Essentially, there have been two reactions over on grad today:
- I didn’t vote, neither of the candidates were going to stop the war in the Gaza Strip, therefore, there could be no good outcome for the US, therefore I can’t be held accountable
- I voted for a third party, which Republicans will have to acknowledge and respect
I’m reading/skimming the letter now, and while I’m definitely not going to read the whole thing (good grief that sucker is long), what I am reading, I agree with quite enthusiastically. Especially the parts about how everyone needs to be concerned about injustice, not just the people it directly affects, and how nonviolent protests that break a law to demonstrate that the law is unjust can be effective.
Yet still, somehow, politically motivated murder remains what Drag was pretty explicitly calling for when Drag said “we need to be prepared to kill them”, and what Dr. King was pretty explicitly talking about not doing when he said “We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: ‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?’ ‘Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?’”, and something I’m pretty expicitly still not on board with.
Expand your horizons. Sometimes reading long things is worth it
Dr. King was a firm believer in non-violence, true. His non-violence was counter-balanced by MalcomX and the Black Panthers. The powers in charge had to choose.
Drag was not stating that people should go out and murder their neighbors. Drag was saying that, in resistance to fascists that want to murder LGBTQ+ people, moderates and centrists have proven again that they are not allies to the oppressed (like Dr. King stated just over 60 years ago) and will likely be among those collaborating with the oppressors in order to maintain a new status quo.
While I don’t agree with violence in most cases, I’m not trans and what we’re seeing is not most cases - it’s not even The South under Jim Crow. It is much, much worse. I don’t see the country isn’t coming back from this, even if they implement only a fraction of what they have stated that they want - the courts are not correctable through any political action in the lifetime of anyone currently living. The highest court in the country that can override all others has signaled that they would like to revisit decisions allowing same-sex and inter-racial marriage as well as transforming the presidential office into a kingship.
LGBTQ+ people who want to live are going to have no choice but to use violence to defend themselves. Because, as drag pointed out, they have been betrayed by both moderates/centrists AND far-left anti-electoralists/accelerationists who were overjoyed to sacrifice them for their political ends. Neither can be counted on as allies.
LGBTQ+ people are already dying because of this election: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/the-trevor-project-shares-post-election-day-crisis-contact-volume-data/
Mmm, that link doesn’t say what you say it says. All it says is that The Trevor Project has gotten an increased call volume about election-related things after Trump won the presidency – what a shock. It does not mention anything at all apart from this, even the things I would have expected it to mention, like how many of the new callers were contemplating ending their own lives.
Additionally, I’m not sure how Drag could have made it more clear what Drag wants us to do about the fact that moderates are not our allies. And I’m not sure how much more clear I can make it that I still don’t really want to commit a felony in the name of politics. Punching people in the face, sure, fine. Pepper spray, why not. But I don’t like murdering people in the streets, especially not people whose only crime is being white, uneducated, and afraid of anything they don’t understand. Or just more scared of the police than they are of the rebels.
Lastly, I’m truly shocked by how easily you can insist that you think politically motivated violence is bad and not something that someone like Drag would advocate for and insinuate it is necessary in the same breath. You’ve been doing it this whole conversation, but you actually said both things that time.