In May, the Struggle for Socialism Party Los Angeles branch discussed the new book, “Against Fascism: Reclaiming Populism’s Legacy for Today’s Class Struggle,” compiled by Louisiana socialist Gregory Williams. 

Following is the closing presentation for the series of classes, given by trans activist Melinda Butterfield on May 31.

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Since this is the eve of Pride Month, I thought it would be good to start with a little about the convergence of queer lives with the 19th-century Populist movement in the South. We know there were queer people involved in the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party, because we have always existed, and today’s queer communities have strong roots throughout the South. 

No doubt some of those who joined the movement were closeted, some were stealth, and some were accepted for who they were, as part of their community. But because there was no queer movement as we understand it today, it can be difficult to find direct information on these intersections. We have to suss them out.

This week I’ve been reading a new book by activist and scholar Eli Erlick, “Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950.” In this book, I learned about Sally-Tom and Mollie Wilson, trans women of color who lived in the South during the height of the Populist movement and the People’s Party. I’m going to share a little bit of their stories:

Sally-Tom was a Black woman who lived the first 26 years of her life in slavery. She took the new opportunities opened up by Emancipation to start living more fully and openly as her true feminine self. In 1869, when she came before the Freedmen’s Bureau on an unrelated matter, she was presented with the opportunity to choose her gender for the official records, and she chose to be legally recognized as a woman. According to Erlick, Sally-Tom was probably the first trans person in U.S. history to have her gender officially recognized.

Sally lived in several Georgia towns over the next four decades, working as a cook and household help, as many Black women did. “Sally refused to discuss her life with reporters, so we do not have a single word of her self-narrative,” Erlick writes. “Those who knew her described her to papers at length, however. With a high and crackly voice, Sally reportedly hid behind her straw hat and left events before conflict arose. 

“Her decision to avoid media made sense from the perspective of self-preservation; she likely did not want to draw attention to herself during such a violent era of increasing lynchings and attacks on the Black population.” She died on March 4, 1908, in Waycross, Georgia, at around the age of 69. According to a death notice in the local paper, none of her friends and neighbors knew she was trans.

Mollie Wilson was a Two-Spirit trans woman who was Choctaw and Black, born around 1865 in what was then the Choctaw Territory, which included parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Originally, she spoke only her Indigenous language. At the age of 19, she barely escaped a lynching, killing several of her would-be murderers in the process. She fled from home and took the opportunity of her escape from these traumatic events to embrace her womanhood.

Erlick writes: “Eventually, she moved to Kansas City, Missouri. She reportedly had a large group of friends, mostly Black residents of the city. Mollie always wore a dark dress and fascinator, and with a tall and thin frame, passed with ease. Her transition allowed her to blossom into a social butterfly without fear of lynch mobs.” She married a man and later lived with a woman.

As Jim Crow’s noose tightened, Mollie was arrested twice on police claims that she was a sex worker. Shortly after one of these arrests, she died of tuberculosis in 1901.

These long-hidden lives show how trans and queer people found ways to live as their true selves during the same era that the Populist struggles were pushing back against reaction.

Trump attacks trans health care

But let’s move to the here and now. Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill recently passed in the House and is currently before the Senate. It attacks housing, Social Security and public health care to transfer funds to the war machine, ICE, and the 1%. Some 20% of Medicaid recipients are to be cut – nearly 14 million people. 

A rider attached to the House bill would eliminate all Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage for trans health care, both for youth and adults. At least 275,000 trans people currently depend on Medicaid. The likely knock-on effect would be to allow private insurance companies to dump gender-affirming care, affecting many more. 

In addition to Sally-Tom and Mollie Wilson, this week I have been thinking about Charlotte Fosgate. Charlotte was a 17-year-old trans girl who lived in Oregon. She disappeared May 1 and jumped from a bridge in Portland the next night. Her death was confirmed last week. 

Charlotte’s final social media posts, made from the bridge where she leapt to her death, became a lightning rod for bigots posting hateful memes and messages.

Charlotte represents all the trans youth and adults who are being forced out of public life and losing their hopes for the future because of health care bans, bathroom bans, sports bans, doxxing and violence.

Populism is supposed to represent the interests of those who have been left out, who are marginalized. What kind of “populism” is it that doesn’t include someone like Charlotte Fosgate and other queer youth who are completely stripped of their right to exist, to be themselves, to even dream of a better future?

What the media and politicians term “populism” now is something utterly different. Where populism in the 19th Century represented the desire of people at the margins – small farmers, formerly enslaved people, agricultural workers and all those left behind by the growth of capitalism – to work together to better their futures, now it usually means appealing to the most backward, atomized, anti-social elements that have completely swallowed the small-capitalist, white supremacist mentality. 

What they now call “populism” appeals mostly to the social base of fascism – the shock troops of the billionaire class.

Nazis co-opted socialist terms

It’s not the first time this has happened. The classical fascist movements and regimes in Europe in the first half of the 20th Century adopted some of the anti-establishment and even anti-capitalist rhetoric of their enemies, the communists and socialists, to attract people to their cause. Hitler even called his organization “National Socialists.” 

But they redirected the righteous anger at capitalism toward Jews, queers, people of color, and the left – much as we see ultra-corrupt capitalists like Donald Trump and Elon Musk railing against the “elites” and “Washington insider corruption” as stand-ins for marginalized communities, migrants, and the working class as a whole.

Like the followers of the Strasser brothers, who formed the “left” wing of the Germany Nazi movement, today we have formations like the so-called American Communist Party (ACP) and the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) that use leftist terminology and symbolism to draw disaffected people and those lacking class consciousness into the orbit of the fascist movement. 

While claiming to be socialists or communists, they adopt the exact same racist, misogynist, anti-trans and anti-queer arguments and bigotry as their MAGA inspirations do.

Where is the united movement from the grassroots that will give a voice to people like Charlotte Fosgate or to Sam Nordquist, a Black trans man who was tortured to death in upstate New York earlier this year? 

Where is the movement that will give a voice to the children whose parents are ripped away by masked ICE Gestapo at immigration hearings across the country? Or the migrants from Southeast Asia who were kidnapped and sent by the Trump regime to South Sudan? 

What about Mahmoud Khalil, who is being held thousands of miles from his wife and newborn child in a Louisiana prison? Or the queer youth who are being thrown away by their families or pushed into state-mandated conversion therapy torture?

Building united movement is our task

This united movement of the dispossessed, of the workers and oppressed, is not going to come from the Democratic Party or the established nonprofits that cling to the broken system. Fighting back in the courts and with other “official” methods, while important, is not going to save us or build the movement we need.

It’s up to us. We have to build this movement, this unity. We have to refuse to be siloed. We have to reach out and find ways to collaborate, even when there is not 100% mutual understanding yet. Working together against our common enemies, in our common interests, is the way to build that understanding.

Queer rights are under attack everywhere, including California. Gruesome Gavin Newsom just this week began the process of excluding trans students from athletic competitions, after months of pandering to the worst anti-trans bigots on his podcast. Trans youth have been under attack in schools throughout Southern California for the past few years. And last month, queer activists had to confront a fascist march in the streets of West Hollywood.

That brings us back to LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. This year especially, it’s important for people from all sectors of the working class, all communities, and all organizations of the real left to come out in support of trans rights, trans lives, and all queer people. This is the time to take good sentiments about being an ally and turn them into contacts, joint work, and real efforts to build a united movement. 

In Los Angeles, the Harriet Tubman Center, Struggle for Socialism Party, Trans Rescue Action, and others will be mobilizing for Pride events and queer resistance actions. If you’re not in LA, talk to us, and we can put you in touch with others doing the work in your area.

Let me close with this thought from the conclusion of Vince Copeland’s “Southern Populism and Black Labor,” a classic Marxist work included in the book we’re studying today: “[The Populists’] failure was not due nearly so much to the failure of their ideas, as to the failure to maintain their social position – to hold on to the material base of independent small and especially farming business, from which these ideas originated.

“The new class, the working class, does not yet have the ideas that correspond to its class position. But its class position is innately superior to that of the old Populists from the point of view of having the base to mount a serious and successful struggle. When the new ‘people-ism’ of the workers is born, it will soon grow powerful enough to really lead the people and rule in the name of practically the whole people – something the Populists could not have done, even if they had won.”

Following is part two of an interview with gay communist activist Bob McCubbin, who has organized and written political analysis since the 1960s. He is the author of the 2019 book, The Social Evolution of Humanity: Marx and Engels were right! For Pride month, Struggle-La Lucha writer Gregory E. Williams sat down with McCubbin to explore the revolutionary history of the LGBTQ+ struggle and what it means for today’s fight back. 

• • • Part 1: Targeted by fascism, united by struggle: Bob McCubbin on defending trans rights and building class solidarity
    • Part 2: Inside the Bay Area’s Gay Liberation Front with Bob McCubbin
    • Part 3: Bob McCubbin on LGBTQ+ liberation and Marxist organizing
    • Part 4: Leslie Feinberg, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and the radical legacy of LGBTQ+ communists

Gregory Williams: We’re getting into what the beginning of the gay movement was like. Nowadays we say LGBTQ+, because we’re constantly trying to be more expansive, with a bigger and bigger vision of liberation, including more and more people. But what was it like? You’re describing how the youth in the late 1960s and early ‘70s were taking inspiration from the Vietnamese and other anti-colonial struggles. Was there a strong sense in the emerging movement that it needed to be anti-capitalist? Was that a common sentiment?

Bob McCubbin: Good question. In Sam Marcy’s party, the guideline that he presented to the youth was Marxism is as Marxism does, meaning the focus needs to be on the struggle. The struggle is what educates our class and our understanding of oppressed nations’ struggles. 

Let me try to describe the San Francisco Gay Liberation Front. We met once a week to discuss activities. One of the Gay Liberation Front organization’s tasks was to join the struggle – struggle for their own rights and the struggle for the rights of their siblings, while also struggling for other members of their class. And we did. 

I remember making a banner to free Angela Davis and Ruchell McGee, and we took it, as the Gay Liberation Front, to the following rally. And we’re talking the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. So we were activists, no question about it.

Another very important example I remember was a young man who was shot trying to escape a bar raid by the San Francisco police. He managed to get out of the bar, but while running toward his car, the police shot him. And we met with him in the hospital, and his request to us as an organization was, please see if you can do a fundraiser for me. I have legal expenses and medical expenses. 

So, who came to our aid to organize a fundraiser? It was the San Francisco local of the West Coast Longshore Union. They had a union hall in San Francisco and turned it over to us to have a fundraiser. It was very successful, hundreds of young people of all genders and sexualities, definitely. We just loved it. 

As chaperones for our event, four of the union officers attended the fundraiser, and they found seats along the wall and smiled a lot, but they didn’t join our circle dances. But my point is how wonderful it was to have the support of a workers’ organization. And they were into it. I mean, they weren’t there to make sure we weren’t smoking marijuana. They were there to show their support for us, and they were very friendly.

I’ve given us a flavor of our activism, but there was another very important role for the LGBTQ+ movement back then. And it was to find personal strength, to help us find personal strength to accept ourselves. Certainly, I was an example of it. 

There wasn’t much consciousness of gender oppression and what it signified and how important it was. But on the other hand, I don’t know how prevalent this was around the country, but in our group, we had what was called “gender fuck.” And it would involve, well, whatever you wanted to do, but people would show up with full beards, wearing a skirt, or any kinds of interesting variations on gender expressions and sexuality expressions. 

And getting support for that, not being ridiculed, not being laughed at, but being loved. And that was a very important part of it, too. You know, if, say, a heterosexual revolutionary came to one of our meetings and said, “you’re wasting all this time.” No, it wasn’t a waste at all. It was finding personal strength. 

But maybe here is a good point to throw in a lesson about the struggle under capitalism. We never win until the final battle. That is to say, we’re talking about Stonewall, we’re talking about 1969. It was a long, long time ago. We won our rights back then. Oh, did we?

GW: Look at everything happening now. 

BM: Now, it’s like the past never happened. And the focus, of course, is on our trans folk. And it’s horrible what’s going on. That’s part of fascism.

GW: It’s important to understand that. There were big victories in the past, and a lot of advances were made, but until the foundations of the society are changed, until capitalism is overthrown and we start to create a new society – socialism – those gains can be taken away in one fell swoop. That’s the job of fascism: to come in like a wrecking ball and destroy all these gains.

Look at the way the Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wade, and now women are dying of sepsis. And trans people who get pregnant are dying of sepsis because the doctor’s afraid to treat them. This is just going totally backwards. The struggle is not over. We’re in an intensified period of fighting.

I think it’s important for the young people, especially right now, to get an infusion of hope and revolutionary optimism. Because every struggle that’s happened – you can probably testify to this throughout your life – the people needed to have revolutionary optimism in order to keep on fighting. And that’s so needed right now. We need to have a vision of an alternative kind of society.

BM: It doesn’t have to be this way.

Following is part one of an interview with gay communist activist Bob McCubbin, who has organized and written political analysis since the 1960s. He is the author of the 2019 book, The Social Evolution of Humanity: Marx and Engels were right! For Pride month, Struggle-La Lucha writer Gregory E. Williams sat down with McCubbin to explore the revolutionary history of the LGBTQ+ struggle and what it means for today’s fight back. 

• Part 1: Targeted by fascism, united by struggle: Bob McCubbin on defending trans rights and building class solidarity
• Part 2: Inside the Bay Area’s Gay Liberation Front with Bob McCubbin
• Part 3: Bob McCubbin on LGBTQ+ liberation and Marxist organizing
• Part 4: Leslie Feinberg, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and the radical legacy of LGBTQ+ communists

Gregory Williams: You were in the revolutionary movement at the time of Stonewall, and you’ve been in the struggle ever since. But what’s happening right now with all the fascist attacks that are coming down? Where’s that coming from, and what can we do about it?

Bob McCubbin: We should have a discussion about fascism, because it’s what we’re facing right now. And there are various ways to explain it. Scholars and revolutionaries who studied the fascist movement in Germany – which was in the leadership of the European imperialists – that was a form of fascism designed to crush a very strong workers’ movement in Germany, which was challenging the capitalists as a result of the First World War. 

Germany was forced into a very difficult economic position. The workers’ movement grew and grew and became stronger and stronger. At a certain point, the German industrialists decided not to put up with it any longer because even by their own rules, the workers were gaining more and more political power, organizing in the communities and at the workplaces, etc.

So, they began breaking their own rules, but that’s just a part of it. Another part of it is their desire. The economy was terrible in Germany. Their desire was to place the blame elsewhere, always using scapegoats. That’s a favorite tactic of the ruling class, pointing the finger at others. And in this case, they tried to direct the anger of the German people against Jewish people, and also against homosexuals. In general, people of color were considered the enemy.

I hope everyone understands the significance of the concentration camps, which were terrorism. It’s going on right now, though; the same kind of genocidal terrorism is going on in Palestine, for example. 

But getting back to fascism now, what we’re facing right now, it parallels Germany in the sense that the ruling class is pointing the finger at trans people and people of color as the source of the economic problems which are really based in the economic system itself, the system of private property and capitalist exploitation.

So, yes, we have to defend the trans community, we have to defend people of color. The U.S. contains oppressed nations that need liberation. They’re finding groups in society that are already denigrated and targeting them. It looks like everything’s on the chopping block in terms of illegality, the illegality of the current rulers of the United States. 

It’s important for people to understand what we mean when we say the ruling class. Of course, it’s the billionaires. But they’re just window dressing, in a way. The ruling class includes the military-industrial complex, the industries that make money off war. The ruling class includes big banks and big industries in general. Together, they constitute the sources of oppression of the rest of us. We need to identify them, and they need to be targeted. 

We don’t expect any sympathy from the ruling class. They have to be defeated and overthrown. They’re destroying the world. And they know it because their system is in crisis, and that’s why they’re stooping to the worst terrorist tactics, using racism, homophobia, transphobia, and whatever they think they can use to turn the workers against each other. We, on the other hand, are fighting for unity in our class and consciousness of the task ahead of us, which is to overthrow the capitalist system.

GW: The situation can change radically when there’s intense struggles, like in the 1960s. How did you find out about Stonewall in 1969, which was this earth-shaking moment? 

BM: To understand the ‘60s, we have to look back at the ‘50s, which are really hard to reconstitute. They were so outrageously repressive. We’re talking about the period of McCarthyism, and preceding that was the return of hundreds of thousands of GIs from World War II looking for jobs. Now we’re talking about the mid-40s, and as a result of all of the class struggles that, to some extent, continued in the war, but definitely erupted very strongly after the war. And again, we have a ruling class confronted and organizing fascist tactics. I mean, McCarthyism was a form of fascism, with the ruling class fighting back against the rising workers’ movement. And the repression was incredible. 

There’s an example, I think, that typifies the terror that gay people felt. I remember watching a television program. I think it was a Saturday afternoon, and we are talking about the early ‘60s. It was a student assembly at a high school somewhere in Florida, and the chief of police was speaking to an audience of about a thousand students. And I remember the words, not word by word exactly, but it was really terrifying. He looked out at the audience and said, “There are among you homosexuals, and they cannot be …” — well, whatever horrible and negative things he had to say about it. But he concluded by saying, “The person next to you may be a homosexual. And always remember, if you are a homosexual, you need to go to a police station and identify yourself.” 

This was about 1964 and gives you a flavor of what the ‘60s were about, because the ‘60s were a response to the terrible repression of the ‘50s. The youth just wouldn’t have it. And that was the background to a countrywide and international youth rebellion. It was largely a cultural rebellion. 

At the beginning of the ‘60s, very few people in the imperialist countries knew what or where Vietnam was. But the youth movement was beginning to develop a good political consciousness to the extent that, by the end of that decade, we were chanting, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win! Free Huey! Stop the attacks on the Black Panthers!” And all of that was happening in the youthful world, the world of the youth, the cultural background. And it was largely middle class, but some of the revolutionaries made a big mistake writing it off because it did not involve the working class per se. Although, of course, many of the youth were from working-class families. 

But, in general, it was a task of educating the youth into revolutionary thought and class consciousness that was tremendously aided by the example of the Vietnamese and the example of the Panthers and the other Black revolutionary movements. A number of new Marxist-Leninist groups began organizing.

It was a fantastic time, and so when the young people at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, when they were confronted with the police, it was just one confrontation too many. Instead of accepting the repression, they fought back. It was beautiful and went on for about four evenings.

The New York Times reported on it in a small back-page column, “Homosexuals Riot in Village.” And there I was in Buffalo, probably at our party office, which was also where I lived, opening up the New York Times, reading this and thinking to myself, “Okay, now you need to make a decision.” What am I talking about? The fact that I was gay, and like most of the gay youth, I was largely in the closet. (And let’s start saying LGBTQ+. There’s been a whole series of vocabularies that have been used.) And anyway, there I was, a revolutionary, largely in the closet, and I had to decide what I was going to do.

I knew that I didn’t have the courage to face everyone. I mean, I’d grown up in Buffalo. I knew hundreds of people. I told the comrades I needed to leave Buffalo. I spent a year and a half in San Francisco, largely working with the San Francisco Gay Liberation Front. I was able to do organizing work in San Francisco, including LGBTQ+ organizing. And was making some progress in terms of organizing it, but the comrades in New York kept calling me, “We need you here, we need you here.” So, at the end of a year and a half, I moved to New York City. 

And then that was a whole new stage of my life because working with the party was tremendous – rewarding and tremendously educational. And Dorothy Ballan – I always thought of Sam Marcy, Vincent Copeland, and Dorothy Ballan as the triumvirate of the party, because they were the leaders. They were products of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, which meant that they had seen the power of the working class in the United States. They understood the potential for our class, as well as having experience in practical organizing. They were all organizers in the working class. 

But unlike the other traditional socialist groups, they didn’t write off the youth movement as just a middle-class shindig or whatever it was. No, they understood there’s a revolution here. These youth are drawing their inspiration from the Vietnamese struggle, from the Black struggle. And I remember I was not present, but in the midst of this, right at the time of Stonewall, there was a conversation in the party headquarters, and one comrade was heard saying, about the Stonewall Rebellion, “A new front is opened in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.” 

Well, maybe a little exaggerated, maybe a little too much, but the first organization was the Gay Liberation Front. Where did they pick that name from? From the NLF, the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, which was leading the struggle in the south of that country. That tells you something about the consciousness of the youth. Maybe a little bit idealistic, maybe a little bit overblown in some instances. 

But I remember a leader of the party saying, “We should much prefer the slightly ultra-left youth to the conservative youth.” And I mean, there was a confidence there that we could win them to the class struggle, that they were already angry, they already knew the contradictions and the outrageous values of the capitalist system, and were ready to hear about something else, something to replace it with. 

GW: Just the fact that those youth decided to call their organization the Gay Liberation Front shows how developed their consciousness was already despite coming out of McCarthyism, the extreme anti-communism and extreme homophobia and transphobia – we didn’t necessarily have these words. But in that moment of rebellion, they were able to break through that conditioning, even if they didn’t understand all the ins and outs of Marxist theory and everything that was going on in Vietnam. It’s a learning process.

They were able to put two and two together and see the commonality of those struggles. Because on the surface of it, you might think, “Well, what does the Vietnamese struggle have to do with the gay and lesbian struggle?” But they saw that, yeah, it is related. It actually is related, and not only is it related, but we can learn from each other’s struggles.

White nationalist conservatives, the”National Park Patrol,” named themselves after 2000-era Neo-Nazis charged with felonies after beating up minorities in what they dubbed “Park Patrols.”

Early Sunday morning around 2 a.m., I laid down, exhausted from a long week of outdoor work, but looking forward to a day off and a breakfast date at 9 a.m.

As I plugged my phone in to charge before I planned to sleep, a Facebook messenger notification came via a name I didn’t recognize.

A Good Samaritan had just seen a flier with my name on it, appalled by its disgustingly hateful intent, and they were not sure if they should go back and take it down or leave it for potential law enforcement evidence.

They sent a pic of it. Based on how it was placed with a type of spray glue, I knew the culprits were likely a collective of white natiobalist conservatives who also put out a lot of Nazi propoganda across the state in recent years.

In fact, one of their associates, Trenin Bayless, had gotten a shocking number of votes as a Montana Republican candidate in Butte despite local media denoting his links to extremists.

I told the Good Samaitan if there was one flier, and knowing these people, there would be a lot more in the area. I would go pull them down.

So pull them down I did.

In a 10 block long stretch from the main road areas of Grand Avenue to Broadwater from 7th Street West to at least 18th Street West. I walked the silent streets of Billings from 3 a.m.til 5:30 a.m. Thus is the duty of an Antifascists.

The first snows broke the bitter cold air about 4 a.m., my feet scrunching the only noise as I pulled down some 40-ish colored-ink fliers on dumpsters, lightposts, and on all 4 corners of traffic lights.

I woke up, and pulled down a bunch more.

Around the block I live, the fliers were particularly dense, denoting this was not only targeted intimidation at someone they deemed a “left wing extremist” (i.e. “we know where you live”) but also a coordinated team effort based on the sheer number of fliers spread out.

The fliers themselves read like tired, typical boomer-tier scare propoganda. It calls me a “groomer” of children with libelous and ridiculous implications I am a danger to children because of drag queen story hour.

It also has two pics of me, one selfie I randomly took while at Walmart the other week where I thought I looked cute, and one pic—designed to scare normies, no doubt—where I am in “goth attire” attending an rave/EDM event.

The logic—or lack thereof—children are not safe around because I am transgender, was used as an anti-First Amendment reason to ban me from doing an Indigenous history lecture at a local Butte library.

City officials cowered to the demand of white nationalist republicans like the GOP’s Bayless and other Nazis who took credit for canceling my speech. In fact, an alias account of Bayless was the first to reply—and as this flier says—and they called me a “child groomer.”

The republicans and outright Hitler-worshiping Nazis who promote violence (one of their main leaders has done felony time for violence) must have put in some serious time and effort all to target and try intimidate a single, Indigenous trans woman. They must have ran through a few pricey colored ink cartridges, as well.

But as one of the rare people in Montana who dares speaks out against their toxic, ruinous white supremacist antisemitic ideology that promotes—as according to their own “white lives matter’ handbook—genocide of non-whites and LGBTQ folks, I get why they think my free speech is a threat that must be silenced with proposed violence at me based on their bland implications I am a pedophile.

The so-called “Nationalist Park Patrol” took credit for this targeted terroristic action as they took to social media bragging of their terroristic action, and they say you should contact them so they can presumably confront/assualt me or whatever they plan on doing.

This newly formed group seems to be a coaltion of local republicans, the Big Sky Active Club, and White Lives Matter Nazis who also seem fond of the Patriot Front Nazis whom protested a Livingston Pride event earlier this year.

Patriot Front, who have an infamous instance of them all being arrested after being pulled out of a Uhaul truck for conspiracy to riot at a North Idaho Pride event, have tried to make inroads in recruiting in Montana lately.

Much of the NPPs “actions” thus far—beyond obsessing over a Billings trans woman for daring to have the “hot take” in Montana that being a hateful racist and bigot against queers is bad—seem to be finding random migrant workers in Bozeman to bully as they record them and bizarrely accuse all of them of trying to photograph white children for sexual purposes.

Not wanting to start trouble, the migrant workers usually leave the area due to this creepy harassment.

The name Nationalist Park Patrol, seems to stem from their admiration of early-2000s neo Nazis skinheads known to roam Pioneer Park (located near where many recent fliers were placed) doing “Park Patrols” which basically consisted of beating up people of color.

Their leaders had large visible swastika tattoos, and recruits ‘earned’ things like red suspenders and shoelaces if they jumped minorities.

These violent, terroristic actions resulted in eight of them eventually convicted of federal hate crimes.

I wrote about the rise of Nazi groups a few years ago in the Daily Montanan, and “Active Club” Montana Nazis took note with great amusement of the name and idea of”park patrols”—and even they wanted to scare me and put me in “danger” for daring to call attention to their violent ideology.

Fascism is an accerationist ideology, and its flames of must constantly be fueled with a steady supply of hate.

It was never going to just be about banning books that mention LGBTQ people. Or drag queens. It was about making the dehumanization of entire groups of people like migrants or trans women acceptable, so that way when violence inevitably happens to us, they hope their fellow theocratic conservatives will cheer, and other Montanans become afraid to speak out, and thus condone these actions with silence as hatred becomes synonymous as an accepted “Montana Value.”

Source: Adria L. Jawort Publication

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Nancy Mace, a far-right representative from South Carolina, has been the figurehead for a move to ban transgender people from using restrooms on Capitol Hill that correspond to their gender. Publically, this campaign was aimed at Representative-elect Sarah McBride from Delaware, who will be the first openly trans woman in Congress.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, another fascist, backed Mace and implemented a rule banning trans people from Capitol Hill restrooms.

Unfortunately, the moderate Democrat McBride (who is also a Zionist supporter) followed her party’s line and backed down from a fight, agreeing to submit to the new rule. McBride has a private bathroom in her offices, but the rule will harm trans people who work at the Capitol as well as visitors. 

McBride (and, by extension, all trans women) are being subject to humiliating discussions of our bodies, misgendering, and deadnaming in the corporate media.

As many trans community voices predicted, McBride’s capitulation was immediately followed by Mace introducing a bill to ban trans people from using the correct restrooms in all federal facilities nationwide. 

All of this unfolded on Nov. 20, the 25th annual Trans Day of Remembrance, when the community mourns those lost to anti-trans violence — every year, the vast majority of whom are trans women of color.

This attack is a signal that the new administration and Congress will move rapidly to enact measures intended to drive trans people out of public life, prevent us from living visibly or holding jobs outside the home, and vastly increase the incidence of violence and state repression. 

The Democratic establishment has so far given every indication that it will continue to capitulate as it seeks to secure a role under the new regime and move further to the right after its election losses.

In December, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a case on health care for trans youth that is likely to result in strengthening restrictions and set the stage for a planned nationwide ban on life-saving gender-affirming care, including for adults. 

Hateful anti-trans scapegoating, which originates with the billionaire class that both Trump’s Republicans and the Democrats represent, has other consequences. 

On Nov. 10, a pogrom took place at a Minneapolis light rail station (in Minnesota, considered a liberal “trans sanctuary” state). Two trans women were brutally attacked by men while onlookers cheered on the attackers. 

Both women were knocked unconscious, with one having her nose broken and the other receiving “multiple contusions” on her ribs.

In the coming weeks, the trans community will be reckoning with how to respond to these assaults on our very right to exist. Working-class and progressive movements must be ready to play an important supporting role in these efforts.

In the meantime, understand that the trans community is in crisis. We have already lost people who have given up hope and will lose more. Reach out and offer support to the trans people in your life. In public, be supportive of our rights and stand up for people using the restrooms.

Since mid-September, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly spent more than $30 million on television ads promoting anti-transgender hate. These have aired primarily in contested “swing states” and during high-viewership national sports broadcasts, including the World Series, NFL, and college football games.

Not only Trump and the Republican Party but the sports industry and television networks should be condemned for their complicity and for profiting off bigotry.

One of these insidious ads explicitly targets Black men viewers, featuring actors complaining about tax money spent on health care for trans prisoners and immigrants and about “men” competing in sports against “our girls.”

This ad, in particular, seeks to erase the solidarity trans people and other queers of all colors showed during the 2020 uprising after the police murder of George Floyd – when Trump, then in the White House, threatened to unleash the military against Black Lives protesters.

Likewise, Trump ads targeting immigrants and refugees contribute to whipping up a lynch-mob atmosphere ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. Trump has vowed to ban trans health care and begin a military roundup of migrants. He says he will make good on the threat to deploy U.S. troops against Palestine solidarity protests.

During the last year, trans and queer people have also been in the forefront of protests and actions against the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Speakers at Trump’s neo-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27 – in the middle of multinational, immigrant, queer New York City – likewise used openly genocidal language against trans people, along with racist hate directed at immigrants, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Palestinians.

No support from Harris

Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris has gone out of her way to avoid any hint of support for trans people, who are under vicious attack from the far right. In fact, Harris hasn’t even offered the hollow “thoughts and prayers” for which President Joe Biden became notorious.

In an interview with NBC News on Oct. 22, Harris deflected a softball question about her position on trans rights. Instead of expressing support for trans people, their rights, and their health care, Harris simply said she would “follow the law.”

While some Harris supporters attempted to paint this as a win for the LGBTQ+ community, many trans people pointed out that this is no kind of support at all – given that half of U.S. states have now passed anti-trans laws. The ultra-right U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case in early December that could have devastating consequences for trans youth health care and beyond.

As the anti-trans panic continues to crest at home and abroad, in defiance of medical science and the lived experience of trans people, there is a high likelihood that a new Democratic administration and Congress will follow the example of the Labour government in Britain – which adopted the anti-trans policies set out under the previous right-wing Tory government.

After all, Harris, following Biden, has already taken up the Trump policy against immigrants and refugees at the Mexican border. Her campaign has steadily moved to the right since her nomination, courting right-wing war criminals like Dick Cheney and other anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans who oppose Trump and declaring her total support for the genocidal apartheid regime in Israel. 

Harris told “The View” that the only difference between her and Biden is that she would include Republicans in her administration.

Taking their cue from the Harris campaign, Democratic congressional candidates in Ohio and Texas have adopted openly anti-trans positions.

The ballot box? Or another way

The city of Odessa, Texas, just enacted a ban on trans people using public restrooms that match their gender. The law includes a $10,000 bounty for people who report trans people using the “wrong” bathroom.

A new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has once again confirmed the high rate of long-term satisfaction among people who started gender-affirming health care in their youth. But another study published in September by the journal Nature found a 72% increase in suicide attempts by trans youth and young adults in states that have enacted measures like Texas, with its ban on gender-affirming care and other legal attacks on trans rights. 

Trump applauds such measures. Harris stays quiet and will “follow the law.” What choice is there in November for trans people, their families, and supporters?

Progressive third-party campaigns are an option for a protest vote at the ballot box. Black activist Cornel West and socialist Claudia de la Cruz have both taken strong positions in favor of trans rights and queer liberation, as well as for Palestine. Jill Stein, who has received a lot of publicity as an opponent of U.S. collaboration with Israel, has a platform that is generally pro-LGBTQ+, though it makes unnecessary concessions on trans youth health care. 

However individual trans people and allies choose to vote or choose not to vote, what’s most important is to recognize that we must organize and prepare to fight for our right to live – no matter the outcome on Election Day.

If Harris is elected, we must be in the streets to help stop the probable coup attempt by Trump while continuing to fight the genocidal policies of the Democratic Party in Palestine. If the Democrats concede to Trump, we must resist the new fascist regime by any means necessary.

The most crucial thing trans people can do is learn from the example of the heroic Palestinian resistance. We must work to build alliances with immigrants and other communities facing genocidal attacks.

As I wrote during Pride month: “It’s the same U.S. ruling class, the same bosses and profiteers, the same reactionary politicians and media – the same capitalist system – aiming at people in Gaza and trans and queer people here at home. We are all sand in the gears of their efforts to turn back the clock on people’s rights worldwide.

“Let’s do whatever we can to unite our struggles, together with all workers and communities under attack, to say: Our rights are not negotiable, and we are not going anywhere!”

Melinda Butterfield is an organizer with Women In Struggle-Mujeres En Lucha. She was the initiator of the National March and Speakout to Protect Trans Youth in Orlando, Florida, on Oct. 7, 2023.

Since the resurgence of the Palestine solidarity movement following the heroic Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people of all ages have taken up the struggle for a free Palestine.

Face it: imperialism is the world’s greatest threat to LGBTQ+ people.

Capitalism and imperialism, stretching back to its days of old-style colonialism, have done more than any other force on earth to annihilate and suppress societies that see gender and sexuality outside a narrow binary. 

Erasure of nonbinary people in pre-colonial Philippines

Take Spanish colonialism, for example. For those unfamiliar, one need only refer to the Spanish-American War in 1898, through which the United States made off with Spain’s old colonies: Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. At this point in history, the United States emerged as the leading imperialist power in the world, pushing aside the European powers.

Previous to this, Spain held these countries as colonies. In particular, Spain controlled the Philippines for over three centuries. 

Before the Spanish arrived, societies across the Philippine archipelago, though not a monolith, viewed gender and sexuality in its many shades. In fact, people who we would now consider to be nonbinary, trans, or queer were considered spiritual and tribal leaders. One popular term for them, among many, is babaylan. 

What happened to the babaylans? Between the Spanish military, governors, and missionaries, they were vilified and executed. The Spanish colonists, by both sword and cross, enforced the nuclear family and the narrow gender roles that came with it.

The Catholic Church’s “mission to civilize” was the ideological justification for the complete annihilation of an Indigenous social system, the babaylans being only one of many. 

But the true motivator behind such a historical atrocity is not something subjective like “good” or “evil” — these are just assessments that different people and class forces make for different reasons. 

The true motivator was primarily political and economic: it served the interests of European colonialism. There’s an old saying about European colonialism: First came the Bible, then came the sword. 

Like most Indigenous systems, the babaylans’ significance and function stood in stark contradiction to the Spanish colonists’ system of rule. Spain could not allow the precolonial Filipino peoples this degree of self-determination and autonomy, so it needed to be crushed.

Even hundreds of years later, the annihilation of the babaylans haunts the Philippines. Despite the Filipino people’s struggle having expelled U.S. military bases from the archipelago, the Visiting Forces Agreement has allowed the U.S. military rent-free use of Philippine military infrastructure. And where the U.S. military goes, sexual violence follows. 

One needs only refer to the brutal murder of Jennifer Laude and the non-indictment of U.S. soldier Scott Pemberton to bear this out. 

Imperialism has wrought this kind of havoc throughout the world. It stands in the way of, and violently suppresses, any system that allows for the genuine self-determination and social development of a people, nation, or movement.

This is not to say that every Indigenous or cultural practice is positive or progressive or that they are all negative or reactionary. Social and cultural practices must be understood on their own terms and in their own contexts. They do not form in a vacuum but rather according to objective historical conditions.

But a society’s practices simply cannot change and develop while the boot of imperialism weighs on its neck.

June 15 — Dozens of activists made history as the first pro-Palestine contingent in the Baltimore Pride Parade. A huge Palestine flag along with the banners: “No Pride in Genocide, $$ for Gender-Affirming Healthcare, not War” Peoples Power Assembly and “Stonewall Means Fight Back” Socialist Unity Party led the contingent.

Thousands along the route cheered the group, many joining the chant, “Free, Free Palestine!” Drummers and horn instruments kept marchers’ spirits high, along with colorful placards, banners, and flags. Parents brought young children, and seniors who had participated in the original pride marches also attended.  

On-lookers eagerly grabbed hundreds of copies of the Struggle-La Lucha publication, including flyers advertising the National March for Trans Lives on Oct.19 in Columbus, Ohio. Flyers were also distributed demanding justice for Donnell Rochester, murdered by Baltimore City police.

The overall activity was organized by the Peoples Power Assembly and supported by many other local groups. After a mile of marching in the hot sun, the group finished exhausted but extremely elated, recognizing that this was a first declaring of “Baltimore supports Palestine.”

June 1, Mandeville, Louisiana – Despite increasing attacks on the community from well-funded, far-right organizations, the Northshore region of Louisiana held its first-ever Pride Parade this June. Around 500 people marched, and an impressive 2,000 people lined the parade route in the small parish outside New Orleans. 

Although Governor Landry and his capitalist backers want to silence and divide LGBTQ+ people and other workers, the people of St. Tammany Parish stood together. They did not back down.

This area has been a major focus of struggle in the state. The Landry-aligned, book-banning, Moms for Liberty clones – the St. Tammany Parish Library Accountability Project – caused havoc with repeated attempts to censor libraries in the parish.

They wrongly believed that targeting smaller suburban communities would lead to easy victories, but the people of St. Tammany rallied repeatedly, coming out in large numbers to council meetings. They showed up at libraries to defend these important public institutions, uniting progressive groups and LGBTQ+ people. From their organizing came Northshore Pride.

A Mandeville parent speaks

A Mandeville home-health worker and parent, Mike Spalt, spoke about this historic Pride event.

“With last year being my first time marching in a pride parade [in NOLA], I had no idea the feeling it brought within me and everyone I saw out there. It was also my first experience with Queer Northshore. 

“So, when I heard they were bringing the Northshore its first pride parade, I offered to help. My family and friends marched this year, and words can’t describe seeing our community come together over a common cause.

“Of course, not everyone was on board with the LGBTQ community holding a parade. It’s something the queer community has faced since the beginning. The attacks on books, libraries, librarians, and members of the queer community are rooted in ignorant fear. … It doesn’t stop us. It moves us. 

“I’m really taken aback at how amazing [Pride organizers] Jeremey and Mel organize here on the Northshore. Since the LGBTQ community lives throughout the Northshore, it’s time it felt like their home too.”

When asked how it feels to be a parent of a queer or trans child when your child is under attack by grown-up bullies trying to score political points, he said:

“All of that is what inspires my opening line to a parent who has just found out their child is LGBTQ: As a parent, don’t be their first bully. They are going to encounter many. Unfortunately, these adult bullies spewing hate for the queer community could be the very cause of their own child taking their own life.”

The Trevor Project, a suicide-prevention organization focused on LGBTQ+ youth, reports that “1.8 million LGBTQ+ young people (ages 13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. — and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds.” But, “LGBTQ+ young people with at least one accepting adult in their life report significantly lower rates of attempting suicide.”

When the right-wing whips up hatred with rhetoric and repressive laws, children die. The purpose of these attacks is to create an atmosphere of desperation for queer and trans people and to scapegoat LGBTQ+ people while the rich strip away every right – from abortion to minimum wage, from lunch breaks for teenage workers to bathroom access – that workers have won in this state, and beyond. 

From Louisiana to Palestine, all the attacks are connected

A contingent of around 15 people with Louisiana Allies for Palestine marched in the parade, bringing attention to how the struggle for Palestine is connected to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. All our communities are under attack, and the spirit of Pride means standing up for everybody. This contingent raised the Palestinian flag, chanting “Free, free Palestine!” with support from the crowd.

Many watching the march also had Palestinian flags or wore keffiyehs, the patterned scarves that are a symbol of the Palestinian people. One young man with a Palestinian flag painted on his face said, “We can’t forget Palestine while we’re out here.”

A New Orleans-area Palestinian public health worker recently spoke to this writer about how she has experienced the past eight months of the U.S.-Israeli genocide:

“Think back to the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when people were trapped on rooftops, bodies were floating down the street; people were crowded into the Superdome, babies didn’t have formula. 

“My life for the past eight months has been like watching that, getting worse and worse and with a far higher death toll. It’s a terrible feeling of powerlessness. In the first few days of this horror, I didn’t know if my son would make it back to New Orleans. He happened to be back home in Palestine at that time. Thankfully, he was able to leave after a few days, but he was very much affected by that experience.”

The same government in Washington that let working-class (especially Black) New Orleanians die during Katrina is the one bank-rolling the Zionist killing machine responsible for around 40,000 deaths in Gaza. They do not care about human life so long as their rich backers are making money, as they certainly are doing in the current war. Many of those same politicians are leading the assault on queer and trans people. But we can take them on if we stand together, just like they did in St. Tammany. 

Stonewall was a riot! Free, free Palestine!

Meet danger with resistance

LGBTQIA+ people greet Pride Month this year with a mixture of joy, fear, and anger. 

Joy at the annual celebration of our vibrant, diverse community and our struggle for liberation, marking the anniversary of the heroic 1969 Stonewall uprising of trans and other queer youth in New York City. 

Fear at the growing tide of anti-trans laws and violence and attacks on all LGBTQIA+ people that seek to kill us or drive us back in the closet.

Anger that so many cisgender and straight allies have not answered our increasingly desperate appeals to join us in fighting back while others have allowed themselves to be influenced or bought off by our enemies.

Queer people, especially trans youth and adults, are in danger. Over half of U.S. states have now enacted laws and regulations aimed at harming trans people. 

These attacks on gender-affirming health care, bodily autonomy, free speech, sports participation, and even our right to use public restrooms feed violence and hate – like the attacks that led to the death of Nex Benedict and so many others.

The corporate-owned media have joined in this hate campaign, gleefully spreading misinformation and stoking the far-right campaign by “just asking questions.” It’s not just Fox News but also mainstream and liberal outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian that are responsible. 

In April, the FBI issued a warning that Pride Month activities were again likely to be targeted by violent extremists. But we know all too well that the FBI, the police, and the military are no friends of queer people. From Stonewall 1969 to West Hollywood 2023, the state’s repressive agencies not only attack us outright but regularly aid and abet neo-Nazis threatening our events. 

The cops and the federal government want us to be too scared to resist while state governments peel away our rights and our ability to even exist in public.

But we refuse to sit by as our rights are stripped away by the far right while Biden offers only “thoughts and prayers.” We refuse to run, and we refuse to stay silent while the Democratic Party and the administration arm, fund, and provide political cover for the ongoing genocide of our Palestinian siblings in Gaza.

Supporting our Palestinian siblings

June marks eight months of genocide in Gaza by the terrorist apartheid state of Israel. Over 35,000 Palestinian people have been killed so far, including over 14,000 children. Among them are uncounted numbers of LGBTQIA+ people. 

Yet there are still people trying to convince us that Israel is a “democracy” that is “queer-friendly” while Palestinians are all homophobic and transphobic barbarians. 

The best answer to this racist lie comes from Palestinian queers themselves: 

“We refuse the instrumentalization of our queerness, our bodies, and the violence we face as queer people to demonize and dehumanize our communities, especially in service of imperial and genocidal acts. We refuse that Palestinian sexuality and Palestinian attitudes towards diverse sexualities become parameters for assigning humanity to any colonized society. We deserve life because we are human, with the multitude of our imperfections, and not because of our proximity to colonial modes of liberal humanity. We refuse colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society and alienate our society from us on the basis of our queerness. 

“We are fighting interconnected systems of oppression, including patriarchy and capitalism, and our dreams of autonomy, community, and liberation are inherently tied to our desire for self-determination. No queer liberation can be achieved with settler colonization, and no queer solidarity can be fostered if it stands blind to the racialized, capitalist, fascist, and imperial structures that dominate us.

“We, queer Palestinians, are an integral part of our society, and we are informing you: from the heavily militarized alleys of Jerusalem to Huwara’s scorched lands, to Jaffa’s surveilled streets and cutting across Gaza’s besieging walls, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

“We call on queer and feminist activists and groups around the world to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their resistance to displacement, land theft, and ethnic cleansing and their struggle for the liberation of their lands and futures from Zionist settler-colonialism. This call cannot be answered only by sharing statements and signing letters but by an active engagement with decolonial and liberatory struggles in Palestine and around the globe.”

(Full text: A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine)

Queers for Palestine

From coast to coast, a mass movement against genocide and for Palestinian liberation has shaken U.S. society to its foundations. The powers that be, from the White House and Congress to universities and city halls, have failed to repress or brainwash this solidarity movement with false charges of “antisemitism.” Anyone can see that anti-Zionist Jewish people are in the front ranks of this movement.

Also at the center of it, from day one, have been mobilizations of Queers for Palestine. Why?

For eight decades, Palestinians have been:

• Told they do not actually exist
• Demonized and dehumanized
• Driven from their homes
• Forced to build and rebuild communities of resistance wherever they can
• Targeted by capitalist powers as scapegoats for the crimes of the system

No wonder so many queer people, especially trans youth, have put their bodies on the line for Palestine! These attacks on the whole Palestinian people parallel on a global scale what so many of us have experienced in our own lives. We empathize, we are in solidarity, and we feel compelled to act.

Just a few decades ago, it was nearly forbidden to mention Palestine even at progressive events in the U.S. But Palestinians’ courage, resistance, and refusal to be silenced, no matter the odds, has won them the solidarity of millions here and billions worldwide. We can, and we must, learn from their example as we work together to end U.S.-Israeli war crimes.

It’s the same U.S. ruling class, the same bosses and profiteers, the same reactionary politicians and media – the same capitalist system – aiming at people in Gaza and trans and queer people here at home. We are all sand in the gears of their efforts to turn back the clock on people’s rights worldwide.

Let’s do whatever we can to unite our struggles, together with all workers and communities under attack, to say: Our rights are not negotiable, and we are not going anywhere!