Feb. 12 — Two actions were held in New Orleans against the latest attacks on LGBTQ+ people and other oppressed workers. These attacks locally are being spearheaded by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry — who is running for governor — but the attacks are nationally coordinated and have been blessed by Trump.

Landry met with other Republican attorneys general in the “Forbes Travel Guide verified luxury” Roosevelt Hotel. Down on the street, the Louisiana Abortion Rights Actions Committee (LARAC) held a news conference to expose oil profiteer Landry, who has used his office to block Medicaid expansion, limit abortion rights, and much more. His gubernatorial campaign comes from the playbook of David Duke, who was rejected by Louisiana voters in 1992. Currently, Landry is stoking hatred against queer and trans people with attempted library book bans.

Those who spoke and gathered at the LARAC press conference represent the diversity of South Louisiana: Black, white, immigrant, non-immigrant — all coming from the multinational working class. By contrast, when Landry recently appeared in the Legislature with the astroturf “concerned parents” group the St. Tammany Parish Library Accountability Project — which is allied with Republican Party organizations — everyone who stood at the podium with him was white.

LARAC is building toward a March 5 International Working Women’s Day Emergency March.

Members of the trans rights organization Real Name Campaign NOLA participated in the news conference and then led the crowd in a militant march. Their flyer read, “Stop Landry’s Book Ban!”

With chants like “2,4,6,8, stop the book bans in our state,” they took over part of busy Canal Street. This is significant given that crowds were gearing up for a Mardi Gras parade on the street (Mardi Gras and other tourism are a backbone of the city’s economy). They ended their march at the main library branch in the Central Business District.

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On Feb. 6, hundreds of trans people and supporters flooded the Capitol in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, ahead of right-wing Gov. Kevin Stitt’s state of the state address and the opening of the state’s legislative session, where several anti-trans bills are pending. 

Chanting “Trans lives matter” and “This is our house,” members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies gave a forceful response to the anti-trans panic that has escalated to unprecedented levels in the past year. 

Since Jan. 1, nearly 300 anti-trans laws have been proposed in statehouses across the U.S. Several have already been adopted, including a total ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth in Utah.

In early 2022, proposed laws mainly focused on banning trans youth from using school restrooms or playing sports. Now, just a year later, many states are advocating outright bans on gender-affirming health care for trans people – youth and adults alike – and so-called drag bans that would make it illegal for trans people to speak, perform or live publicly in any capacity.

Following the example of Texas, several states have called for measures to punish parents, doctors, and teachers who support trans youth and even to take kids away from supportive parents. Thousands of families of trans youth are pulling up stakes to flee to safer states. Many others don’t have that option.

Civil rights attorney and trans activist Chase Strangio summed it up in a Twitter post Feb. 6: “The following states are closing to banning – and in some cases criminalizing and deeming child abuse — medical care for trans adolescents: MS, TN, SD, ND, WY, ID, WV, OK, MO, MT, ID. The following states have: AR, AL, UT, TX. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the media coverage?”

Nor is the danger confined to the legal arena. From California to New York, drag shows and other queer events have been besieged by right-wing protests, including openly white supremacist and fascist groups like the Proud Boys, sometimes armed. 

In almost every case, these hate groups have been met by far larger crowds of community defenders. But the ultra-right has the manufactured outrage of politicians and corporate media at its beck and call.

The new ‘build that wall’

In 2016, billionaire oligarch and demagogue Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency around the slogan “build that wall” – a call to not only ban refugees and migrants from entering the U.S. but to use them as a scapegoat for all the ills of capitalism.

On Jan. 31, Trump released a video announcing what his 2024 campaign slogan will be: trans genocide.

The Advocate reported on Feb. 1: “Posted on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called access to gender-affirming care ‘child abuse’ and ‘child sexual mutilation.’ The former president … said he’d forbid government agencies from promoting ‘the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.’

“In the pledge, Trump said he’d cut off federal funding to doctors and health care groups providing gender-affirming care to minors. He also said that if teachers or school officials ‘suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body,’ then ‘they will be faced with severe consequences including potential civil rights violations.’

“Trump said that his administration would push for ‘positive education about the nuclear family…’ 

He added, “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

Trump’s main opponent for the Republican nomination in 2024 may be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is equally bigoted against trans people. DeSantis enacted the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibiting discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in schools, banned Medicaid patients from accessing gender-affirming care, and has attacked teaching the truth of U.S. history regarding slavery, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and more. 

Florida teachers have been banned from letting students read books in their classrooms until they have been vetted to remove anything pertinent to Black history, women’s liberation, and LGBTQ+ lives.

Every week sees new cases of slander meant to manufacture outrage against trans people and medical providers, like the case of Christynne Lili Wrene Wood in Santee, a San Diego suburb. Wood, a retired African American city worker and trans woman, was thrust into the center of a national hate campaign and local lynch-mob atmosphere for using the women’s changing room at the local YMCA. The campaign against her was fueled by the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News. 

In a statement expressing solidarity with Ms. Wood, San Diego LGBTQ+ organizations said: “It is also important to recognize the racial implications of this incident – a white woman claiming the mere sight of a Black woman’s body as threatening is a dangerous perpetuation of racism. The reality of anti-Black racism in this country continues to be a pervasive and unavoidable aspect of our American culture, and contributes to the consistent danger that Black people – particularly Black transgender women – face every day.”

Christian nationalist groups targeting Ms. Wood are mobilizing on Feb. 8 to have the Santee City Council shut down the YMCA for allowing trans people to use its facilities. Counter-protesters are mobilizing in support of trans lives.

Join actions in D.C. March 31-April 1

Actions like the one in Oklahoma City are needed – more of them, many more – in every state capitol coast-to-coast. And those actions must grow with solidarity from organized labor, communities fighting racist police brutality, and the censorship of Black history in schools, women’s rights, and anti-war organizations.

An important call to action has been issued by the Trans Radical Activist Network for a national mobilization in Washington, D.C., on March 31 and April 1. TRAN has retitled the Trans Day of Visibility on March 31 as the Trans Day of Vengeance.

The actions in Washington can be an important first step in organizing a nationwide fightback movement. Visit TRAN or Struggle-La Lucha in the coming weeks for details about the events and how to get involved.

The attack on trans lives has escalated into a crisis, and no one can predict the outcome. There is no time to wait for elections that may or may not swing toward one party or another, especially when the Democratic Party’s national leadership and President Biden have shown themselves incapable and unwilling to take the growing threat seriously. 

Capitalist rule, the power of bosses over the workers and oppressed, is built on a foundation of divide and conquer – setting one group of workers against another. Fascism as a movement is divide-and-conquer in its most extreme form. 

Today, trans people in the U.S. are on the front line. The history of fascist movements in the 20th century provides ample proof that when one group is targeted for extermination if the working class does not rise to the challenge, it only opens the door for the next wave of repression. 

After trans people, other members of the LGBTQ+ community, the women’s movement, Black and Brown communities already besieged by racist cops, and the labor movement will be among the next targets.

An injury to one is an injury to all. It’s time for the working class to mobilize to stop the attacks on trans people.

The members of Women in Struggle/Mujeres en Lucha, both in Puerto Rico and in the United States, stand in solidarity with our compañera Lorena Guadalupe Peña Mendoza, president of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF-FDIM), in the face of the outrageous attack by the government of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

We repudiate and denounce before the international community the political persecution of Lorena Peña at the hands of the Salvadoran government for alleged “embezzlement.” It is despicable that Bukele wants to submit her to a civil trial based on a rigged process against her.

The reason for this trial seems more like a vendetta against our compañera because of her long record in favor of true justice for the Salvadoran people and women and for being part of the opposition to the current government.

A leader of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) who participated in the peace negotiations that concluded with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, Lorena Peña was the third woman in Salvadoran history to preside over the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2015. Since 2016 she has been the president of the WIDF-FDIM, unanimously elected at our World Congress held in Bogotá, Colombia. 

We urge the international community to join this denunciation, endorsing it or writing their own messages with the hashtags #SolidaridadConLorena and #FdimAmericaConLorena.

On Sunday, Jan. 22, a webinar was held on “What we can learn from Cuba’s ‘code of freedom’ for families.” The people of socialist Cuba voted by a two-thirds margin for the new Code of Families on Sept. 25. The vote was won after three years of democratic discussion and education at all levels of society.

The new code enshrines in law the rights of LGBTQ+ people and women in marriage and adoption. It changes the fundamental relationship between parents and children to one based on responsibilities and rights. It elevates chosen families to the same status as blood families. It protects the rights and dignity of elders and people with disabilities. It embraces the rights that are being stripped away from people in the U.S. or that we never had at all.

Cuba is under siege from the U.S. blockade, which has been condemned by the United Nations for 30 years, a siege tightened by Trump and now maintained by Biden.

The panel will discuss:

• How was Cuba able to accomplish this historic transformation of families while coping with the U.S. blockade against Cuba, which has continued unabated during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent climate-change catastrophes?
  
• Why is the U.S. media silent about this unprecedented accomplishment?
  
• What can we learn from Cuba’s experience building solidarity at a time when rights for LGBTQ+ people, reproductive care, equality for chosen families, as well as respect for youth, elders, and the disabled are under vicious attack by the capitalist class, its political parties and violent white supremacist groups?

Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), will present a message in the webinar panel. Some of the other speakers will include Berta Joubert-Ceci for Women In Struggle / Mujeres En Lucha; Cheryl LaBash, co-chair of National Network on Cuba; Gloria Verdieu from Prisoners Solidarity Committee; Mahtowin Munro from United American Indians of New England; Melinda Butterfield, a Struggle-La Lucha co-editor; and Ellie McCrow from Pratt Workers United. There will be opportunities to address questions to the speakers following the panel presentations.

The webinar is sponsored by Women In Struggle / Mujeres En Lucha, a member of Women’s International Democratic Federation.

Jan. 22, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. It was a hard-fought victory made possible by the militant struggles of the women’s, LGBTQ2S and Black liberation movements.

The far-right U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe last year – a brutal blow against the rights of women and other people who can become pregnant, and against bodily autonomy for trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming and intersex people. Abortion is now effectively banned in at least 14 states, with more expected this year. Access to facilities that perform the procedure is absent even in many states where abortion technically remains legal.

Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha is part of the fight to restore and expand access to abortion and all reproductive rights, including the right to raise healthy children with access to food, shelter, education and healthcare. We salute the work of the Louisiana Abortion Rights Action Committee and others organizing to restore abortion rights. 

Pictured above, a LARAC protest in New Orleans on Sept. 10, 2022. Read more: tinyurl.com/yc5zaff5.

In September, Serena Brennerman, a 16-year-old white trans woman, was found drowned in Salem, Oregon. Serena’s death was ruled a suicide by the police. But her friends and community don’t believe it. She was physically harassed by bigots in her school for a long time. Some of this violence was even captured on video. Whether Serena was murdered or took her own life, she was a victim of the trans panic being pushed by the rich and powerful and embraced by violent neo-Nazis and TERFs.

There’s no ambiguity about the murders of Semaj Billingslea, a Black trans man, who was shot to death in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sept. 21, or Mya Allen, a Black trans woman, who was murdered on Aug. 29 in Milwaukee. Nearly three dozen trans people have been killed so far this year, most of them people of color, and that’s only counting those who were correctly gendered and identified.

There’s a war against trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people in this country. It’s not new. But it has escalated to unprecedented heights in the last year and is spilling over into the whole LGBTQ2S community and those who support us. 

Doctors and children’s hospitals are threatened with bombings. Neo-Nazis shut down drag events, often aided by local cops. Parents are threatened with prosecution for supporting their trans kids. We are increasingly threatened and accosted on the street, in stores, on public transportation, with slurs and threats.

What are the supposed friends of the LGBTQ+ community in Washington doing to stop this? Not a damn thing. They tell us to vote for them, the way they told women to vote for them before standing aside and letting abortion rights be stripped away. Meanwhile, alleged progressives like Hillary Clinton and the New York Times are spouting TERF rhetoric and dismissing trans rights. 

The Biden administration and Congress have made it crystal clear that their priority is funding wars for empire on the other side of the world, not protecting the rights of people here.

It’s painful to watch. But we are not powerless.

On Sept. 25 something incredibly important happened just 90 miles from U.S. shores. After three years of democratic discussion and education at all levels of society, the people of socialist Cuba voted by a two-thirds margin for a new Code of Families. It enshrines in law the rights of queers, trans people and women in marriage and adoption. It changes the fundamental relationship between parents and children to one based on responsibilities and rights. It elevates chosen families to the same status as blood families. It embraces the rights that are being stripped away from us or that we never had at all.

In the U.S. media this was reduced to a vote for gay marriage. The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN and the rest don’t want people in this country to know what Cuba’s Code of Families is, or how it was achieved. They especially don’t want the trans and LGBTQ+ community to know, because people here might realize that we need to fight for what Cuba has: free health care, including gender-affirming care, free education, including comprehensive sex education, the right to housing and work and dignity for all.

There’s an old liberal saying from the 1960s that those who make reform impossible make revolution inevitable. Today’s liberals don’t mention that much, because it’s a damning indictment of their own inaction and complacency. 

Cuba made a revolution to get out from under the thumb of the U.S. empire. Washington has been punishing Cuba ever since. Cuba has been subject to a 60-year economic blockade on trade, medicine, food and more. Trump tightened the blockade and Biden has kept his hateful measures in place despite the pandemic and climate collapse.

One of the most hateful and destructive policies of the U.S. empire is using the rights of trans people, LGBTQ+ people and women as an excuse to attack other countries around the world in its wars for profit. It’s so obvious right now, as our own limited rights are being viciously stripped away. 

We need to rely on ourselves, not corporate-sponsored politicians, to fight for our rights. We need to build alliances with other people here and around the world who are fighting for their rights and against the U.S. empire. Trans people who are on the front line of so much abuse and bigotry can play a leading role in building a revolutionary movement here. Just look at how trans and other queer workers at Starbucks and Amazon have become an incredible force for organizing unions.

Bigots say get back, we say fight back! Protect trans kids! Unblock Cuba!

New Orleans, Sept. 10 — Today the Louisiana Abortion Rights Action Committee held a demonstration and march downtown. Signs and hand-outs read, “Raise the wages, lower the rent, abortion access now,” highlighting the intersection of all these issues affecting poor and working people. Abortion access is a working-class issue.

The action was endorsed by Workers Voice Socialist Movement, Socialist Unity Party, Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha, and Louisiana Workers Councils.

Speakers began with addresses outside the Louisiana Supreme Court building on Royal Street.

Gavrielle Gemma of the WVSM said that “there is a right-wing movement that wants to protect the accumulation of vast wealth and income inequality. They see [this moment] as an opportunity to take away everything—from workers, from women, from everybody, just so they can make profits. 

“Every movement has a beginning and a time when it seems as if it is not strong. But the people are strong. Vote for whoever you want; it won’t change the situation. Organize. People fighting back will change the situation.”

After the talks, the crowd began marching through the French Quarter, chanting, “Not the church, not the state, rich men won’t decide our fate” and “Abortion is health care.” Only a couple of onlookers were openly hostile. Overwhelmingly, the service industry workers and even some tourists seemed receptive. Servers and kitchen staff came out of the restaurants, took fliers, and pumped their fists.

For around 10 minutes, the marchers blocked one of the most commercially important intersections on Bourbon Street. Workers from the nearby queer bars came down to see what was going on, and some joined in the chants.

Over a megaphone, one organizer said: “If you’re wondering why we’re stopping traffic, the reason is that our lives—our right to exist with bodily autonomy, free from oppression, free from violence—is under attack! And whether you’re out there working or drinking, you are involved! Join us! Take a flier!”

Service workers’ power

In 2019, visitors to New Orleans spent $10.05 billion, making tourism and the service sector that it relies on a driver of the city’s economy. The French Quarter is the heart of that. This means that the workers here have tremendous power. Women make up 57% of New Orleans’ low-paid hospitality workforce. If workers–especially women and gender-oppressed people–collectively decide to shut the city down, we can stop the flow of cash to the bosses and force them to meet our demands.

The smallest direct action — like blocking Bourbon Street for a few minutes — contains within it the seeds of bigger collective action. On Saturday, the workers in the bars and restaurants heard the message and pumped their fists. One day, what if they all walk out?

There should be no doubt that the specter of the George Floyd Summer is fresh on the minds of the ruling class and all their lackeys in the state.

And that radical moment contained within itself yet more seeds and echoes of the urban rebellions that shook this country after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. It was the rebellions of the people that consolidated the gains of the Civil Rights era.

Or take contemporary India. That country is very different from the U.S. But it’s still worth thinking about the fact that, for several years in a row, Indian workers (including farm laborers) have carried out possibly the biggest general strikes in history—even for a day. 

By shutting down whole sectors of the economy, the farmers defeated fascist Modi’s anti-farmer legislation. We have much to learn from the working class of India.

For now, the workers of New Orleans and the U.S. are a sleeping giant. But if we get organized, we can have the power. That’s what the ruling class and their fascist movement fear.

Abortion is health care. And if we don’t get it, shut it down! 

On Sept. 3, abortion rights activists mobilized to counter a monthly protest of the Planned Parenthood Manhattan Health Center by anti-abortion forces. In August, the New York Police Department had attacked the clinic defenders, arresting five. New York City for Abortion Rights organizes the monthly clinic defense. 

The anti-abortion group Witness for Life is based at the nearby Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on the Lower East Side. Clinic defenders began the day with a picket outside the church, then dispatched activists to provide support to Planned Parenthood escorts at the clinic and blockade nearby intersections to intercept roving gangs of anti-woman bigots.

Outside the clinic, dozens of abortion rights defenders held rainbow umbrellas and a banner that said “Your body, your choice” to block the chanting anti-abortionists.

All attempts to invade the clinic or stop patients from entering were successfully blocked. One entering patient aptly gave the middle finger to the bigots.

Comically, one of the anti-abortion goons wore a red MAGA hat and walked outside the clinic chanting, “Make America great again.” His cohorts made him change his hat and change his chant halfway through their stunt since it too clearly exposed their far-right allegiances.

Provocations continued after the “pro-life” group left the clinic. When abortion rights supporters held a wrap-up rally outside the church, a driver attempted to assault them with their vehicle. Then bigots threw eggs from the roof of a building across the street; they only succeeded in egging the SUV of one of their supporters.

Naturally, the NYPD was nowhere to be seen when these attacks on abortion rights activists took place.

The Supreme Court coup that overturned Roe v. Wade has emboldened the ultra-right against the rights of women, trans people, people of color, and all workers. Even in a pro-choice, “blue” state like New York, the fascists are trying to advance. 

The clinic defenders – multigenerational, people of color and white, queer and trans – show that only the workers and oppressed will stop their advance, not the cops or politicians.

For info on upcoming clinic defense actions, follow NYC for Abortion Rights on Twitter.

August 1 — Yesterday, 200 people took to the streets to fight for abortion rights, childcare, healthcare, and more. The streets rang with rage against racist, sexist, anti-worker Attorney General Jeff Landry who, in service to his millionaire backers, is heading a right-wing campaign to rip away the rights of women and all other gender-oppressed people capable of pregnancy.

This was the latest protest in the ongoing fightback against the Louisiana abortion ban. Recent protesters in Indiana and Georgia also engaged in militant action against the right wing, with the Indiana protesters shutting down the state legislature.

We need to keep the fight up! In order to win back abortion rights – and more – we have to build a movement like the one that won Roe v. Wade, to begin with. To be part of building this movement, contact us at Louisiana4AbortionRights@gmail.com.

Washington, D.C. – Thousands of mostly young women marched in pouring rain from 14th and I Streets to the White House July 9 as part of the “Summer of Rage” called by the Women’s March. When the group reached the White House, a sea of green bandanas with “Bans Off Our Bodies” written on them were tied to the White House fence.  

In defiance of park rules at Lafayette Square, hundreds of protesters sat down in front of the White House preparing for arrest. While no arrests were made, the charge against the Biden administration was very clear: Not enough is being done to protect abortion rights.  

The group is calling for President Joe Biden to declare a national emergency which would provide additional funds for abortion and health care. This includes access to abortion pills and the leasing of federal land to abortion providers.

Many protesters proclaimed that the White House and mainstream Democratic Party politicians are not doing enough and that “we cannot wait until the elections.”

On July 8, protesters organized by the Louisiana Abortion Rights Action Committee took over the streets in front of the Civil District Court in New Orleans where a hearing about Louisana’s anti-abortion “trigger laws” was being heard.

Sally Jane Black from LARAC proclaimed at the protest: “We’re not going to let the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision stand! The original Roe v. Wade was won in the streets with a mass movement. We shut it down this morning to show that we mean business and that they cannot continue like this.”  

Black emphasized that their battle was connected to the fight against racism and for workers’ rights.

LARAC is one of several organizations, including the Workers Voice Socialist Movement and Socialist Unity Party, calling for a national week of civil disobedience from Sept. 18-24. The Louisiana protest represents the mounting resistance taking place across the country.  

On June 24, thousands of protesters in Phoenix, Arizona, were met with riot police firing tear gas outside the State Capitol. In defiance, protesters returned on July 8, despite the erection of razor wire fences.   

The battle has just begun.