Saturday, April 22 – 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Malcolm X Library, 5148 Market Street, Performance Annex Room, San Diego

Hosted by San Diego Coalition to Free Mumia & San Diego Black Panther Party

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023 AT 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
Community Outreach Event – Food is a Right
1534 McKean Ave, Easterwood/Sandtown Park, Baltimore

Demand Rollback Prices, Restore & Expand Food Stamps, End Food Deserts, Feed the People, Not War

12 noon to 1 pm Gather at Easterwood/Sandtown Park, 1534 McKean Ave. Share food & prepare for Community Outreach Walk through the neighborhood from 1 pm to 2 pm and return to Park.

We will be petitioning. This neighborhood is one of the many food deserts in Baltimore City. This event will also commemorate the founding of the Easterwood/Sandtown Park.

Defend Filipino people and lands against imperialist war!
WHAT: Stationary action
WHEN: Monday, Apr 10, 7pm EST
WHERE: Times Square

This month, the Armed Forces of the PH (AFP) & the US military will hold their largest joint-military exercises to date, fortifying 1-sided military agreements that allow US imperialism to develop more platforms for war.

Join BAYAN-USA NE in a Natl Day of Action to denounce further military expansion across the Asia-Pacific under Biden & Marcos Jr., & call for an end to all unequal military agreements!

The Trans Day of Vengeance was a long-planned protest in Washington, D.C., scheduled for April 1. People were coming to D.C. from across the country to participate. It was called in response to the growing legal and extralegal violence against the transgender community, egged on by far-right politicians and corporate media.

In the words of event initiator Tsukuru Fors, as reported by Struggle-La Lucha: “Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence. It is our battle cry to declare to the world that we the transgender/non-binary communities will neither be silenced nor eradicated. And we are calling to our allies, members of other marginalized communities to make themselves known and to fight with us.”

On March 30, organizers were forced to cancel two days before the event because of “a credible threat to life and safety.” The reason: fascist mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson and other social-media bottom feeders whipped up a hate campaign targeting the event, falsely claiming it had caused a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, where three students and three staff members were killed. 

The alleged shooter was Aiden Hale, a former student of the school who happened to be a trans man. Hale was shot dead by police. He was consistently misgendered and deadnamed for the first 24-48 hours after the tragedy, and some right-wing social media used this to claim that Hale was a trans woman.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, by the end of March 2023 – that is, in just three months – there have been at least 130 mass shootings in the United States this year. The Nashville shooting is the only one reported to have been carried out by a trans person. 

And yet, according to the right-wing, from Fox News and the New York Post to internet-famous white supremacists, Hale’s acts represented the “dangerous” nature of the whole trans community, and particularly the planned April 1 civil rights protest.

At least two specific threats to the Trans Day of Vengeance march took the form of mass shootings. According to independent anti-fascist researchers working with the John Brown Gun Club DMV, a Minnesota-based white supremacist named Adam Murray made credible threats to the event. After this was reported to the FBI, Murray was briefly detained in Baltimore and then released. 

Another white supremacist said to be one Benjamin Ryder of Pennsylvania, was detained by police when he pulled out a gun outside the Supreme Court on April 1, where the Trans Day of Vengeance march had been scheduled to gather. 

The right-wing tried to turn the Nashville tragedy into a Reichstag fire moment to frame up the entire trans community and justify the acts of violence it encouraged from stooges like Murray and Ryder – who much more fit the profile of the typical U.S. mass shooter.

Biden’s concession fuels attacks

On March 25, a member of the “White Lives Matter” neo-Nazi group attempted to firebomb the Community Church of Chesterland, Ohio, for hosting a drag story hour. Just a week before, the Nazis staged an anti-trans, anti-drag demonstration in the Ohio town of Wadsworth, chanting, “There will be blood.”

So far this year, 450 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S. Some 14 states have banned life-saving gender-affirming care for trans youth, with more expected to join them. In addition, bans on trans youth participation in school sports and use of school restrooms have been enacted. 

On April 5, Kansas passed a law explicitly aimed at trans girls and young women that could require genital inspections for participation in sports programs. Florida and other states are expected to follow suit. Tennessee, where the March 27 shooting took place, is one of the worst offenders, even enacting a so-called “drag ban” that places the public existence of trans people in jeopardy.

On March 31, International Trans Day of Visibility, President Joe Biden repeated his occasional claim to support “love, dignity and respect” for trans people. Yet less than a week later, the Washington Post reported: “The Biden administration on Thursday proposed new regulations that would allow schools to bar transgender athletes from participating in competitive high school and college sports but disallow blanket bans on the athletes that have been approved across the country.”

A few state legislators like Nebraska State Senators Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt, both parents of trans children, and Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr, who is trans herself, have used their platforms to fight for trans rights relentlessly.

But Biden and the national Democratic Party leadership have done nothing to counter the onslaught of anti-trans hate that has engulfed the country since he entered office. Instead, the first significant act of the administration on this issue concedes trans rights.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Biden rode to victory in 2020 on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fight for reproductive freedom – then immediately oversaw a huge shift of funds to police while refusing to take the necessary action to codify abortion rights in law before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Now, as Democrats gear up for the 2024 elections, where Biden’s likely Republican opponents are notorious bigots Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, Biden is preparing to throw trans people – and the whole LGBTQ+ community – under the bus. 

Whatever the good intentions of some individual Democrats, the Democratic Party ultimately answers to the same capitalist class that has decided to double down on anti-trans hate as a divide-and-conquer strategy to protect their system as people’s suffering grows.

Biden’s lack of action to protect trans lives, now exacerbated by his concession on sports participation, will encourage more legal attacks and more violence like the attempted church firebombing in Ohio and the armed threats to civil rights protesters in Washington.

When I spoke to participants in the March 31 march for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy in the capital, I found enthusiasm and desire for bold action to protect trans youth and fight for trans liberation. 

I heard young and older people eager to link the struggle for trans rights with the fight for Black and Indigenous lives, solidarity with migrants, defense of reproductive rights, union organizing, and climate justice.

It’s time for bold, independent action, like the National March to Protect Trans Youth proposed by Women in Struggle-Mujeres en Lucha. It’s time to organize for self-defense and take to the streets to push back the violent anti-trans attacks. 

It’s time to change the political climate of the U.S. from one where oppressed peoples live in fear to one where politicians and the super-rich behind them fear the people.

Worldwide there is a “cost-of-living” crisis. Inflation is raging. Food prices are out of reach. Access to housing is collapsing, with unsheltered homelessness up more than 30% in U.S. cities. New apartment sizes have dropped severely across the U.S., making Manhattan-style micro apartments the new affordable norm.

Oxfam reports that with the post-COVID-19 recession came the “largest increase in global poverty since World War II. … Tens of millions more people are facing hunger. Hundreds of millions more face impossible rises in the cost of basic goods or heating their homes. Climate breakdown is crippling economies and seeing droughts, cyclones and floods force people from their homes.”

Oxfam concludes: “Poverty has increased for the first time in 25 years. At the same time, these multiple crises all have winners. The very richest have become dramatically richer and corporate profits have hit record highs, driving an explosion of inequality.”

Capitalism has had economic crises every 10 years or so since 1825. Recessions are built into capitalism’s cycle of boom and bust.

Recent recessions have occurred in 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2000, 2007, and 2020. That’s a recession about every seven-to-ten years, with the exception of the back-to-back recessions of 1980 and 1981.

The Great Recession of 2007 lasted the longest (almost two years). The 2020 recession produced the most severe decline in GDP (down 19.2% in the U.S.).

Until capitalism is overturned worldwide, the boom-and-bust crises will return, again and again, each one destroying jobs, housing, and food while at the same time increasing the centralization of capital and expanding monopoly domination.

Capitalist overproduction always causes these recessions. This is because of the laws of competition. The capitalists are in a permanent race to outproduce each other to gain the most profit. So capitalist production expands, but the market does not equally grow.

While production expands rapidly under capitalism during a boom period, the bosses eventually find that they cannot sell at a profit. So they shut down businesses and cut workers’ hours; an unemployment crisis begins. Inventory must be reduced or destroyed. 

This is the law of capitalism. It cannot operate in any other way. This is the boom-and-bust cycle.

The capitalist drive to expand is also the drive to war – the imperialist drive for big business to control the raw materials such as oil and ores, the agricultural production, and most of all, the labor in every part of the globe. 

But that’s never the way the talking heads on TV explain recessions. There’s always some other explanation, usually blaming financial corruption, like Lehman Brothers’ lending practices for the 2008 recession. Never is it said that capitalism or overproduction is responsible for the crisis. Yet that is the underlying cause.

Congress recognizes the capitalist roots of the crisis, of course, and its sole act (Democrats and Republicans together) in response to the looming recession was to pass a resolution denouncing socialism.

Cuba’s victories are piling up. There were many people who were full of praise for the victory of the U.S. baseball team in Miami, without expecting that this “defeat” for the Cuban team, and I am putting it in quotation marks on purpose, was the best thing that could happen for everyone in the face of public opinion and the international panorama.

What happened at the Miami ballpark is unprecedented; it is no longer talk of hatred, but of anger, as Pascual Serrano recently described at the Patria Colloquium held in Havana, the feeling emanating from all those who hate and suffer from the progress and advances of the Cuban people.

These are people who are not only against the government of the largest of the Antilles, but against their own people. What generates within a human being such affection as to insult and attack his own people? What moves them? Comparisons are odious, but it is enough to compare how the athletes of the Cuban team were received there, and how these people are received when they come to the island, or how representatives of U.S. governments have been received when they have come. Respect versus insolence.

It is not them, and this is not a justification. It is the machinery that pulls the strings behind it. Cuba has been at war for more than six decades, and this arms conglomerate keeps changing its shape, but its mission is always the same: to sink it. They did not succeed at the Bay of Pigs, they did not succeed when the socialist camp fell, and they are not succeeding now with the information and psychological warfare. This battle that is taking place now is taking place in the minds of men and women who are vulnerable to all kinds of information that reaches them by any means. It is no longer possible to distinguish what is true and what is not. And the enemies of frankness know it well. And they know that, in these times, is where they have to sink their teeth. This fight is the greatest challenge facing the defenders of the Cuban Revolution, the defenders of Fidel and those who hope for a better world.

We are confident that it is possible to fight against the predominance of capitalist values and hegemony, which have the upper hand in the Western world, and which little by little, through the Internet and cultural aspects, are trying to infiltrate Cuba. Manipulation is powerful, but it is not all-powerful. People have intuition. The good ones exist. And even if many are fooled, they cannot fool them all. Those who live in Miami, or in Spain, or in any other capitalist country, may have a distorted image of the Revolution, because of how they have been told, how they have been poisoned, how they have increased their discontent and hatred to transform it into anger. But that, consciously done, does not have to be forever.

The Dantesque episode in Miami was not decisive, but I have no doubt that it influenced the Cuban people to close the line at the time of the united vote in the elections of March 26. It served for this people, dignified and fighting, to see what is outside and the poison that is injected from the empire. Every time there are elections in Cuba, the enemies launch campaigns to turn them into a referendum against the revolution. Historically, this has been done on radio and television. As it could not be less, now also virtually through digital media and social networks.

But always, and forgive the expression, “it always backfires”. Because in this land, they are educated, and they are not so easily fooled. It is not easy to wash your conscience that they make you quickly do in any other country. The cultural war is hard, very hard, but here there is dignity, here there are values and there is confidence in the sovereignty that passes irremediably through socialism. In order to be eternally free and emancipated.

But that freedom has not been and is not given as a gift, it is forged and conquered every day. In fact, yesterday, April 4, was a historic date in this Homeland. On April 4, 1962, a congress of the Association of Young Rebels was held, which changed its name and began to be called as we know it today: Union of Young Communists. That same day, Fidel gave the closing speech and as always he emphasized the youth, because they are and will always be the relay of any process of continuity:

“The revolution that we are making is not the revolution that we want; the Revolution that we want is the Revolution that you are going to make”. And that is why, as Fidel continued, “Our society will be a society without exploiters or exploited, without privileged or discriminated”.

Before April 4, 1962, Cuban youth had already been protagonists in decisive moments in the country’s history, such as the Literacy Campaign and the Battle of Playa Girón.

What would this and other revolutions be without the role of the youth and their responsibility? Fidel always appealed to a responsible youth. A few days ago I myself was able to share with young and not so young Cubans, but all united in the end:

The image of how much Cuba works must be shown to the whole world. How much this socialist system leaves its skin on the basis of the principles and ideas of its heroes. As did Mella in the student struggles, Fidel in the Moncada, and so many more who gave their lives in this land, today free of any chain they want to impose on it, but with an imperial punishment, which it bears for having this freedom. Free or martyrs, the heroes would say.

The struggle, in this multipolar war, lies in the growth of Cuba, in the image of Cuba, not only in the media, not only fighting the matrixes of opinion against the defamers and enemies. But also in the daily work done with conscience and responsibility so that this revolutionary country advances. It is not only built from discourse but also from action.

And that is an indestructible mixture; that is the lethal mixture that as it takes steps and steps, this island, with the passing of the years, will rise in the ocean as an increasingly iron and indomitable bastion.

Source: Cuba en Resumen via Resumen Latinoamericano English

Chicago, IL – On Tuesday, April 4, Brandon Johnson won 51.4% of vote in the Chicago mayoral runoff election. Johnson’s victory is also a victory for working and oppressed people, as demonstrated by the range of organizations and individuals who celebrated with Johnson and his family at the Marriott Marquis on election night.

Frank Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said, “I’ve been living for this moment since the Great Harold Washington in 1986, yet we didn’t wait on history; we, the oppressed and the working class, made history.”

Several hours before polls closed, Adeline Bracey with Action Now, who canvassed for Brandon throughout the campaign and has been organizing for 11 years, said, “My family is from a rural town in Mississippi where they threw a smoke bomb in a church to stop Black people from voting. Having lived through that, not just reading about it, it’s crucial that I be a part of this movement here on this date.” Bracey was referring to the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

In his victory speech, Johnson also pointed to the historical significance of his mayoral election and the movement that made it happen. “It was right here in Chicago that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized for justice, dreaming that one day the civil rights movement and the labor movement would come together. Well Dr. King, the civil rights movement and the labor movement have finally collided and will make your dreams come true!” Johnson declared.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), of which Johnson is a member, introduced Johnson by explaining the unity and consistency of the movement that elected him: “It is the people who brought today’s victory to reality.” Davis Gates said before she explained how Brandon Johnson worked with former CTU President Karen Lewis to hold the city accountable for closing 50 schools in 2013.

The 1000-strong crowd at the victory party included other leaders and members of CTU. The leadership and rank and file of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 and Healthcare Illinois and Indiana (HCII), Unite Here, and many other unions were also present. Community organizations represented included United Working Families (UWF), the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), Southside Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), Good Kids Mad City, Indivisible Chicago, and many others. United with the progressive unions around Johnson’s campaign, these community organizations formed one of the most diverse coalitions the city has seen in decades.

This victory over Paul Vallas and his supporters in corporations and the pro-police lobby is the second time this year that the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has been beaten in the electoral arena by progressive movements. The first was on February 28, when pro-accountability candidates were elected to a majority of seats in 14 of the city’s 22 Police District Councils.

Brandon Johnson has pledged throughout his campaign to support these district councilors in their efforts to hold the police accountable. The newly-elected district councilors, and some who ran but didn’t win, supported Johnson because of his promises to invest in the people. In contrast, Vallas stood for policies that would further enrich the capitalists who donated to his campaign and allowed it to outspend the Johnson campaign two to one.

“The people won Chicago,” said 3rd Police District councilor and organizer Anthony D Bryant, who attended the Brandon Johnson victory party along with several other newly elected district councilors.

April 4 also saw victories for other progressive electoral candidates. With Lamont Robinson in the 4th Ward, Desmon Yancy in the 5th, William Hall in the 6th, Ronnie Mosley in the 21st, Angela Clay in the 46th, and Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth in the 48th, the runoff election saw a majority of progressive candidates win their races.

The newly elected progressive alderpersons will join incumbents such as Carlos Ramírez Rosa, Rossana Rodríguez, and Jeanette Taylor in City Hall, giving Brandon Johnson’s administration a potentially more favorable city council than the one Harold Washington had.

While recognizing the historical impact of the election, Brandon Johnson and his supporters resolved to continue fighting for the various movements of working and oppressed people.

“With all of you, we’ve accomplished so much, but in the years to come we have a lot of work to do,” Johnson said. “We have a multicultural, multigenerational movement that has captured the imagination not just of the city of Chicago but the entire world.” He continued. “Let’s take this bold progressive movement across the United States of America!”

After the celebration, Frank Chapman summed up how the movement would carry the momentum from this victory to others in the movements for working and oppressed people.

“It’s like they used to say in Mozambique, ‘Aluta continua,’” Chapman said. “The struggle continues.”

Source: FightBack! News

The popular outrage and response from the Resistance factions to the Israeli assaults on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque have again been distorted by Western media, in an attempt to try and pin the blame on the response. The framing of what occurred at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is vital, as this is how the Zionist entity and its Western backers seek to begin their pro-“Israel” narrative.

Before we get into what happened in Al-Aqsa Mosque, perhaps the best way to approach this for a Western audience is to imagine the scenario as follows: A militarized force stormed the Vatican, during Easter, with the aim of purging Christian worshippers so that radicals from another faith background could storm the site under the protection of armed police forces. The militarized force broke through the doors of one of the churches, where some younger Christians had gathered fireworks to attempt to keep the militarized force out. The armed men then entered the church, fired gas and stun grenades, and caused a small fire to break out before beating Christian worshippers who were already on the ground and helpless. This militarized force beat women, guards at the Vatican, and even elderly men, then proceeded to return to the Vatican later to assault Christian worshippers during prayer.

The situation above would not take a genius in the West to figure out who was in the wrong. It would also be ridiculous to suggest that some young Christians who used fireworks to keep their attackers out were the real instigators, and the situation would never be presented as a “clash”. Yet, when it comes to the Western media’s coverage of anything involving “Israel”, somehow, all professionalism, journalistic integrity, and consideration for the facts simply go out of the window. In Ramadan of 2021, in the lead-up to the Israeli war of May, the Western media distorted the facts then too.

In fact, it would be fair to say that if such an assault on worshippers at a Holy Site was to take place during a religious holiday, there would not be any issues for Western media to at least use accurate language to frame the event.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is in the heart of every Muslim and all Palestinians, and it has become a symbol of Arab and Islamic civilization, not to mention it being the third Holiest site in Islam. This is the location where Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) ascended to the heavens, to where the first Muslims directed their prayer. When the site is attacked by a regime, which, under international law, maintains an illegal occupation over the eastern part of Al-Quds, where the site is located, it provokes some of the most intense emotional reactions possible.

Legally, the Zionist entity has no right to any of the occupied eastern part of Al-Quds, which they “annexed,” a decision that was rejected by the international community. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan also holds custodianship over the Holy sites in the Old City of occupied Al-Quds, which gives it the right to maintain the security situation within Al-Aqsa compound itself. The status quo at the site is that there are special tourist hours, where anyone can enter the compound, but the site is for Muslim worship alone, so all talk from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his intention to maintain the status quo are sheer lies. The aim of the Israeli regime is to allow for special hours where extremist Israeli settlers will be escorted inside the compound and are given the ability to freely worship and perform provocative acts whilst this occurs… this is a change to the status quo.

The act of extremist religious settlers praying inside Al-Aqsa compound is used as a sticking point in Zionist propaganda, which they use as a pretext to argue that since the site is also Holy in Judaism, they should be able to pray there. The reality is something very different however, this is not about a prayer; it is about asserting Israeli sovereignty over the area, and for the “Temple Mount” movement that finances the settler incursion movement, they openly seek to build what they call the “Third Temple,” meaning that they want to destroy Al-Aqsa and build a synagogue on top of it. There is a split in the Jewish religious traditions on the issue of whether a Jew should even enter the site, which many Jewish religious authorities rule as forbidden. It is believed by many Jews that the remains of what they believe to have been a synagogue at the site only remain at the “Western Wall” area. This site was once of insignificance except for a small number of Jews who would pray there on religious holidays. In the 1920s, the Zionist movement began focusing its efforts on seizing this area, which caused a number of revolts from the Palestinians, culminating in the largest in 1929, sparked by fears that the Zionist movement would go further and was threatening to lay claim to Al-Aqsa.

Today the issue is clear, this extremist group of settler organizations, which receive funding from registered charitable organizations in the West, most prominently in the United States, seek the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as their ultimate goal. On top of this, the Zionist entity continues to assault, kill, arrest, and harass worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Just a week ago, a man from Al-Naqab was shot dead near one of the gates to the compound. Inside “Israel’s” current coalition, holding ministerial positions, are West Bank settlers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have openly participated in storming Al-Aqsa with the settler groups. So these extremists are not fringe, they are in the mainstream.

When the initial response to these assaults on worshippers, which resulted in around 400 injured or arrested, or both, the Western media went on to report on the issue of rocket fire from Gaza as a “border exchange.” This is also a key sticking point in Zionist propaganda, which frames exchanges of fire between the resistance in Gaza and “Israel” as occurring across a “border” when no such border exists. Along with “Tel Aviv” never having officially declared its borders, Gaza is an occupied territory, it is not a state. There are separation fences and walls built by the Zionist regime to divide the two pieces of land from each other. Therefore, there is nothing that can be legally claimed as a border. This language is used, despite “Israel” not officially declaring this as a border, because it gives them the excuse to pretend that they have the legal right to defend an internationally recognized boundary. Western media, by using this term, are actively playing into Israeli propaganda.

The starting point, when looking at the current escalation over the assault on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, has to be rooted in an understanding of how serious such an attack is. When the West protects “Israel’s” so-called “right to defend itself” but then condemns the people of the region for reacting to an Islamaphobic attack on a Holy site during Ramadan, which is supposed to be under the custodianship of an Arab nation, there is a double-standard at play. The Palestinian people have a right to defend themselves, they have a right to defend their national sanctities, and the Muslim and Arab World has the right to protect its Holy sites.

Source: Al Mayadeen

New York City: Protest the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque! Free Palestine!
Saturday, April 8 – 1:00 p.m.
Times Square, 43rd St. & Broadway, Manhattan

Take on Times Square to show the world that Palestine is not alone!
Called by American Muslims for Palestine

More than a thousand trans youth, family members, and allies joined the Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy March in Washington, D.C., on March 31, Trans Day of Visibility. The march was called by Queer Youth Assemble, which presented a list of demands supported by many organizations.

The D.C. action was one of dozens held in cities across the U.S. to rebuke and resist hundreds of bills targeting trans youth in nearly every state and the growing campaign of anti-trans hate and violence promoted by media from Fox News to the New York Times. 

The multinational crowd gathered outside busy Union Station, then marched to the Capitol, where a rally was held in Grant Park. The protest drew people not only from the capital and surrounding states but from as far as California, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York.

Official Washington’s sheltered, well-manicured streets rang with chants of “Protect trans youth” and “No justice, no peace!” A colorful banner from Women in Struggle – Mujeres en Lucha declared: “Trans people won’t be erased. Bigots say get back, we say fight back!”

Protesters were outraged by the far-right Republican campaign to outlaw gender-affirming health care, prevent students from playing sports or using school restrooms, and ban trans people from public life – measures that will increase suicide and transphobic violence.

Several speakers also called out Democrats for claiming to support trans rights but doing nothing to stop the growing onslaught that has already robbed youth in at least 14 states of gender-affirming care and imposed many other Draconian laws aimed at causing harm to the entire trans community.

“These last few months have been hard for all of us. One side likes to act like we are not real, just products of a social trend, not every bit as real, as valuable, as deserving of freedom as everyone else,” said Samira Burnside, a trans youth activist. “Some even suggest that we be eradicated, shunned, pushed into a quiet corner, and silenced. 

“Look at SB 264 in Florida, where I’m from, which would take us from our parents and make those who give us the care we need felons. They cloak their disdain for us in phrases like ‘save the children’ and moral grandstanding. But they truly only seek to save their positions of power.

“And the other side? Democrats say things like ‘pass the Equality Act immediately,’ but don’t put their words into action when they have the power to do so. They say, ‘I support my trans family,’ yet sit idly by while we are legislatively attacked,” Burnside said.

Struggle-La Lucha spoke with trans activist Melinda Butterfield of Women in Struggle – Mujeres en Lucha, who was distributing leaflets and talking to people in the crowd about her group’s proposal for a National March to Protect Trans Youth to be held in Florida in Autumn 2023.

“It was heartening to see so many parents and families supporting their trans kids,” Butterfield said. “The media and politicians try to make it seem like parents are only interested in protecting their ‘right’ to treat their children like property, to be whipped into line with conservative expectations. But today there are many, many families that accept their trans and queer children and are determined to do everything they can to help them lead happy, healthy lives.”

Butterfield said that a Black trans woman who came all the way from Missouri, another state where trans rights are under fierce attack, made a big impression. “She said she’s been waiting for a national protest and was determined to be here no matter what. It’s not an exaggeration to say that she and pretty much everyone I spoke to – young and old, queer and allies, union organizers – were excited at the prospect of a national march for trans youth in Florida. 

“People are eager for bold action. There is a huge vacuum that will be filled with the same old lesser-evil voting politics that led to the end of Roe v. Wade unless independent forces take action soon. But if we do act boldly, I think we will be surprised by the response.”

For more information, visit WomenInStruggle.org.