Fixing the System: Page 14
We Need Coalitions
How are your trans friends and family? How are your immigrant friends and family? How are your non-white friends and family? How are your friends and family with disabilities?
A coworker mentioned some songs that might play during the half-time show. I had not heard of ether, or knew that the big game was happening the following Sunday. I looked up the songs and found them to be misogynistic. Why can’t some of the black men who are anti-racist see that it effects black women more and work to protect them? Similarly I’ve heard a lot of stories lately of cisgender women feeling threatened by trans women.
We need to stand together. No one group is going to solve bigotry alone. This is the kind of issue that people like Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell had to deal with during the suffrage movement. This is what Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera had to deal with as white men took over the pride movement and boxed them out.
One of my kid’s providers is a first generation black immigrant with a South African accent. At the end of my kid’s most recent appointment she turned to me and asked me, “how are you doing Mom?” I gave her a brief summary and then asked how she was doing. She told me how many of her patients were struggling right now, and some even had to be hospitalized. It was clear she was stressed. The mental health of her patients was really concerning to her.
A few weeks ago I met a guy on a hike with the Boston Queer Outdoor Activities Group. He said he had been a delegate for the Democrats at the DNC. He talked about how excited he had been for Harris and how disappointed he is now. He even said that at this point he didn’t care what happened to Florida. He felt that any suffering they have due to climate change and the new administration would be their comeuppance. I didn’t defend Florida because he clearly needed some time to process and heal. 42% of Florida votes went to Harris. There are people in Florida who can’t afford to leave. There are people in Florida who don’t have the means to leave, including children and the elderly. The 14yo trans boy who is considering suicide because he can’t get gender affirming care and his parents aren’t supportive is stuck. Their lives matter!
In 1969 Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers, William Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization, and José Cha Cha Jiménez of the Young Lords founded the Rainbow Coalition in Chicago. It was an inclusive civil rights organization that aimed to fight poverty, corruption, police brutality, bad housing, and racism. While the organization certainly wasn’t perfect, it’s an example of what we need today.
Today we need male rappers to stand up for women’s rights. We need comedians to support the LGBTQIA+ community. We need medical providers to support disability rights. We need the Puerto Rican community to stand up for the immigrant community. We need the Jewish community to support the Muslim community.
Right now immigrants and the trans community are the canary in the coalmine. We are cannon fodder being dehumanized by Executive Orders and compliance. We are a distraction from billionaires stealing more power. We are the tip of the iceberg. They come for us today, next they come for reproductive rights, and so on until it’s just the rich white men with power … or we get bombed to oblivion.