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The attacks on trans people (and indeed on all groups targeted by this dictatorship) is a calculated attempt at erasure and part of a broader policy of dehumanization to justify present and future crimes. Crimes against their humanity, our humanity, your humanity.

The flaw in their plan is that erasure isn’t possible if we loudly proclaim the opposite, and force them to clumsily attempt the repression they hoped to do out  of sight. 

That is what SJ Johnson did when they helped hang a trans flag from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. SJ, a Park Ranger at Yosemite, was fired for their role in action, an obvious retaliation for choosing to protest Trump’s attack on trans people. The retaliation may not stop there, criminal charges are being considered as well.

That is a steep price to pay, and no doubt it is meant to chill any future similar protest. But it carries an unintended consequence as well, it stops their attempts at the erasure of trans people. Erasure isn’t possible when protest brings the targets to the foreground.

When that flag was hung, they weren’t proclaiming an ideology, political goal, or movement. They were announcing their existence and refusal to participate in erasing it.

They were telling the world that if they were going to be attacked for who they are as people it would have to be done openly in public with the world watching. It was an unmistakable invitation to us all to stand in solidarity and fight back, to not let the inevitable retaliation go unanswered. It showed us that this reckless hatred can be stopped.

The choice is yours.

Two barkery owners were found guilty of “concealing and harboring” immigrants without documentation in a Texas Federal Court on 8/14/25. They face up to 10 years in prison. 

Their lawyer noted that they were not being covert or deceptive in employing the immigrants. So why were they prosecuted so vigorously? Why would the feds choose to prosecute two legal immigrants who owned a Mexican bakery for employing undocumented workers? The racist intent is obvious.

More broadly they are doing this to frighten and freeze us in place. They need to stop to a rising tide of anger becoming an organized resistance to their nascent authoritarian regime before it even truly starts. They know that if a movement emerges they are finished. They need those that they are targeted to cower. They need those who aren’t targeted, but see and understand what is going on, to pretend like it isn’t happening. They know how much power we have and they fear it.

They want you to forget that you can do something about it, that you don’t have to accept it. They want you to hope that if you do what they say that it will mitigate your risk. They want you to deny knowing that kowtowing won’t help at all.

Our strength lies in the reality that there are too many of us to repress all at once. Their power is significant and brutal, but it declines sharply the more of us are willing to defy it. Publicly defy it, show others what can be done, and dare them to dream of a world without their failure as human beings.

Leonardo Baez and Nora Avila-Guel may have just been bakers employing workers and did not ask for any of this, but the actions of the US government have made them heroes. Don’t let anyone forget it.

Trump’s sudden attacks on poor and unhoused people in Washington DC, with his use of FBI agents and other Federal law enforcement officers is surprising in that it isn’t rooted in any emerging crisis that threatens elite interests. But past that it should surprise no one. This is what fascist governments do, manufacture a pretext for a takeover of one city, that will move on to other cities, and eventually highjacking our very lives our lives.

Trump will continue to use the national guard as much as possible as he edges ever closer to using the standing military against us. Boots on the ground in your neighborhood. They want us to get used to it, so when the time comes start murdering people we will go about our day in constant fear and pretending that everything is fine.

The National Guard in LA. The National Guard in DC. The National Guard in streets of your city. Then the Army under his command. In neighborhoods where brown, queer, and centers of resistance reside. They are already disappearing people off the streets. How long before they just massacre protestors?

What are you going to do about it? Standing in place isn’t an option.

You are taught that your country is a “shining city on a hill”. That is an example of freedom, wealth, and security. But everyday you have less of everything and instead possess a growing sense of oppression, desperation, and ruin. When you complain that the truth is killing you, they say it’s your fault for looking. Returning to bondage is the only way to live free.

Imagine defending a history of genocide, white supremacy, and exploitation with a paper thin facade of manifest destiny and divinity. If you refuse… there are consequences. As fascism’s malignancy grows into its own, the dangers of resistance are increasingly brutal and dangerous.

So you give them your life, the lives of your children, and the wealth of your labor willingly. You sacrifice to a ruling class that only cares about what they can extract from you for their momentary opulence. They are not the leaders they pretend to be. They know that there is no real future in their world, but they just don’t care so long as it means a few more minutes of power and privilege.

Imagine giving reverence to your own exploitation. Striving to believe that you are doing it for your family and community; but knowing that it is a lie. Repressing the reality that you are disposable, a mark in a confidence game.

But you do have a choice. It is the one thing they fear. The one thing that they have no real protection against. You can stop believing their lies, cease obeying their commands, and join in the fight to end their rule.

You can return to yourself, and decide to really live free, instead of clinging to their dying world. It is dangerous to do; but when you understand that they have already taken your life and you can either wait for your own murder or fight to take it back, it is the only choice.

We do not abandon each other.

In 2024 when anti-trans themed commercials were splashed across prime-time, sporting events, and local newscasts it represented the culmination of an ultimate failure of liberal politics to build a movement with real solidarity that would defend us against the attacks of the right.

Anti-trans politics have been a rising tide within the right for years, and the Democratic Party failed to answer those attacks in a meaningful way, and so the attacks gained traction. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s re-election, many party “strategists” are rushing to throw trans people under the wheels of so-called pragmatism, arguing that we had to secede some ground to the right if their party was to remain in the mainstream, win elections, and reverse the damage that has been done.

It is repugnant. Those that push it are showing us who they really are, an enemy. A slower version the voracious hatred of the other party.

Building coalitions and alliances means compromise; but not on the subject of who is human and deserving of human rights. To do so is not only morally wrong, it is a losing strategy.

Immigration is a stunning example of when we do not articulate and push for solidarity, we end up in a downward spiral of capitulation and powerlessness. 

For decades Democrats have tried to play tough on immigration to undercut Republican electoral gains on the issue. Obama was reviled by immigration activists as the “Deporter and Chief” because that administration was determined to beat the Republicans at this cruel game. That led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Joe Biden did the same thing during his administration. Look at where we are now. Sacrificing others who have no choice in their sacrifice wins us nothing, and only advances the cause of cruelty.

We cannot ever back away from defending the basic humanity and right to exist of any one of us because of who we are. There is a reason why after the Holocaust was ended and exposed a maxim of “never again,” was adopted.

Those who are attacked by fascism as it rises to power are groups that have always been marginalized and discriminated against. They, more than those of us who are assigned a more privileged class, are intimately familiar with how the ruling classes oppress and exploit everyone else. Marginalized people have lived with oppression constantly, and they have defended themselves, fought back, and won. All of us are stronger with them by our side. Solidarity not only builds power through numbers, it builds it by adding new perspectives and ideas on how to fight in this crisis.

It gives us back what the forces of oppression and hatred have stolen from us, ourselves.

We do not abandon each other.

The recent “peaceful” street protests were heartening in that they show that there are millions of people willing to do something. But make no mistake, they had no effect on the Trump Administration’s advancement of authoritarian government. They did nothing to stop ICE raids, gutting essential health and safety infrastructure, the attacks on LGBTQ+ (especially trans people), and the removal of any accountabiluty. Nothing.

Protest that involves the public letting their voices be heard means little when dealing with a movement and government that has no shame or morality.

The only way to hold authoritarians accountable is to take away their staged appearance of efficiency and inevitability. That means direct action. Even the smallest, most uncoordinated action against this machine makes a difference; especially when those around us can see it. When others can see it, they might understand that they can take action too.

Enough small actions can mean that the efficiency of the machine lessens, cracks appear in the facade of authority, and others begin to directly resist too. When we band together and coordinate and work together on our actions the consequences for the state exponentially rise.

As will the backlash against those that choose to fight back. This is risky, but when we honestly reflect on our choices, and the inevitable catastrophe that will result if we don’t take action, there is only one way forward.

Our enemies are bent on our capitulation and silence. Do not let them have it. They want to claim the word freedom and make it just another tool of their oppression. Don’t let them have it, freedom stands in direct opposition to their oppression, show the world what that means.

Refuse. Resist. Become ungovernable.

The powerful, their servants, & those desperately clinging to the lie of American exceptionalism don’t want you to realize that you have a choice.

If you want a world without the hatred and violence required to maintain the power and privilege of a few, want to live without the hopeless descent into extinction, and desire a culture free of control and oppression; you can choose to reject it.

You can choose what that looks like for you. What do you believe? Who do you stand with? What you are willing to do to fight back? It’s up to you.

It’s not always an easy choice. But life is complicated, impermanent, and uncertain anyway. We do not get a choice about the results once we start fighting back. We don’t know how others will react to our decision. But all that doesn’t negate that fact that we are free to choose.

Authoritarians, religious fanatics, and those that choose to believe the lie can never take that away. So they want us to forget, or even better, never realize we have a choice in the first place. They present a mask of inevitability so that you will continue to choose to support the theft of our wealth while it kills you and everything you love.

Once you realize that you have a choice, make it, and begin to act on it; you are free of them. You are living a life based on your terms not theirs. If this sounds dangerous, it is. That is the price of freedom, living dangerously. It is beautiful.