#QTPower #Noborders #Nowalls #justiceforall
They say: “Trump is very pro-LGBT for a Republican. He won’t eliminate federal nondiscrimination protections, and won’t attack gay marriage. Trump wants to protect LGBT people from oppressive foreign ideologies.”
We say: “Trump and his people are extremely and viciously anti-LGBTQ. They have already done great harm to Queer and Trans immigrants, Muslims, undocuqueer people, incarcerated folks, Black people, Native QT and Two-Spirit people through EOs on Muslim ban, border wall, pipelines. They’re denying millions of QT people access to health care by dismantling ACA. Neil Gorsuch, their supreme court nominee, will be a disaster for QT people. They are threatening voter ID laws to disenfranchise millions of already marginalized people. They want to spread Stop and Frisk everywhere and give police more power when they already are killing Black & Brown people every day. They want a so-called ‘religious exemption’ to nondiscrimination that is really a license for bigotry.Trump is reinvigorating and incentivizing a long-standing program that deputizes local authorities to enforce federal immigration law, regardless of Sanctuary City status. AND we are all here for each other in solidarity. We don’t just care about gender identity and sexual orientation. We care for one another as whole humans because our liberation is bound up together.”
Co-Sponsors:
#IfNotNow
ACLU Massachusetts
ANSWER Coalition
Black Lives Matter Cambridge
Black & Pink
Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians (BABAM)
Boston Feminists
Boston GLAD
Boston / North Shore / Worcester Antifa
Boston LGBTQIA Artist Alliance
Break the Chain
Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
Degenderettes
Food Not Bombs
Hispanic Black Gay Coalition
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
Make GE Pay
Massachusetts Trans Political Coalition (MTPC)
National Lawyers Guild MA
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Queer Asian Pacific-Islander Alliance
Queer Muslims of Boston
Same Boat Consulting
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
Student Immigrant Movement (SIM)
The Network / La Red
Tod@s Collaborative
United American Indians of New England (UAINE)
Unitarian Universalist Mass Action
USW Local 8751
Workers World Party
Long Messaging
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Trump claims that he wants to protect the LGBTQ community from oppression (!!!) But we know that the vicious, hateful, misogynistic, xenophobic, islamophobic, transphobic, anti-Black, ableist shitheads in the Trump administration have ALREADY moved quickly to attack all of our communities, exactly as they said they would. The unconstitutional #MuslimBan impacts millions of people including Queer and Trans people; border walls and militarization means more deaths in the desert, including QT deaths; expanding raids and detention and deportations affects all of us and especially increases the violence that Undocuqueer folks experience; the return of the Global Gag Rule undermines reproductive justice; attacks on Native sovereignty through reopening #KeystoneXL and #NoDAPL are attacks on all Native people including Two-Spirit people; threats to implement voter ID laws in all 50 states because Trump lost the popular vote carrying the threat of disenfranchisement for marginalized voters; Trump’s promise to take Stop and Frisk nationwide will target Black and Brown people in every community, and we know that Queer, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming Black and Brown people are among those MOST targeted by racist police violence; and, Trump is already reinvigorating and incentivizing a long-standing program that deputizes local authorities to enforce federal immigration law, regardless of Sanctuary City status.
And now Trump is trying to say he’s a friend to LGBTQ people, but we know he plans to sign an Executive Order that targets Queer and Trans people by allowing bigotry and discrimination under cover of ‘religious freedom!’ Trump, Pence, and Bannon plan to use this cover to roll back antidiscrimination protections that block all federal agencies and contractors from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This applies to 24,000 companies, 28 million workers, and about one-fifth of the U.S. workforce. They plan to mask it under the guise of “religious freedom,” but don’t be fooled – it will have nothing to do with getting closer to the divine, and everything to do with legitimizing hatred and discrimination. Even if we create enough pressure this week to block this, Trump nominated a Supreme Court justice that would be a disaster to queer people, supports North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill” (HB2), and has said he’ll sign the so-called First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). The rise to power of Trump and the people around him has ALREADY had brutal implications for Queer and Trans folks, especially Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC) and Undocuqueer people.
Let’s be clear: the Trump administration is already attacking Queer and Trans people!
#MuslimBan This xenophobic, islamophobic, white supremacist Executive Order, like the rest of Trump’s immigration policy, means increased detention and deportation of Queer and Trans folks, especially QT muslims and POC.
The Border Wall will mean that more QT folks seeking asylum will die while crossing the border, because an even more militarized wall means that many migrants are forced to cross in ever more difficult and dangerous areas, leading to higher death rates. See http://nomoredeaths.org.
Detention and deportation: a rapid and vast increase in the already massive system of detention and deportations means more raids at workplaces, homes, and in the streets, more checkpoints in border states and throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of lives disrupted every year; it means more QT immigrants will suffer brutal conditions in detention centers. See http://detentionwatchnetwork.org.
Abandoning nondiscrimination and I.D. policies. Soon we expect to see the Trump administration roll back federal nondiscrimination policies that will impact QT folks at every level of our lives, from employment and housing to health care, from I.D. gender marker policies to immigration status, and beyond.
We need to take these streets and stay in these streets in solidarity with all of the communities that are most targeted! We’re here for Black, Muslim, Native, Immigrant, Queer, Disabled, Women, POC communities, and for all those who live at the intersections of many of these communities at the same time! We are here for each other, because our liberation is bound up together. We see each other and we have got each other’s backs.
We see that Trump wants to send the feds to Chitown and start a National Stop and Frisk; we see these racist police brutalizing Black, Brown, Queer and Trans people and protestors every day; we see racist cops still out here killing Black people. None of us are free until all of us are free! If we don’t ALL get it: #SHUTITDOWN.
We also need to keep advocating for trans and queer rights at the state level.
We need to protect our progress on public accommodations. We won a major victory last year, and non-discrimination in public accommodations for trans people is now law in MA. However, our opposition has placed a ballot question on the 2018 ballot to overturn this. It should never be possible for a majority to vote down a minority’s rights, but it could happen, and it would be devastating to future trans rights efforts in other states, where trans people are in still more danger.
We need to make sure guidelines on trans healthcare are enforced. Established law demands healthcare coverage for trans people, but a lot of advocacy still needs to be done to let trans people know their healthcare rights, and to teach insurers that denying gender transition procedures as “cosmetic” will always cost them.
We need to make conversion therapy illegal in MA. Conversion therapy for queer and trans people is legal in MA, even on minors. The state legislature is pushing a bill right now to end this horrific and deadly practice. We need to let them know that we have their backs as they move forward, we’ll push them if they retreat, and we’ll keep laying the groundwork for deeper public understanding that this practice is a human rights crisis.
We all know that the federal government may pass discriminatory policies, and we may not be able to block them all. Until this government ends, we need to remain vigilant and tell our state government what they can do to protect us here in MA whenever we see an opening.
