportunity to voice them in accordance with the First Amendment.”
The campaign plays on the public’s tendency to fear the other, and it has done so by overstating the power and the scope of said other. Citizen GO understands the insistence on rights for trans people as “gender ideology dogma,” a tactic which fails to consider the cultural context in which the White House is actively stripping away our protections (including, yesterday, making a move to do away with a trans-inclusive health-care rule). When trans people are seen not as victims of violence and discrimination, but as violent radical ideologues and bullies who pose a threat to the right to free speech, people who harbor transphobic beliefs feel even more empowered to cling to them.
When trans people are seen not as victims of violence and discrimination, people who harbor transphobic beliefs feel even more empowered to cling to them.
However, the promotion of the idea that trans people present a threat to free speech exists on the left as well. After coming under fire for her remarks that trans women and cis women should be treated differently because of their childhood socialization, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie decried what she refers to as a “language orthodoxy” among liberals. She argued that the left’s insistence on the use of words like “cisgender” and “intersectionality” is not a sign of healthy political evolution, but a tactic for silencing people with dissenting views and closing off debate. Rather than facing up to critique and owning her privilege, Adichie chose the same route as many folks on the right, understanding her speech to have been silenced by the trans community.
Likewise, folks on the left continue to argue that even hateful alt-right trolls like Milo Yiannopolous deserve to have a platform. Despite the fact that Yiannopolous has been known to dangerously out trans students, many liberals still insist that protests against him, including the one at UC Berkeley that caused the university to cancel his speaking engagement, have wrongfully denied his right to free speech. Articles on the New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian — all written by left-leaning white cis men — argued that protestors shutting down Yiannopolous’s speaking engagements were just as bad as fascists and that the “right” way to go about dealing with them would be to have a nice, friendly debate with them. Because, hey, this is America and even fascists and neo-Nazis whose literal objective is to silence and kill minorities should have the right to free speech!
Everyone Who Enabled Milo Yiannopoulos Should’ve Seen This Coming
theestablishment.co
These arguments rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of free speech and stand in contradiction with what the original free speech movement that emanated out from Berkeley in the ‘60s set out to achieve; namely, to make sure that marginalized people were granted the full right to free speech accorded to them by the Constitution. Instead, arguments from both sides aim to uplift the voices of those who hold an incredible amount of power: cisgender people.
Politics is rooted in discourse and debate. Because we don’t all agree on everything, we have to have space to argue, to come to decisions, and to push for progress. We have to be able to invent new language to describe our experiences and we have to be able to call out privilege, power, and oppression for what they are.
But that doesn’t mean that this is always going to manifest as polite, emotionless conversation. How many people could we expect to behave calmly when their right to full personhood is being called into question? Would you not be driven to anger, to vandalism, to protest in the face of the denial of your literal humanity? Are these not, in fact, viable forms of political action and discourse?
The Left’s Long History Of Transphobia
Trans discrimination isn’t an invention of the right wing. Liberals have been perfecting it for years.theestablishment.co
If Adichie came under serious fire for her comments, it was not because she was being denied the platform to disseminate her opinion, but rather that enough people disagreed with her transphobic remarks to call attention to the flaws in her argument and, ultimately, to shut it down.
If Yiannopolous’s speech at Berkeley was cancelled, that doesn’t mean that he was denied his right to free speech. We all know he had been given a substantial platform, at least up until he crossed the line with that pedophilia remark. Rather, it means that there were enough people at Berkeley who would not tolerate his vitriol that they felt the need to make it near impossible for him to speak at that one particular time and location.
If the “Free Speech Bus” was prevented from easy passage across the United States, it was because its message was so cruel and intolerable that allowing it to be disseminated freely in the name of “free speech” was simply not an option.
And get this. All of these people continue to have a platform, continue to have plenty of media in which to express themselves. They are not literally being denied their right to free speech. There’s a big difference between that dystopian reality and being strongly dissuaded from continuing to speak by those who are affected by the issues at hand.
There’s a big difference between denying free speech and being strongly dissuaded from continuing to speak by those who are affected by the issues at hand.
The resistance to these anti-trans campaigns would not have happened if a vast and vocal opposition did not exist. And that community is not limited to transgender people, who, admittedly, make up a tiny percentage of the population. Estimates suggest that there are six transgender Americans for every 994 cis people. If we did not speak up for ourselves boldly, fiercely, and passionately, transphobic vitriol would still be circulating freely just as it has for decades, if not centuries. If we did not have the backing of accomplices, this pushback would not be happening to the extent that it is.
Free speech does not mean anything goes. There’s a reason why you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire, or why hiring an assassin to kill someone does not fall under the purview of free speech. These words can and do enact harm on others.
This includes language that suggests that trans women are not women, like those displayed on the side of that orange bus. It may not seem as direct as speaking the words “I want you to kill so and so,” but it might as well be, because this ideology makes trans women (especially those of color), and to a lesser extent other trans and gender non-conforming people, vulnerable to potentially fatal violence. It allows people to continue to hold the transmisogynist idea that trans women are men, who against the patriarchal system that upholds the superiority of masculinity, have chosen femininity, and that their womanhood is an act of deception. And it is these ideas that directly produce disproportionate violence against trans women.
The reason why transgender people are being systematically targeted for violence and discrimination while transphobic people are not is a substantial power differential. Trans people are already denied the right to free speech, and often, the right to even exist in public space. Transphobic people, however, are permitted to outwardly express transphobic and transmisogynistic views without significant threat to their livelihood because these views are propped up by powerful institutions, including the U.S. government.
Deadnaming A Trans Person Is Violence — So Why Does The Media Do It?
Make no mistake: This rhetoric is harmful.theestablishment.co
In reality, what has happened is that trans people have done the seemingly insurmountable work of passionately and persuasively arguing our humanity. We have, after decades of fervent political labor, begun to circulate language that feels more accurate to our experience and that makes space for our oppressors to acknowledge their privileged positionality — and that is threatening to those who have long been in power.
But anyone with even a fraction of a heart can see that this is no threat at all. We have actualized ourselves, both materially and linguistically. Our words, our protests are rather an act of opening, of expansion, of world building set to liberate us all from a system that limits our scope and our sense of possibility.
via The Establishment - Medium
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