Oct. 13 — In recent weeks, we have seen naked violence unleashed against Black trans women, directed against them by the state in the form of police beatings and by rightist forces in this emerging fascist movement in America.

What does this mean? Why now?

I believe it comes now for specific strategic purposes, for trans women stand on the periphery of the gay rights movement, not its nucleus. This means they are isolated, and as such they are targeted by rightist forces to isolate them further. We must not forget that they are, after all, Black folks in a land and in an era where and when Black life remains cheap. Now, as Black, gay and transgender: See where the analysis goes?

And if it’s Black trans women today, it’ll be Black straight women tomorrow. And Black children soon thereafter.

That’s the nature of the fascist beast. Attack those who seem weak, isolate them, destroy them. Since Charlottesville, we’ve seen the emergence of rightist racist forces who are committed to destroying Black life and to proving that Black lives don’t matter.

The lives of Black people are the literal foundation, not just of America, but of all of us. We need to build a radical movement that protects all of us, for all of us — that consigns such racist violence to the trash heap of history.

From Prison Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Listen to Mumia’s commentaries on Prison Radio. 

What a weekend! From Friday, June 28 — the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion against police terror — through Sunday, June 30, protests, parades, meetings, festivals and celebrations took place in New York to mark the dawn of the modern movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) liberation.

Like any movement that has survived for half a century, experiencing both tremendous victories and tragic setbacks, the 50th anniversary of Stonewall was messy, challenging and full of contradictions.

But what stood out above all the noise was the sense that the tide of struggle is rising again.

Despite the takeover of New York’s large annual Pride Parade and other celebrations by corporations and capitalist politicians, and in the face of a hostile national political climate of intensified terror by white supremacists and bigots in both official and unofficial capacities, LGBTQ2S people declared: “We will not go back!”

And many of those who came out under hot, sunny, late June skies understood that solidarity with the most oppressed, inside and outside the LGBTQ2S community, is not only desirable. It is essential.

You could read it on the signs that said “Fuck ICE” and “Black Lives Matter” and “Unite to Stop the Murders of Trans Women.” You could see it in the multinational, multigender and multigenerational crowds that flooded the streets and parks and subways.

Thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the world came here to celebrate five decades of fightback and renew their commitment to continue the struggle for liberation. Among them were members and friends of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper and the Socialist Unity Party from Atlanta, Baltimore and San Diego, who made the journey to speak and march alongside their New York comrades.

They had a message to share, one both simple and profound: Stonewall still means fight back!

Lifting voices of most oppressed

On June 29, Struggle-La Lucha sponsored a panel discussion featuring revolutionary veterans and young organizers of the LGBTQ2S struggle. The theme was “Lifting the Voices of the Most Oppressed.”

This powerful meeting, held at the offices of Project REACH, a multinational youth organizing center in the heart of Chinatown, was also live-streamed around the world. It was chaired by Miranda Bachman of Youth Against War and Racism.

Opening the event, Baltimore organizer Andre Powell, a retired AFSCME delegate and founder of Labor for Reparations, declared that, “We are light years away from the days of the Stonewall Rebellion. However, all is not perfect. Employment discrimination, along with discrimination in housing and health care, is too common in the LGBTQ2S community.

“LGBTQ2S immigrants crossing the border have found themselves held in detention centers for long periods of time, in unsafe conditions, and are at a far greater risk of sexual violence than the general population in those concentration camps.”

Powell added: “ICE has shown disrespect and utter contempt for the transgender community. They are housing transgender immigrants in unsafe conditions. Trans women have been forcibly housed in the men’s housing units. Many have been denied their hormone treatments and have been kept in solitary confinement, which the United Nations says is a form of torture.

“It is crucial that the LGBTQ2S community continues to show its solidarity with its immigrant siblings,” he concluded.

Reece Evans, a revolutionary youth organizer from Los Angeles and producer of Struggle-La Lucha Radio, spoke via pre-recorded video. Evans discussed the early LGBTQ2S movement’s links with the anti-imperialist struggles against the Vietnam War and for women’s, Black, Latinx, Native, Asian and Arab liberation.

Evans also emphasized the special contributions of two queer internationalists: Marielle Franco and Chelsea Manning. Franco, an Afro-Brazilian lesbian and socialist, fought against racist police terror and the growing power of the U.S.-backed ultraright in her country. She was assassinated in early 2018 by police linked to current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Manning, a trans woman who spent seven years in military prison for sharing evidence of U.S. war crimes with WikiLeaks, is back in jail today for refusing to testify before a grand jury targeting Julian Assange.

“It’s in the interest of all working and oppressed peoples to unite and fight for a better world — without wars for oil and other resources, without racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ2S bigotry. International solidarity is key to building the struggle against capitalism, imperialism and all forms of oppression,” said Evans.

On the shoulders of giants

Lizz Toledo from Atlanta, a queer Latinx communist and anti-police brutality organizer, spoke about the lives of Stonewall participants Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. “The leaders of our movement come from the most oppressed. They come from communities of color. They come from the poorest of communities.

“At every turn in the story of our movement, poor LGBTQ2S people like Sylvia and Marsha have been in the front lines of all fights for liberation,” Toledo explained. “From the women’s movement to unions to any fight for working people here or anywhere in the world, it has been poor, queer people of color in the front lines, before Stonewall, during Stonewall and today.

“We have thrown the first brick and the first bottle in the fight against police terror and racism, defending migrants from the brutality of ICE, fighting for reproductive health for all women, for our trans sisters, for equal pay in unions across the country, and against imperialist wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the ones these warmongers are itching to start right now against China, Venezuela and Iran,” declared Toledo.

“We threw the first stone in saving the planet from climate change, to stop the destruction of Native land — and we stand on stolen land right now. We continue to fight on the front lines of these movements,” she said.

“We have never wavered, but we have been silenced and pushed to the side. The first Pride parade refused to let our trans siblings march, even though they threw the first bricks.

“We stand on the shoulders of giants. But our best is yet to come,” Toledo said. “When all of us — men, women, trans, Black, white, Brown, gay, straight, working and poor, united — throw the first brick to bring this rotten capitalist system to its inevitable death.”

Solidarity opens path to liberation

Bob McCubbin of San Diego, author of “The Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression: A Marxist View” and formerly an activist with the San Francisco Gay Liberation Front, stated that “Solidarity opens the path to liberation and justice for all the workers and oppressed.”

McCubbin used the life of Leslie Feinberg, author of the acclaimed novel “Stone Butch Blues” and groundbreaking nonfiction works on transgender liberation, to illustrate his point.

“Leslie was a communist activist and a fierce opponent of racism, a transgender warrior. But Leslie entered adulthood in the late 1960s as a somewhat forlorn, profoundly oppressed factory worker in Buffalo, who asked, ‘Why am I so hated for being different?’ This was a very difficult question with no existing reasonable answer. Leslie would only find the answer years later, using the tool of Marxist analysis,” said McCubbin.

Over the years, McCubbin explained, Feinberg “amassed an impressive amount of the anthropoligical and historical evidence that makes clear the ubiquitous existence of trans and nonbinary people and their acceptance and special contributions to society” prior to the development of class society.

“Leslie found that prior to the development of society into distinct classes of rich and poor, hatred of transgender, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary people didn’t exist,” said McCubbin.

“But that discovery came later. What came first” and what laid the basis for those later achievements, he insisted, was Feinberg’s “introduction to and enthusiastic embrace of a revolutionary organization, where Leslie was given every opportunity and much assistance to develop as an extremely skillful and supremely articulate activist, talented journalist and novelist.”

45,000-strong Queer Liberation March

McCubbin added: “We believe that collaboration with the racist police and promotion of commercial enterprises at our sacred march is wrong. This is not what Stonewall is all about. The message our contingent will bring to the Queer Liberation March will affirm the need to struggle, in solidarity with the most oppressed, both in this country and around the world.”

And what a powerful march it was — 45,000 strong, one of the largest political protests on the streets of New York in recent memory.

The Queer Liberation March stepped off from Sheridan Square, just south of the Stonewall Inn, in the early morning of June 30, and marched uptown to Central Park. Organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, the march was in the spirit of early Pride parades — a protest against social injustice and a celebration of the fight for LGBTQ2S liberation.

There were no corporate-sponsored floats and police were not welcomed. Along the route, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) held a “die-in” to protest the deaths of at least 17 HIV+ people in ICE custody.

The Marielle Franco and Chelsea Manning contingent organized by Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party was in the thick of it with beautiful banners and signs. Activists led chants like “Migrant rights are under attack! Shut down concentration camps!” and “No war for big oil profits! Free Chelsea Manning!” Along the way, contingent members distributed hundreds of copies of a special Pride issue of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper.

Several times along the 4-mile march, members of the Brazilian LGBTQ2S community stopped to pose for photos with signs and banners of Marielle Franco and thanked the contingent for honoring her. A message from Chelsea Manning was read at the closing rally on the Great Lawn in Central Park.

“As I marched it felt like the early years in the 1970s — everyone marching proudly without floats or cops. It was so alive and filled with energy.” Andre Powell told Struggle-La Lucha, adding: “Our strength as a new revolutionary party came through loud and clear.”

SLL photos: Greg Butterfield and Leon Kofax

Watch livestream of “Lifting the Voices of the Most Oppressed” panel

https://www.facebook.com/strugglelalucha/videos/2361541347468964/

Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army veteran and trans woman, spent seven years in military prison for sharing evidence of U.S. war crimes with WikiLeaks. Earlier this year, Manning was thrown back in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury convened to justify the U.S. extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Below is the full text of Chelsea Manning’s statement to the Queer Liberation Rally in New York on June 30, as read by Janus Cassandra Rose. 

Friends,

I’m deeply saddened that I cannot be here with you today.

A few months ago, while speaking on the phone from jail with one of my friends out in Brooklyn, I came to a startling realization. I said: “I remember growing up as a kid searching for someone to look up to – someone to lean on for inspiration. I needed an idol.”

Right then I realized, the thing I needed as a young kid is now available. I said, “Wow, look at all these kids and teens and young adults in the queer community – THEY FOUND EACH OTHER.”

I felt something so profound that I broke down crying, and my friend did too. I finally felt that word that gets thrown around – I felt PRIDE. I almost yelled into the phone: “I’m so fucking proud of my community. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of what we have – of what we’ve built together.”

Despite everything, we as a community face daunting challenges every day. The world feels colder and more alien somehow. Our society constantly reminds us – in both obvious and subtle ways – of the need for us to meet THEIR standards. To meet THEIR expectations. We somehow always need their approval.

Our spaces changed. Our neighborhoods gentrified. Our protests became parades. Our acts of defiance became exhibitions. Our love and rage were commodified – turned into something that could be packaged and branded and sold.

Christopher Street, Washington Square, Stonewall – on these streets, on this land which rightfully belongs to the Lenape people, the true history of queer and trans liberation is written. All these places tell stories: Stories of solidarity, of love, of rebellion. Our movement for freedom began here, and the fact that you are all standing here today proves it is far from over.

The first pride was a riot. But we will not allow that historic struggle to simply become a catchphrase on designer T-shirts. We are here today because we know that no matter how much they claim otherwise, the forces of capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy have always – and will always – work against queer and trans justice. 

We are here because we know that rainbow-branded storefronts are not signs of acceptance, but of oppression with better marketing. We are here because we know there should be NO PRIDE FOR SOME OF US WITHOUT LIBERATION FOR ALL OF US.

We are here for trans women of color, who, despite leading the fight at Stonewall 50 years ago, continue to be attacked and killed on our streets, in jails and prisons, and in our own communities. We are here for Layleen Polanco, who just a few weeks ago was found dead in solitary confinement on Rikers Island. We are here for Johana Medina León, a 25-year-old asylum seeker from El Salvador, who died in ICE custody on the first day of Pride Month. We are here for Ashanti Carmon, Zoe Spears, Muhlaysia Booker, and the eight other trans women who have been murdered this year alone. 

We are here for our queer and trans siblings, and all the children who have been separated from their families and placed in concentration camps at the southern border. We are here for sex workers, and to demand the full decriminalization of sex work. We are here for Indigenous people, on whose land we now march.

We are here because a society that relies on prisons, police, borders and military intervention is fundamentally at odds with queer and trans lives.

We stand here today because we refuse to accept these injustices. Because we believe in a better world – a world that we create every single day. Every action we take brings this world into reality. We see it when we stand in solidarity for our incarcerated queer siblings. We feel it when we reclaim our spaces and march in the streets. We experience it when we build systems of mutual aid that allow our communities to thrive without the intervention of the state.

Today, I hope you will look around you and see this world. It is not a utopia in the far-away future – It is here. It is our community. It is us. We got this.

Your friend in struggle,
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning

New York — On June 28, I walked the short distance from my day job in lower Manhattan to Sheridan Square, a historic LGBTQ2S meeting place just south of the Stonewall Inn, where a police raid exactly 50 years before sparked Marsha P. “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and other super oppressed, working-class, queer youths to rise up against the vicious goons of the New York Police Department.

I had heard about a wall of honor recently erected at the Stonewall. I wanted to see if I could visit it and read the name of my departed comrade and friend, the noted author and fierce communist Leslie Feinberg, who was among those honored there.

I never reached the Stonewall nor saw the wall of honor. Instead, I found the blocks surrounding Stonewall densely packed with NYPD cops, some with truncheons, some in what appeared to be “light” riot gear, nearly all carrying sidearms. Metal barricades closed off streets for many blocks around. 

Access to the area was severely restricted. LGBTQ2S people, other workers and area residents were turned away, shunted into long lines or questioned about where they were going. Police vehicles of every description, from scooters to massive mobile command buses, clogged the streets.

The excuse, it seems, was the plan to hold a ticketed, corporate-sponsored, celebrity-attended “celebration” in the area. But the vastness and totality of the police occupation went well above and beyond any reasonable measure, even from the point of view of these bourgeois sponsors

It certainly did evoke Stonewall ‘69, but not in a good way. 

Worried much, NYPD, City Hall and Wall Street?

It is just this sort of behavior that inspired many LGBTQ2S activists and allies to found the Reclaim Pride Coalition to organize a Queer Liberation March for Stonewall 50, to counter the corporate/police takeover of the traditional New York Pride Parade. 

Just a few weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill got headlines — and drew the scorn of activists — when he issued a mealy-mouthed, 50-years-too-damn-late “apology” for the police raid on Stonewall and subsequent NYPD repression against those who fought back. 

Reclaim Pride answered: “We are not impressed by Commissioner O’Neill’s empty apology, given under pressure during Pride month. Where has this apology been for the last 50 years? The NYPD Vice Squad is still in business, busting sex workers and others, while its members run their own brothels. The NYPD is still arresting trans kids of color for walking down the street and arrested a transwoman in the Bronx who was walking home from work, holding her in custody for 24 hours, in handcuffs! The NYPD has spent decades entrapping gay men. And the NYPD continues to strike fear in communities of color and other marginalized communities.”

Fortunately, later on the afternoon of June 28, I found an inspiring antidote: the Trans Day of Action rally held in nearby Washington Square Park, followed by a neighborhood march. Hundreds of trans people, their families, friends, co-workers and supporters gathered for this annual event, now in its 15th year, sponsored by the Audre Lorde Project. 

Trans and gender nonconforming people of all nationalities, sexualities, abilities and ages came together to mourn the dead and fight for the rights and futures of the living, with a special focus this year on housing justice.

And Stonewall? Even if it is temporarily under occupation, for the folks at Washington Square Park, and for all workers and oppressed peoples — it still means fight back.

Chants of “Free Chelsea Manning!” rang out on the streets of Baltimore during the city’s annual LGBTQ2S Pride Parade on June 15. Members of the Peoples Power Assembly, Baltimore Peace Action, Struggle-La Lucha, the Socialist Unity Party and Youth Against War and Racism formed an anti-imperialist contingent in this year’s parade. 

Carrying a banner highlighting both Chelsea Manning and Marielle Franco, which included large pictures of both women, the contingent raised the call to free Manning and honor the name of Franco, a Brazilian queer activist who was murdered for organizing in opposition to the ultraright in that country. The banner drew much applause along the march route. Many people joined the chants to free Chelsea Manning, with some pumping their fists into the air. 

The anti-imperialist contingent set the political tone of the parade, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, when trans people of color along with other LGBTQ2S patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, fought back against another police raid. Though the rebellion ended after three nights, it was the spark that ignited the modern LGBTQ2S rights movement. 

The contingent also carried large placards of Marsha P. Johnson, who along with Sylvia Rivera refused to be arrested that night and started the rebellion. An additional banner reading “Stonewall still means fight back” by Struggle-La Lucha newspaper and the Socialist Unity Party received much applause from onlookers, with several shouting to the contingent, “Yes, it still does!” 

Youth Against War and Racism members led the chants, which also connected with the struggle for immigrant rights, against attacks on the LGBTQ2S community and against the increasing corporatization of Pride parades. 

This year many Pride parades have contingents or separately organized actions speaking out against this increase of corporate floats that take away from the original meaning of Pride as a rebellion against so much police oppression of the community. This oppression still continues today, especially against trans women. These contingents also raise the call “Police out of Pride,” citing their continuing attacks against communities of color and immigrants, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.   

The solidarity continued June 16 at the annual Pride Festival held in Druid Hill Park. Festival attendees stopped by the anti-imperialist booth to discuss Chelsea Manning’s current status and to get information on Marielle Franco, whose political assasination is not widely known in this country. On both days, informational leaflets about these heroic women were widely distributed. 

Black Alliance for Peace-Baltimore Chapter members participated and also staffed the table in a show of solidarity with the LGBTQ2S community, along with the Communist Party of Baltimore and Maryland. A special Pride edition of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper was distributed.

On June 6, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill issued an apology for the police raid on a gay bar that set off the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and sparked the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and Two Spirit (LGBTQ2S) liberation movement.

The Reclaim Pride Coalition, which is organizing a Queer Liberation March in New York on June 30 to protest the corporate-police takeover of the traditonal Pride Parade, condemned the NYPD’s “non-apology [that] ignores ongoing attack on LGBTQ+ and communities of color.”

Readers in the New York area are urged to join Struggle-La Lucha’s contingent in the Queer Liberation March. Gather at Sheridan Square, on Seventh Avenue south of Christopher Street, beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 30. The march will step off at 9:30 a.m. and go up Sixth Avenue to the Great Lawn in Central Park, where a rally will be held from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Following is the Reclaim Pride Coalition statement:

“We are not impressed by Commissioner O’Neill’s empty apology, given under pressure during Pride Month. Where has this apology been for the last 50 years? The NYPD Vice Squad is still in business, busting sex workers and others, while its members run their own brothels. The NYPD is still arresting trans kids of color for walking down the street and arrested a transwoman in the Bronx who was walking home from work, holding her in custody for 24 hours, in handcuffs! The NYPD has spent decades entrapping gay men. And the NYPD continues to strike fear in communities of color and other marginalized communities.

“Commissioner O’Neill had the nerve to say that this would never happen in 2019, completely ignoring that the NYPD continues to be an oppressive force in our communities even on the day of Pride.  For decades, the Christopher Street Piers have been somewhat of a public safe space for LGBTQ+ youth of color, who are now being violently policed out of the space. Every year, cop watch activists patrol the piers during Pride because of the amount of violent policing the youth who hang out there experience. Last year the NYPD completely cut off all access to this space, taking away a gay space of community from hundreds of mostly Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people. This is only one example of the continued oppression faced by marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ population and it happens on Pride Day!  

“The Reclaim Pride Coalition is a group of individuals and organizations producing a massive Queer Liberation March people’s protest for June 30 (reclaimpridenyc.org).  No corporations and no uniformed police in our March. From our first meetings in the months prior to the 2018 Pride Parade, the Reclaim Pride Coalition has called for a comprehensive NYPD apology, including for their ongoing brutality against marginalized groups and for a systemic change in their operations.”

1 de junio de 2019

Tal vez ha escuchado hablar de “Dos Espíritus” con relación a lesbianas, gay, bisexual, transgénero u otros términos Si no es indígena, tal vez esto le hace pensar que “Dos Espíritus” se refiere a gente indígena que es lesbiana, gay, bisexual o transgénero. Pero ser Dos Espíritus no necesariamente significa que alguien es lesbiana o gay, porque este término no se refiere a preferencia sexual.

“Dos Espíritus” es un término amplio pan-indio que describe a personas indígenas que tienen roles de género mixtos o no binarios. El término comenzó a ganar popularidad a fines de la década de 1980 y ahora se usa ampliamente en todo Canadá y EE. UU., y otros pueblos indígenas, como lxs Zapotecas en México, también reconocen el concepto.

Aunque el término es relativamente nuevo, el concepto ha existido para cientos de naciones indígenas durante miles de años. Algunos pueblos originarios por ejemplo, tienen hasta 4 y 5 géneros diferentes. Las personas de Dos Espíritus se consideran no binarias y tienen elementos sagrados femenino y masculino dentro de ellas.

Estos conceptos indígenas vinieron mucho antes y existen fuera de la terminología “LGBTQ” que ahora se usa a menudo. Una persona de Dos Espíritus puede que sea lesbiana o gay, pero ser lesbiana o gay no necesariamente hace que alguien sea Dos Espíritus.

La gente de Dos Espíritus ha existido durante miles de años. Muchas naciones tribales entendieron que había personas que no formaban parte de un binario masculino / femenino. De hecho, algunas naciones creían que había múltiples géneros, no solo dos.

Tradicionalmente, en muchas naciones tribales, las personas de Dos Espíritus se consideraban en alta estima. Eran líderes, guerreras y sanadoras. A menudo desempeñaban un papel especial con los jóvenes, incluyendo la adopción de niñxs y el otorgamiento de nombres sagrados especiales para los bebés.

Cuando los europeos cristianos invadieron, sin embargo, despreciaron extremadamente a la gente de Dos Espíritus. Las personas de Dos Espíritus a menudo, eran asesinadas u obligadas a ocultar quiénes eran. Los misioneros cristianos hicieron todo lo posible por enseñar a lxs indígenas que ser Dos Espíritu era un pecado y diabólico, y las leyes y costumbres coloniales de los invasores prohibían la existencia de personas que no eran específicamente hombres o mujeres.

Por esta represión, más y más gente indígena se apartó de sus antiguos entendimientos, pero no toda. Se hizo más difícil para las personas de Dos Espíritus ser quienes eran, y en muchos lugares tenían que funcionar de manera clandestina.

Desafiando el desprecio

Para el siglo XX, algunas personas de Dos Espíritus abandonaron sus reservaciones para irse a las ciudades donde había comunidades de lesbianas y gays. Algunxs fundaron grupos nativos urbanos, como Indios Americanos Gay (GAI, por sus siglas en inglés) en San Francisco, y muchos se enfrentaron también al racismo anti-indígena en las ciudades. A veces, los blancos incluso les decían que los nativos no podían ser lesbianas, homosexuales o Dos Espíritus debido a algunas extrañas opiniones estereotípicas de los no-nativos. Es difícil para las personas de Dos Espíritus sentirse completamente cómodas en cualquier lugar.

Pero más y más las personas de Dos Espíritus han hecho saber a sus familias y tribus quiénes son realmente. Si no son tratadas con respeto, desafían esto, especialmente cuando es la propia tradición tribal honrar a las personas de Dos Espíritus.

Durante los campamentos de Standing Rock en 2016-2017 para detener el oleoducto Dakota Access, las personas de Dos Espíritus se unieron y trabajaron en muchos de los proyectos. Las personas de Dos Espíritus en Standing Rock desempeñaron un papel espiritual muy importante y trataron de hacer todo de una buena manera para brindar fortaleza a las miles de personas reunidas allí.

Con el liderazgo brindado por personas como Candi Brings Plenty, este fue un paso hacia delante muy importante en la lucha nativa. Cuando algunos nativos en el campamento no les aceptaban, otrxs desafiaban esto y les recordaban a todos sus culturas tradicionales.

Algunas veces personas no-nativas se refieren a sí mismas como Dos Espíritus. Esto es una falta de respeto, ya que es una apropiación de un concepto y término distintivamente indígena.

Durante este mes de Junio 2019, y durante todo el año, desfiles de Orgullo Gay y powwows  celebrarán a la gente Dos Espíritus, desde Saskatoon hasta Bay Area (Bahía de California), hasta el Desfile Navajo Pride.

Honrar a la gente de Dos Espíritus es una parte importante de la Descolonización — eliminar las ideas nefastas de los colonos de nuestra mente y volver a los entendimientos más profundos que existían mucho antes del surgimiento del patriarcado, el capitalismo, el colonialismo y la invasión europea de las tierras indígenas.

Queens, N.Y. — Chanting “Stonewall still means fight back! Free Chelsea Manning!” activists from Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party kicked off LGBTQ2S Pride month by marching in the Queens Pride Parade on June 2.

They carried signs demanding freedom for Manning, the trans whistleblower who is back in jail for her role in exposing U.S. war crimes. Other signs honored slain Brazilian queer activist Mariella Franco and transgender communist Leslie Feinberg.

Tens of thousands of people, young and old, turned out to watch the parade in Jackson Heights, Queens, a multinational neighborhood of New York City. The city’s second-largest annual Pride event honors Julio Rivera, a gay Puerto Rican man who was murdered by white supremacists in a nearby schoolyard in 1990.

Student groups, unions, community organizations and churches were among those who marched, many of them flying rainbow, trans and pansexual flags. Queens is a borough of immigrants, and marchers also flew the flags of the many of the countries they hail from.

A memorable contingent of Latinx marchers wore orange prison jumpsuits and held up bars symbolizing the cages asylum-seekers are held in by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. One held a sign that read: “Say it loud! Say it clear! Roxana was killed by ICE!” in memory of trans asylum seeker Roxana Hernández, who died in custody in May 2018.

Also marching were representatives of the Reclaim Pride coalition, which is sponsoring a Queer Liberation March in Manhattan on June 30 to mark 50 years since the Stonewall Rebellion of trans, gay and lesbian youth against police repression.

Reclaim Pride is challenging the “official” Heritage of Pride Parade, held annually on the last Sunday of June. Over the years, that event has become increasingly dominated by corporations, police and capitalist politicians. For more info, visit reclaimpridenyc.org.

On May 24, the Washington Blade reported on the Trump administration’s latest assault on transgender rights. On the day before a long holiday weekend, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would strip the Affordable Care Act of its protections for transgender folk and women.

Until now, the ACA, also known as Obamacare, has offered protection to trans people and women against acts of discrimination by health care practitioners. The regulation change announced by HHS will eliminate these protections.

In a pathetic effort to minimize the outrageous character of the new rule, the HHS noted that it would continue to enforce nondiscrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, disability, age and sex.” Although the statement doesn’t explain how, HHS asserted that the rule change will save taxpayers $3.6 billion over the next five years.

A recent “conscience” rule change by the Trump administration already protects health care bigots who refuse to deal with sex reassignment cases or abortions. And, in a further assault on trans rights, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed eliminating a rule that previously protected homeless transgender folk from discrimination at homeless shelters funded by the government.

The Washington Blade article notes that a Supreme Court case due to be ruled on soon “could either affirm decades of case law defending transgender people, or throw them out with a single ruling.”

Of course, trans people are not just under attack by the Trump administration. Scarcely a week passes without the news of another trans person, most often a trans woman of color, murdered. On the same day as the HHS announcement, a gathering of 200 trans activists and supporters in New York’s Washington Square Park demanded an end to the murders of Black transgender women. Their protest focused on the slayings of three Black trans women that occurred in the space of one week less than a month ago. Claire Legato died from gunshot wounds in Cleveland, Muhlaysia Booken was killed in Dallas and Michelle Washington was murdered in Philadelphia.

A Reuters report on the New York protest noted that “at least 26 transgender women were reported killed in 2018 and 29 in 2017” in the U.S. But the truth is that many murderous attacks on trans women, especially on Black trans women, never get reported or are mischaracterized by the police.

Different history in Cuba

What an outrageous contrast with the conditions of life for trans folk in Cuba. Not that the enemies of Cuba would be at all concerned with the well-being of differently gendered people, but they have never been able to accuse Cuba of harboring violence against Cuban trans people because it doesn’t exist in that socialist country.

What the U.S. capitalist media don’t like to publicize is exactly that dramatic difference in social status plus the fact that trans people in Cuba have free access to quality health care, as do all Cubans, and that includes free access to sex reassignment surgery on demand. For women, free reproductive care, including the right to a safe abortion on demand, is available to all Cuban women.

Socialist Cuba’s achievements in the areas of health care, education and equal rights for all have been won despite the continuing open hostility of the imperialist monster to the north. The relentless efforts of the U.S. to recolonize Cuba, most notably using the ever tightening economic blockade, have made social progress more difficult, but all the more remarkable.

Cuba needs our solidarity. Demand that the U.S. end its illegal blockade of the island nation! And express your solidarity with the Washington Square protesters who chanted, “Black trans lives matter!”

El 24 de Mayo, el Washington Blade reportó en el internet acerca del último asalto de la administración de Trump contra los derechos trans. Un día antes del largo fin de semana festivo, el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos (HHS por sus siglas en inglés) propuso una medida que quitaría a la Ley del Cuidado de Salud a Bajo Precio (ACA siglas en inglés) las protecciones para la gente trans y las mujeres.

Hasta ahora, el ACA, también conocida como Obamacare, ofrece  protección a la gente trans y a las mujeres contra actos discriminatorios por los que ofrecen los servicios de salud. Este cambio de regulación anunciada por el HHS eliminará estas protecciones.

En un esfuerzo patético para minimizar el carácter indignante de esta nueva medida, el HHS nota que continuará reforzando la no discriminación basada en “raza, color, origen nacional, discapacidad, edad y sexo”. Aunque la declaración no explica cómo, HHS afirma que el cambio en la medida le ahorrará a los contribuyentes $3.6 mil millones en los próximos cinco años.

Un cambio reciente en la regla de “conciencia” por la administración de Trump ya protege a los proveedores de salud  extremistas que se rehúsan a trabajar con casos de reasignación sexual o abortos. Y, en un nuevo ataque a los derechos trans, el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano, ha propuesto eliminar una regla que anteriormente protegía a personas transgénero sin hogar de la discriminación en refugios para personas sin hogar financiados por el gobierno.

El artículo del Washington Blade nota que un caso en que se espera que la Corte Suprema se pronuncie pronto “puede reafirmar décadas de casos legales defendiendo los derechos de la gente trans o descartarlos con un solo fallo”.

Por supuesto, el pueblo trans no sólo está bajo ataque por la administración de Trump.  No pasa ni una semana sin que aparezca la noticia de que otra persona trans, a menudo una mujer trans de color, sea asesinada.  El mismo día del anuncio de HHS, una reunión de 200 activistas trans y sus simpatizantes en el Washington Square Park de Nueva York, exigió el fin de los asesinatos de mujeres negras transgénero. Su protesta se centró en los asesinatos de tres mujeres trans negras que ocurrieron en el espacio de una semana hace menos de un mes. Claire Legato murió por heridas de disparo en Cleveland, Muhlaysia Booken fue asesinada en Dallas y a Michelle Washington la asesinaron en Filadelfia.

Un reporte de Reuters acerca de la protesta en Nueva York notó que “al menos 26 mujeres transgénero fueron reportadas asesinadas en 2018 y 29 en 2017” en los EUA. Pero la realidad es que muchos ataques contra mujeres trans, especialmente contra mujeres trans negras,  nunca son reportados o son mis-caracterizados por la policía.

Diferente historia en Cuba

Qué contraste tan escandaloso con las condiciones de vida de las personas trans en Cuba. No es que los enemigos de Cuba se preocupen por el bienestar de personas con diferente género, pero nunca han podido acusar a Cuba de violencia contra la gente cubana trans porque en este país socialista eso no existe.

Lo que la prensa capitalista de los EUA no le gusta publicar es exactamente esta diferencia tan drástica en el estado social, como también el hecho de que las personas trans en Cuba tengan acceso gratuito a atención médica de calidad, al igual que todos los cubanos, incluyendo también el acceso gratuito a la cirugía de reasignación de sexo. Para todas las mujeres cubanas, hay atención reproductiva gratuita, incluyendo el derecho a un aborto seguro.

Los logros de Cuba socialista en las áreas de atención médica, educación e igualdad de derechos para todos se han ganado a pesar de la continua hostilidad abierta del monstruo imperialista del norte. Los incansables esfuerzos de los Estados Unidos por re-colonizar Cuba, en particular mediante el bloqueo económico cada vez más estricto, han hecho que el progreso social sea más difícil, pero por eso aún más extraordinario.

Cuba necesita nuestra solidaridad. ¡Exija que los Estados Unidos pongan fin al bloqueo ilegal de la nación isleña! Y exprese su solidaridad con los manifestantes del Washington Square que corearon: “¡Las vidas de las personas trans negras valen!”