We Are Everywhere: A Trans Response to Christian Nationalists
https://kolektiva.media/download/videos/639994f4-1282-4008-9de9-7829accf7f55-480.mp4 Outline:
S: This is Sprout
C: and this is Charyan, and we are the hosts of Molotov Now!, on The Channel Zero Podcast Network, thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast.
S: if you like what we do here and want to support it, you can do that by going to linktr.ee/al1312 and clicking donate, or scrolling to the bottom for Patreon.
C: It’s been another little while since we have posted an episode, and we would like to apologize for that. We appreciate our listeners greatly and want to provide you all with relevant news and updates from Aberdeen and Radical Scenes in general. But life happens, and this podcast doesn’t exactly always take priority, hope you understand.
S: Because of ongoing changes in both of our personal lives the next couple episodes may be a bit sporadic. But we aren’t going anywhere, and will be posting as often as we can. Again, we appreciate your understanding at this time. With that lets get into what were talking about today.
C: Do we have a guest?
S: Yeah, I caught up with Honey, an organizer who recently fled a red state, fae have been doing what fae can to create queer & trans community, safe spaces, along the way. This spring, Fae and another trans organizer put together the Disco at the Moral Panic action, a celebration in protest of the fascist Don’t Mess with Our Kids! rally in Olympia, Washington.
C: Oh cool, what did y’all talk about?
S: Well, we get a report back of the event, what went into it, what came out of it, etc. We also delve into the far right wave of Christian Fascism happening right now, and the recent Million Women’s March on Washington DC. They ended up getting tens of thousands, according to an article by By Mike Hixenbaugh on NBCnews.com, the only outlet that seemed to cover the event at all. The interview was recorded before the march which occurred on the 12th of October, and we would love to talk to anyone invoked in any counter protesting against this march.
All this and more coming up soon after our audio newsletter, and radical news roundup, but first a message from our sponsor:
https://sabotmedia.noblogs.org/files/2024/10/12-Rules-for-WHAT-Jingle-1.mp4 The Communique Volume 15:
To read in full click here
From Sabotage Noise Productions:
In Bremerton:
At The Chuck – 333 Callow Ave:
In Chicago:
Aberdeen City Council attempting to build better, together
After the chaos of this summer’s unhoused encampment eviction and subsequent enforcement of the City’s anti-homeless ordinances. A debacle which ended up with one councilor in jail awaiting trial, and one reprimanded and stripped of her position as council president. A new council president is now in place, Sydney Swor, and Joshua Francy reclaimed his seat which he had lost to Riley Carter, now in jail. The Aberdeen City Council has decided to draft something it has never had before, a council and procedures document. Who knew they were just flying by the seat of their pants this whole time.
This was raised by the incoming Council president, Sydney Swor, as a good idea since the council has spiraled into a chaotic mix of paranoid right wing conspiracy theorists and scared shitless liberals unable to understand what is at play. Their “decorum” is not up to snuff apparently. The proposed document will include:
- General policies
- Meeting regulations
- How to fill vacant positions
- Procedures for voting
- Policies for suspending any of these rules
When Swor sought four or five volunteers to head the drafting of this document several offered. Without hesitation, city councilors David Gakin, Liz Ellis, Stan Sidor and Scott Prato all volunteered to be part of the group.
Since the last update you will have received we have seen these ordinance be enforced on the most vulnerable population in our community. We saw many people flee in fear, some found temporary refuge in friend’s or family’s houses or yards, some ended up scattered around town, and a few did manage to obtain their housing in time for the eviction.
Managing this violent upset and destruction of a micro community down at camp has made everyone’s lives harder. Not just the unhoused themselves, which should be obvious, but social workers, case managers, peers, mutual aid workers, and friends and family have all found it difficult to keep track of their clients or loved ones. Not to mention the horror of not being able to stand or sit on downtown sidewalks, which the City has expressed a desire to extend to all of Aberdeen, and not having any camping or sleeping gear allowed full stop.
The City Administrator Ruth Clemens has been spreading her opinions on where people have gone off too with the Daily World, mostly amounting to the suspicion that “a majority of people” left the county, acting as though they probably left because the party was over and it was time to go back home, instead of fleeing the repression faced in this county for a safer place to live.
The local Catholic Mission the Union Gospel has opined about their high barrier, forced-worship services not being taken advantage of since the camp eviction.
In talking to the paper about the new laws, and the law enforcement officer response to being “unchained” and allowed to run rough shod all over the unhoused residents who ended up with nowhere else to go.
Clemens sounded supportive of the work Aberdeen Police Department has done about the unhoused collectively moving elsewhere in the city.
“Police officers and code enforcement have been very vigilant checking for new camps throughout the city,” Clemens said.
Clemens also commended the city’s ordinances. Part of the ordinance is to inform people of what they’re allowed to do.
“I think the enforcement of both ordinances have been very effective as exemplified by the large, visible reduction of homelessness,” Clemens said about the sit-and-lie ordinances. “Aberdeen Police Department have done a great job consistently educating people and enforcing the law.”
Speaking of moving elsewhere in the city, the City of Aberdeen also decided to remove the “unpopular” Request For Proposal for a contract to make their half though out “homeless village”. They said it was after all not the City’s job but the County’s, the same refrain that has cycled back and forth between the two for years now, precluding any forward progress for those on the streets.
Their next steps in anti-homeless legislation is restricting RV parking with Ruth Clemens, Aberdeen’s city administrator, saying she already has proof that shows limiting parking for such vehicles can be done. It’s because Lacey already has ordinances in place to do so and that city has found success.
Clemens called it “a long-awaited,” presentation.
“One of the things we had been waiting for outside of the Grants Pass (decision) or Johnson v. Grants Pass case was Potter v. City of Lacey, which came soon after the ruling on Grants Pass, which affirmed the authority cities have to enact and enforce parking regulation,” Clemens said. “We also have Aberdeen Municipal Code Title 10 that was impacted, which didn’t allow us to address people living in their vehicles around the city. But I think what we’re proposing today would also address not only that, but other RVs parked around the city on the city streets.”
This new proposed ordinance is very likely to pass and comes apparently from the City’s Homeless Response Committee. How a committee tasked with responding to homelessness would come up with a recommendation to harass and criminalize people living in RVs is baffling. It belies their true intent to legislate the unhoused out of the streets and behind bars. The rosters of our jail have been full of people arrested for nothing but these new ordinances. This new one would restrict “residents” to parking on the street to unload only for 4 up to 48 hours with a permit. “Non-residents” on the other hand, meaning presumably, unhoused individuals, would be allowed to park in a “safe parking spot” at …guess where? The City Hall Parking Lot! Right where the old TASL (Temporary Alternative Shelter Location) was located over two years ago. One big circle. Clemens said, “This would just allow people a place to park from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. It would also have a porta-potty on site and a hand-washing station similar again that mirrors what Lacey uses. Lacey uses their city hall parking lot as well.”
As for barriers to accessing this pittance, she said:“I talked to Chief (Green) yesterday, (they) would handle unlocking it and locking the facility,” Clemens said. “APD will patrol the site. APD will conduct the background checks for those individuals who want to stay there. And they will lock and unlock the on-site restroom facilities as stated.”
To be able to park on the TASL site, visitors require a permit. To get a permit, they must be engaged with social services. They must have a government-issued driver’s license or ID. There may be more than one person staying in the RV. All people in the RV must have a government-issued ID. They must have valid vehicle insurance, valid vehicle registration and their vehicle must meet all standards and requirements to legally operate.
“They must also undergo a background check completed by Aberdeen Police Department,” Clemens said. “They can’t have any outstanding warrants from any jurisdiction and they must not be a registered sex offender.” To get a permit for Temporary Alternative Shelter Location, the people have to apply for a permit every day.
“There might be a way, because they have to be compensated some way, I think we might be able to use opioid funds to kind of cover this one. I think it would be an appropriate use.”
So, the City is still very much on its bullshit and doesn’t seem to be slowing down or coming anywhere near a reasonable resolution to housing shortage. They keep blaming individuals for personal failings and putting barriers in the way of them accessing resources to bettering their situation, resources that often have their own barriers already. Not to mention navigating and tolerating the non-profit industrial complex in this city. They have destroyed this community, and in its death spasms they continue to strike. They show zero compassion or mercy towards these people who have been waiting on these social service housing lists for years because there are NO HOUSING UNITS!! The City isn’t concerning itself with trying to solve that side of the equation at all. All they want to do is further ruin these people’s lives by enacting law after law that targets them and makes their lives all but unlivable.
Monthly Radical News Roundup:
Its time for our radical news roundup from other autonomous media organizations that we follow. Unicorn Riot is a decentralized, educational 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization of journalists. Unicorn Riot engages and amplifies the stories of social and environmental struggles from the ground up. They seek to enrich the public by transforming the narrative with our accessible non-commercial independent content. You can find the following articles on their website at unicornriot.ninja
September 1, 2024 Miami Anti-Abortion ‘Fake Clinic’ Tied to Proud Boys, January 6, Far-Right, Clinic Invasions
September 5, 2024Rally to Ban Artificial Turf with Toxic PFAS in Philadelphia City Properties
September 6, 2024 Salt Lake City Police Broke A Woman’s Leg During An Arrest. Weeks Later, It Had To Be Amputated.
September 10, 2024 Protest Near Harris-Trump Presidential Debate Opposes Bipartisan Support for Israeli Genocide in Palestine
September 18, 2024 Georgia Drops Money Laundering Charges in Cop City RICO Prosecution
September 19, 2024 Killed by a Vigilante Who Received No Prison Time: The Murder of AJ Stewart
September 22, 2024 8th Annual Prisoners’ Families Brunch in West Philly
September 24, 2024 Palestinian Girls’ Boxing Club Continues Amid Genocide
September 26, 2024 Racist Mobs Rampage England, Anti-Racists Fight Back
September 30, 2024 Pakistani Immigrant With Signs of Torture Found Dead in a Greek Police Station
October 1, 2024 Aramark Concession Workers Strike at Philly Sports Complex
October 2, 2024 Israeli Airstrikes Target Medical Facility, Kill Five Health Ministry Workers
October 8, 2024White Mesa Indigenous Community and Supporters Rally Against Uranium Mill
October 9, 2024 South Africa’s Energy Crises Increasingly Target Poor Communitie
October 9, 2024 APIII Militia Infiltrator Warns of Danger to 2024 Elections; Leaks Show Targeting Journalists
October 10, 2024 Amid Ongoing Bombardment, Gaza Strives for Second Round of Polio Vaccination
It’s Going Down is a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America. Their mission is to provide a resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action. You can find the following articles on their website at
itsgoingdown.org: Sep 1, 24
In Contempt #44: Prison Rebellion in Idaho, Running Down the Walls, Antifascist Targeted in Indiana Sep 1, 24
Final Straw: “Solidarity, Spirituality and Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back” with Ashanti Omowali Alston Sep 1, 24
“It Doesn’t Matter How Peaceful You Are”: Report on Repression at the University of Michigan Sep 3, 24
Three Way Fight on the Changing Terrain of the Far-Right, the State, and Resistance from Below Sep 3, 24
Protests in Solidarity with Palestine Resume at Columbia as Universities Across the US Attempt to Clamp-Down on Dissent Sep 5, 24
Running Down the Walls 2024 – The 25th Anniversary! Sep 5, 24
Anti-Fascism and the Three Way Fight in Québec Sep 5, 24
Seattle, WA: ReportBack from March Against Genocide in Palestine Sep 7, 24
“The Case for Not Voting”: Debate Night Conversation Featuring Andrew Lee and Andrew Zonneveld Sep 8, 24
September Update on Jack Sep 9, 24 Grants Pass and the Carceral Conjuncture
Sep 10, 24
From the Camp to the Campus: Reflections on the UC Davis Encampment Sep 10, 24
Journalist Sentenced to 14 Days in Jail After Being Attacked at Proud Boy Rally Sep 10, 24
Anti-Eviction Action at a Landlord’s Home in Montreal Sep 11, 24
“Shake in Your Boots Bureaucrats!”: Resistance, Recuperation, and the Legacy of the Situationists Sep 11, 24
Seattle Is Never Coming Back: Reflections on the DNC Sep 12, 24
Join Us, As We Are In It For the Long Haul Sep 13, 24
An Anti-fascist Guide to the US 2024 Election Sep 13, 24
Justice Distorted: Activists Sentenced for Conspiracy, Avoid FACE Act Charges, in Unprecedented Attack on Pro-Choice Defenders Sep 14, 24
Over 100 March in Richmond, VA in Solidarity with Palestine, Clash With Police Sep 15, 24
A Pillar in the Land of Ruin: Mutual Aid at Willson Tower Sep 18, 24
This Is America #200: Trump Pushes Racist Attack on Haitians in Ohio, Resistance Roundup Sep 18, 24
Atlanta Solidarity Fund Announces Dismissal of Charges, Condemns State Repression Sep 19, 24 N
YPD Out of the MTA Sep 19, 24
Over 100 Gather Outside of Metropolitan Correctional Center for Running Down the Walls in Chicago, IL Sep 22, 24
Student Intifada: Reflections from the 2024 Palestine Solidarity Encampment Movement Sep 22, 24
Report Back on Running Down the Walls in NYC Sep 22, 24
Montreal Summer Reflection: Liberalism, Its Counter-Revolutionary Dynamics & Peace Policing Sep 22, 24
Weaponizing the Legal System: The Case Against the Florida 4 Sep 22, 24
The International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank and the Assassination of Ayşenur Eygi Sep 24, 24
Statement from PSPS on Recent FBI Snooping in PNW Sep 25, 24
From the West Coast to the Midwest: Solidarity with Springfield! Sep 27, 24
A Bridge Between Catastrophes: A Communal Response to Hurricane Debby Sep 29, 24
Mutual Aid and Autonomous Disaster Relief Groups Mobilize in Wake of Hurricane Helene Oct 1, 24
Running Down the Walls Raises Tens of Thousands for Political Prisoners and Anarchist Black Cross Warchest Oct 2, 24
In Contempt #45: Florida Four Sentenced, Casey on Hunger-Strike, Repression of Palestine Protesters Oct 3, 24
Andrew Lee on How Capitalists Are Raising Rents, Not Immigrants Oct 4, 24
This Is America #201: Report on Mutual Aid Efforts in North Carolina; War Expands to LebanonOct 4, 24
On Sieges, Solidarity, and SolarOct 5, 24
No Life in the Master’s House: Lessons on Selling out from the Northwestern Encampment Oct 5, 24
“The Utopia we Dream of Becomes Most Visible in the Dark”: Dispatches from Firestorm in Asheville, NC Oct 6, 24
This Week in Fascism #138: Community Rallies Against Neo-Nazi in Pennsylvania; Spencer Sunshine on Violent Accelerationist ThreatOct 6, 24
Final Straw: Mutual Aid and Disaster Relief in Southern Appalachia Oct 7, 24
Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-Jacketing Oct 8, 24
Statement Against Fascist Disaster Tourism in Western North Carolina Oct 8, 24
“They Still Cower When you Throw a Rock”: Report from the Streets of Richmond, VA Oct 11, 24
Announcing the Fall Anarchist Skillshare November 1st – 3rd in Chicago Oct 12, 24
Anarchists in the Labor Movement #4 Oct 12, 24
Update Message from Hybachi LeMar On His Extradition to Pennsylvania DOC Crimethought is everything that evades control:
CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance. CrimethInc. is a banner for anonymous collective action. CrimethInc. is an international network of aspiring revolutionaries. CrimethInc. is a desperate venture.
2024-08-11 Charlottesville, Revisited—2017 to 2024:What Can a Moment of Peril Tell Us about Our Own Dangerous Times?
2024-08-14 In Memory of Luciano Pitronello, also Known as Tortuga
2024-08-19 Queer Wanderings through the Other Germany and the Anti-Nazi Underworld:An Invocation 2024-09-17 Reflecting on Occupy Wall Street, Thirteen Years Later
2024-09-23 Anarchists on the Wave of Protest in Indonesia
2024-09-23 “Live Free, Ride Free, Fuck NYPD”: A Report from a Mass Fare Evasion in New York City
2024-10-03 Ya Ghazze Habibti—Gaza, My Love:Understanding the Genocide in Palestine
Music:
Segment one:
Sprout: Welcome back to Molotov now. We are now joined by Honey to discuss the Christian Parenting Industrial Complex that is fueling, funding, and creating fascist political subjects here, a la James Dobson’s Focus on the Family Empire, and to talk about how transgender children are being used as a boogeyman to, quote, unite the right under a Christo-fascist banner and to brainstorm possible ways we can intervene.
If you could please introduce yourself, give your pronouns. A brief visual description and any organizing experience relevant to the conversation today.
Honey: Hi thanks for having me on. I’m going to go by Honey here. My pronouns are he, fey. I am a white gender fluid trans man who recently fled red state and I’ve been doing what I can here on the coast to Great queer and trans community and safe spaces.
And this spring, a fellow trans comrade and I organized Disco at the Moral Panic, which was a celebration slash protest of the fascist Don’t Mess With Our Kids rally in Olympia, Washington.
Sprout: Yeah, I’m so sorry to hear that you had to flee your home state. I do remember us publishing Sabo Media a call out for that event.
How did it end up going?
Honey: Yeah it was organized pretty quickly. We had less than a month to put it together. So it was put on by this fascist organization. That’s nationwide. And it was this rally at every single state Capitol simultaneously, but some of the main organizers are from Oregon, Washington.
So it actually had a pretty big turnouts. We were taken a little bit of back at how violent the rhetoric was and how intense the experience was. I do believe they also moved the location based on seeing some of our posters. For the, it wasn’t originally intended to be a protest. It was intended to be a celebration.
To counteract the energy that the fascists were bringing to Olympia, but it ended up also being a protest because we were going to have it on the lawn in front of the build the capitol building and they moved from the steps to the lawn of the capitol building and corralled us off to a little corner and Yeah, I as far as the results I know one comrade got arrested after the event and there was a gun drawn by the Proud Boys were there and there were a few, not quite altercations, but the fascists definitely wanted it to be an altercation and things were a lot more chaotic than we planned, but The people who showed up were all wonderful.
We had a marching band and played music and our drag performers dropped out last minute due to feeling unsafe. So we ended up just doing like a little fashion catwalk and teaching people how to Vogue and catwalk a little bit, which I noticed that we had to do that at the end because the atmosphere had gotten really intense and I noticed that.
When people were going up to the line that had been drawn for us and shouting across to the fascists, things were, it was drawing more of them over. And when we started to do our catwalk and whatever, they got very uncomfortable and their attention dwindled away, because, which was the original intent of the event.
So I think it was a mixed bag, but we learned a lot about I guess you could say our enemies.
Sprout: Yeah, I had no idea it was that sort of tense of a situation, but. Sounds like you guys managed to keep things on the lighter end and celebratory.
Honey: We also made sure to get everyone out of there before the ending of the event, because it was definitely not like a safe space for people to be,
Sprout: yeah. Yeah, I can see that. All right. So since we want to probably dedicate a good chunk of the time today to brainstorming possible solutions, can you give us and our listeners a quick rundown on the planned million women’s March and what organizations are behind it currently?
Honey: Yeah. So the same people who organized don’t mess with our kids.
Jenny and Bob Donnelly are Big names here on the coast. They live in Portland, Oregon, but have some connections up here in Washington, like Matt Shea might be a familiar name for people listening. He is a Republican senator who has actual terrorism charges for yeah, being involved in plots against the US government.
Don’t Mess With Our Kids was a nationwide rally to fearmonger about the alleged trans agenda quote unquote in schools and to uphold gender essentialism. What’s interesting to know about Jenny Donnelly is, and the women and the organizers that she runs with, is a lot of them brand themselves as lifestyle coaches or marriage counselors or giving parenting advice.
And their movement is Runs essentially like a new age cult, but it’s Christianized. They have these prayer hubs going to quote across the United States where people go to speak in tongues and be inspired and whatever. And so what they’re doing is trying to mobilize in every single state and get all of these women involved in this cult and become, quote, unquote, Esther’s prayer warriors.
And Don’t Mess With Our Kids was a way to build energy for this Million Women’s March in October. In their own words, they’re calling it, or they’re saying, The Lord is summoning a million women, esters, young and old, with their husbands and children, to gather to the Washington D. C. Mall on October 12th, the Day of Atonement, in all caps, Last Stand moment for America.
Sprout: The Day of Atonement, Jesus Christ. Yeah, we’re familiar with Matt Shea on this podcast, and our listeners should be fairly familiar with the Christian right wing fascism as a movement. For those who aren’t familiar with what happened with the Don’t Mess With Our Kids event, can you provide a brief description?
Honey: Yeah, so like I said, it was more organized and funded than we expected. They were busing people in from churches across the entire state. They had a grandstand, booths, huge sound system, pig protection, Proud Boys, other far right groups were all there visibly aggressing queer people. It was a sea of hot pink and royal blue because they had attendees wear colors marking their gender.
Lots of screaming, quote unquote, praying and speaking in tongues, and there were some honestly terrifying speeches about the wrath of God, the day of atonement the sins of America, and how America is going to be cleansed, which You know what that’s a code word for we did speak with some attendees who went with their churches and actually left early because they were uncomfortable with the violent rhetoric or experienced racist aggression.
There was one Hispanic lady who left early because of that or saw Nazi salutes. And yeah, one of the proud boys tried to pull a gun on us. And it is the whole nine yards. Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. It shook us up.
Sprout: That’s awful to hear. And it’s so telling that even people within their own crowd were off put by the level of rhetoric and aggression that was happening there.
I can only imagine. Can you speak to the institutions funding this kind of rhetoric in action? This kind of stuff always reeks of dark money, never seeming to be truly grassroots. Can you speak to this at all?
Honey: Yeah, this whole thing is manufactured. So Jenny and Bob Donnelly are grifters. They, I would have to look up the name of it again, but they run a kind of a front that it’s like a, it’s like a wedding venue.
They run a front in Oregon where they have, they host events. And have people living on the property but all of it, all of this is essentially money laundering. And I did a little bit of research into the dark money links. And so the evangelical, right? There’s a town. In Colorado Springs, that’s known as the evangelical Vatican and a lot of the churches, like this new wave of churches that you see popping up in strip malls and abandoned warehouses and all of that, they are essentially money laundering groups.
And the people who are doing this all the way over in like Uganda. So Jenny Donnelly runs her voice movement, which is the force behind Don’t Mess With Our Kids. And funding her voice is. To quote unquote to tell us time ministry ministries, it’s run by Jenny and Bob Donnelly and it only has 1 paid employee.
That’s Jenny. She also teaches these classes on the side as a hustle and how to master inner peace with her book and has an online shop with no listed products. The Donnelly’s described their work as marketplace ministry. Through the quote, seven mountains of influence, business, arts, entertainment, media, government, family, education, and religion.
If you’re unfamiliar, that is the seven mountain mandate. It’s a dominionist movement within Pentecostal evangelical Christianity. And their focus is Christianizing all spheres of culture, government, and media to create a theocracy. And you can find on their website that they purchased a retreat center in Oregon, Crestview Manor.
And they have nine other families that live on site doing volunteer manual labor to remodel it. The mothers in each of these families are like diet pill, multi level marketing peddlers, Christian life coaches, entrepreneurs, marketing strategists. None of them have real jobs. Denny Donnelly also runs Esther Ministries, which is that network of prayer hubs of quote unquote mama bears and has like a weekly zoom call and sells dieting and detox recipe substitutions on her Instagram page.
So all of this is funded through scamming people and they raise essentially their model is to create fear by spreading myths about quote unquote maps minor attractive persons being included in lessons on pronouns in schools stuff like that. And then they spread that into existing churches and draw women in, like vulnerable people who would already be vulnerable to joining a cult in and get their money to fund these prayer hubs.
And then the Donnellys are also connected to Lou Engle. If you know who Lou Engle is, You probably know about the Ugandan Kill the Gays Bill that he promoted with his cross continental ministry, The Call which also supported Proposition 8 in California, of course. So the Donnellys and Lou Engle co founded the Collective Church in Portland alongside the Portland Police Chaplain, Clyde Lewis, and MUFA David Bissek and Malakai Salcido, who are real estate and property development moguls and cryptocurrency mining.
This church also runs a Christian nationalist homeschooling cooperative, which is the Liberty Homeschool Academy, and is a front for the coalition of the evangelical style of congregation home churches. Which prioritized charismatic style calls and meditations that focus on your own personal brokenness and pain as a foundation for your relationship with Jesus.
Why bring all of this up? Lou Engle went to Kampala, Uganda in 2010 and called homosexuality a spirit of lawlessness and called for martyrs to become gods, avengers of blood. Quote unquote to stop this agenda at all costs. And he also endorses christian advocates for israel in 2012 it’s not it’s known as kufi.
I don’t really know why it became the largest us based pro israel organization And in 2017 they hosted mike pence as a speaker for their night to honor israel summit in washington, dc They sponsor Daughters of Zion, which is founded by Lynn Hammond. There’s this global quote unquote community of loosely networked prayer groups.
And the craziest part of all of this is that the Seven Mountain Mandate declares evangelical Christians must go and make disciples of all nations. That’s from Matthew 28, 19. That means infiltrating and winning places over for Christ. This is neocolonialism. And it’s the foundation of the New apostolic reformation, which is a movement built on the pillars of the church in the workplace and the great transfer of wealth.
And it’s influenced by managerial self help empire of Peter Drucker, who emphasized meeting. Worker’s social and community needs at work as a form of like union vesting. So really Let me know if I’m going into too much detail here But I think it’s important to get into all this before we even bring up trans people.
Sprout: No, the details are vital
Honey: Yeah,
Sprout: naming names.
Honey: Okay, so the Dominionist movement embraces the quote Theology of Vigilantism. This is a term coined by scholar Frederick Carlson to describe the legacy of Pat Robertson’s theocratic, right wing bullshit, frankly. And most of them endorsed the presidency of Donald Trump.
A Dominionist was Trump’s spiritual advisor, her name’s Paula White, and she claimed that Trump will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands along Israel in the battle against Islam. Beautiful people. So all of these people and especially centralized in They’re building power in the pacific northwest, but they’re really centralized in Colorado And there’s this guy in Colorado Billy Epperhart, who is a retired real estate mogul and he runs wealth builders Which is an overtly christian real estate and business coaching business that teaches people how to flip houses and buy risky investment properties It has an international arm called Tricord.
He’s a ceo of Wealth Builders, Tricord, and a third company, Andrew Womack Industries, which together founded GlowTrans. This is it’s like a web. I feel like a conspiracy theorist sometimes, but GlowTrans Financial Services is a microfinancing institute which offers housing, church building, and business related microloans in Uganda.
And they fund another Bank, like a kind of a scammy bank, Glory Sacco in Uganda. While these organizations purport to have the beneficial goal of assisting impoverished villagers and impoverished people in the so called United States with loans to build housing and start businesses microfinancial institutions have long been under scrutiny for profiting off of the poor with high interest rates and creating undue repayment.
Burdens that lead to houselessness, perpetual debt, and even suicide. I was able to find, I was not able to assess like the level of predation tricord has in Uganda, but I was able to find civil court cases that were brought against individual parties, likely for failure to pay repay loans. Biglotrans at the High Court of Uganda Kampala.
Yeah, and I I could go on and on about, there’s Andrew Womack Ministries, and they have a media arm called Gospel Truth TV, they run these Bible colleges, they host the Truth and Liberty Awards Banquet, and this is actually where we get close to talking about trans people again. My point is that all of these people are linked.
And scammers, Womack industry offers a series of quack faith healing courses that turn chronic illnesses into an individual center’s responsibility and promise deliverance for 500. You can learn how to administer healing to your pop with Parkinson’s. It’s not predatory at all. And this year, Womack’s Cherished Bible College hosted the Truth and Liberty Awards, with exclusive ticket bundles selling for 50, 000.
And they hosted Riley Gaines, the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship swimmer from Kentucky, who tied against Leah Thomas for fifth place. Riley Gaines was miffed that the one on site trophy was given to Leah, because they tied, and since has been running a petty vengeance campaign to harass trans women out of the s Or entirely.
So I’m gonna, I’m just gonna quote journalist Carly Webb. This issue does not exist in a vacuum. The groups pushing this suit and this hysteria have used support in general, and Thomas in particular, to push anti trans discrimination laws that now affect more than 30 U. S. states. The recent combination of anti trans laws passed in Ohio in January is a textbook example.
Womack also has his fingers in school boards. So in 2021, the Truth and Liberty Coalition backed four candidates for their local school board and won their races. Womack partners with the Aledo, Texas based Wall Builders, which is a Dominionist Christian Nationalist organization to distribute English and Spanish flyers in mega churches to encourage them to vote in accordance with the Christian Voters Guide.
They also offer guides for clergy. These flyers pit churchgoers against the LGBT community and racialized community members via questions about critical race theory, parental rights, boys playing girl sports, sex ed, and gender identity pronouns. Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna stop there, but I hope it’s clear that what her voice movement, the Donnellys, and their ilk are doing is a cynical attempt to weaponize bigotry, ignorance, and fear of change against an already vulnerable population in service of their own callow political agendas and financial gain.
They collude with white supremacists, and their ideological goals are a theocratic ethnostate. This is serious.
Sprout: Yeah, and it sounds like they’re running every scam out there. Yeah, it seems an attempt to make it seem like there are more people in support of these ideas than there actually are.
Does that make sense? Yeah, I watched It seems like there’s only six people involved in so much of what you’ve talked about, and it just seems like they just go and go 24 7 to create this sense of outrage. That’s not really there in the wider population.
Honey: Yes. I actually watched it was a funny, but sad video when I was doing this research from the.
Don’t mess with our kids and her voice movement because they have these weekly zoom calls for their prayer hubs and One of the the 20 something year olds who’s leading it was bemoaning that they can’t get Like any young people involved and it was trying to strategize for how to get more young people involved and I think it’s pretty obvious why they can’t get young people involved.
You have to be pretty You have to be pretty unwell to fall for these scams Yeah, very
Sprout: predatory. Those with an agenda to commit often utilize the argument. Think of the children or what about the children in order to drum up seemingly grassroots resistance to things that can impact the lives of children in public, which could arguably be most things.
Why is this such a pattern for authoritarians? And is there an effective counter position to take here? It doesn’t capitulate to the values of the far right in order to appease the sensibilities of the center.
Honey: Yeah, that’s a big question. And I think it’s really at the heart, ideologically, of what they’re doing, this focus on children.
I really want everyone to read this book, if you can get your hands on it. It’s called Innocence and Corruption. It’s by Ayanna Goodfellow. Her name is spelled A I Y A N A. Goodfellow. Yeah, just do it. She’s 16 when she wrote it and it’s one of the clearest pieces of theory i’ve ever read. On The oppression of children and the creation of children as a class to justify other oppressions to invalidate and justify to invalidate people who are resisting oppression and to justify colonialism.
If you want to understand the links between authoritarian, paternalistic parenting and the Christofascist far I’d recommend, there’s two podcasts. The first one’s called Strong Willed, and the second one is called I Hate James Dobson. There’s a whole rabbit trail I won’t get into around Christian homeschooling.
I was a Christian homeschooled child, so this stuff is very personal for me. The Advanced Training Institute, you could look up them, another cult leader trying to Essentially army of fascist subjects, Bill Gothard, it would, I would look up ATI and Bill Gothard using volunteer labor and essentially child abuse to, to build his empire.
So it’s the same shape from top to bottom, paternalism, infantilizing someone is violent. Even the notions we have of. the child, right? When you infantilize any group, you tacitly assert they don’t know their own best interests, they need to be controlled and cared for, and you’re the person to do that. So with the parenting industry, specifically James Dobson, it’s about breaking the child’s will and spirit early on, like people will break horses, right?
Wild horses. To create obedience above any other traits or values. Nothing matters more than obedience. And so it is about creating fascist subjects who can’t say no to authority, they’ve had their spirit broken, can’t say no, are trained to be obedient, who don’t trust themselves or anyone who isn’t.
A paternal authority or representing the paternal authority. So that means cops. That means, presidents. That means senators. Basically, and it’s really funny how some people who get into this authoritarian parenting and whatnot are still libertarians, ideologically, they’re. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s a very violent ideology.
It’s essential to rape culture as well. They use this smoke screen of the innocent child to deflect what they’re actually doing. It’s very similar to using the image of the innocent white woman who needs to be protected to justify, lynch mobs and racial violence. The best thing we can do, I believe, to counteract their efforts Is to teach and practice consent and honor children’s autonomy see them as our comrades And I would go to say that doesn’t just mean children that means everybody right anyone who is not in a position of authority learning to treat each other with respect and really educate About what consent and autonomy are and why they’re important.
I think learning about child liberation or youth liberation, joining the fight in the school boards, getting people into the school boards and libraries to retain the right to things like sex ed, queer literature, access to information. We’re essentially going through another strain of book burning right now with all the banned books, Idaho has been like one of the red states that passed a bunch of basically, Idaho and Florida, some of those other states are trying to empty the libraries of anything that isn’t biblical.
And And the Puritan sensibility is pretty widespread in the United States. I think it’s a founding part of the philosophy of our government. Worked in schools. I see repression start really early with just like fear of profanity or of talking about any adult topics with children, because if you do, then you’re liable to be called a pedophile.
But I think there’s a lot of power for all of us in engaging with, let me put it this way. I saw an altered billboard. Someone posted it on the internet, which was really brilliant. It was one of those Christian giant billboards that says, trapped by lust Jesus will save you and they cut out Jesus and lust and they swapped them.
So it said trapped by Jesus, lust will save you. And yeah, I think there’s a lot of power in engaging with queer culture and with the right to profanity the right to the full expression Of the human experience and really engaging with our own disgust impulses kids are only hurt when we assume they’re stupid and naive and there is child appropriate education about just like having a human body and we also all of us need to work on our shame about having a human body and about, just existing because we live in this.
Essentially, quasi police state where so many expressions of ourselves are not allowed or socially policed by, by this fear that people internalize. Is that the root of this, all of this, is the belief that the human body in the material world is inherently evil. And it needs to be punished and corrected and hidden and shamed.
James Dobson and Focus on the Family teach that children are inherently corrupt. They need to be corrected. But they’re also innocent. You can’t ask which is it. Because it’s two sides of the same coin, right? It’s dehumanizing. It’s fetishizing and degrading. And I really I’m sorry to say that all of this is very pedophilic.
Like all of this way of thinking is charged with repressed sexual energy and it has its roots in that aspect of imperialist culture. I think you could trace this all the way back to Rome, the way that the deists, quote unquote, founding fathers of America were looking to these Roman legal forms, right?
And the rights of the father, which in ancient Rome, the father had the right To do whatever he wanted to his wife and his children, like if, like a child is considered property. And so you could literally whatever you want, the child has no rights under the law and is owned by the father. And we’re still operating in that system in a lot of ways.
So that got in codified into American property law. And a lot of these churches and ministries are, of course, fronts for abuse, like they’re literally pedophile rings in a lot of, like the the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I, I’ve got trans survivor friends who were trafficked through Jehovah’s Witness or through the Mormon church.
There’s a lot of projection at play. It’s my point.
Sprout: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for bringing up that sort of duality that the Christian theology engenders. I always found growing up Christian that it was you always had to hold 2 opposing views in your head. If you wanted to wrap your head around something, you It was like intentionally confusing.
It’s like a part of it. I think
Honey: it’s not logically coherent.
Sprout: It’s also the part about Christian theology that I hate the most is this idea that the human body or spirit or just entity is inherently evil and corrupt. I think that’s so damaging to so many facets of life and that people just don’t really even think about it.
And I think it’s even secularized to some degree. There’s this idea that you should be ashamed of who you are, where you are, is so ingrained in like Western culture. Yeah. Have we been able to pinpoint where the original focus on the transgender community came from? Oftentimes, what ends up being the single issue for the center right started out in a fascist space such as 4chan or Stormfront.
Do we know where this agenda began?
Honey: I think that somebody who’s more online in those spaces might be able to trace the particular appearance of transphobia as this major focus for the alt but Generally speaking, I wouldn’t blame 4chan. There are fascists on Tumblr, on Twitter, everywhere. I think this wave of transphobia is a response to the organic evolution of the trans community and our broader social acceptance, even though it’s still limited.
The more awareness and education about trans lives exists, the easier it is for fascists to fear monger about us as well. And we’ve had to fight to exist forever. If you look at Germany under the National Socialists, they started off their book burning programs by burning all of the research at the Institute for Sexual Wischenkraft, which was the sexology clinic run by Magnus Hirschfeld, and it was a big hub for the trans community.
in Germany. It was a safe place. It was like a spa. It was a clinic. It was a social scene. They’re researching different surgeries and the Nazis burned all of their papers and equipment. When you look at the classic pictures of Nazi book burning, that’s what they’re burning. They’re burning research on transgender, gender affirming surgeries.
And if you want to go a layer deeper, you can look at how colonialist missionaries tortured, executed, and Shamed two spirit and other gendered individuals like here in Turtle Island or another, even in other continents. So I’m gonna quote DNA scholar Wesley Thomas who says about colonization, We were presented with an entirely new set of taboos which did not correspond to our own models and which focused on sexual behavior.
Rather than the intricate roles that two spirit people played. I think this, the focus and the fear mongering about sexual predation and sexual behavior is an inherently colonial view of what trans people are. It’s a de spiritualized view. It’s a view stripped of, wisdom and knowledge about our Role in community and our place in the broader scheme of things and for like colonialist imperialism There’s this focus on reproduction and war like that’s all it really needs to spread right?
You just need to reproduce and Fight and conquer new land. It’s it’s It’s a viral mindset we just need to take over as much as possible, not considering the quality of life, the spiritual well being of anybody involved. So you just need women to bear children and men to fight. More soldiers supply, reproductive supply, and then fighters.
There’s no room for the whole human spirit there, for the natural diversity of our communal roles, our beauty, and our sacred practices. All of that is seen as extraneous. So now we have the system where children are hit over the head with this binary immediately at birth and sexualized. It’s normal to make jokes about baby boys being womanizers, for example but if you dare to imply a children’s TV show is depicting a lesbian relationship or feelings, it’s suddenly sexualized and taboo.
And I wanted to point out too that intersex people, like people with genetic diversity and their like reproductive systems or their secondary sex characteristics have always existed and a fair amount, there’s a fair amount of overlap between the trans and intersex. community. Some intersex people consider themselves trans or are trans because they choose to move away from the gender they were assigned at birth.
Other intersex people don’t move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, or they embrace their natural intersex bodies and identities outside of the label of being trans. But the real, there’s a lot of this bogus focus on surgeries being done on children, and as anything from the right it’s usually darvo, it’s usually projection of something that they’re already doing.
So intersex children are operated on often, like non consensually, and assigned a gender, and have their genitals mutilated to match an assigned a gender that fits within the binary, and forced to live in that without any explanation. That is a common violence that happens to intersex individuals.
And all this focus on the binary and on reproduction is about advancing and speeding up the reproduction of the race. It’s like an inherently racist mode of existence. Trans people challenge that productive mentality. We are seen as extraneous and dangerous. So our oppression is inextricably linked to colonialism and war and imperialism, there’s no way to really separate our existence unless from these other oppressions, unless our identities are co opted and made these superficial things, so it’s oh, now you can have trans people, piloting drones in the Middle East it doesn’t change the fact that at root we are always expendable if the fascists need a scapegoat.
Sprout: Yeah. Thank you for joining those comparisons. So let’s get into some possible solutions or counter movements to this push from the right to criminalize and eliminate trans people. Have you or your networks had any discussions or come to any conclusions on this issue? How can we best defend all trans people in this moment?
Honey: I have a, I have had an answer prepared and I’ve also given it some thought and I am going to expand A little bit past what I was going to say, which was that everyone should be educating themselves deeply on gender and colonialism and divesting from these consumerist notions of identity, right?
Like seeing yourself as a man because you wear pants and Try just all the really simplistic ways of thinking about our identity. If you can start to work through those and see yourself first and foremost as a human being with an inherent divinity or spirituality or necessity on this earth, that does a lot to cushion the violence of the binary.
And I also wanted to add that like part of this is people have to get weirder, get like getting weirder and being more yourself. It’s like cis, cisness itself is a construct, like to be totally on the same side as, that’s what cis means, trans means across from, as the, of the binary to be like comfortable with what you’re given at birth.
If what you’re given at birth is like a racist and paternalistic view of gender, then you’re going to have to work through some of that anyway. So I’m not saying no one is cis, I’m just saying that the only reason this divide between us exists is because it’s been created. Step one, I think, of really being able to see people as they’re themselves, right?
I don’t have, when I first transitioned and started meeting trans people, I had the problem. that many people do, or they have a hard time shifting pronouns, or seeing them as their true selves. And I know people who try to mask being transphobic by like mentally superimposing the pronouns because they feel like they’re going to get in trouble if they say the wrong pronouns, but they’re not doing the work to really see us, like to really see the person and why they’re asking you to refer to them in a different way.
Or by a different name and there’s not like an actual respect going into it. And I think part of that is because people are so afraid to transgress what they were handed, right? Oh, we could never change. I could never change my name. I was like, yeah, you could like, if you’re a cis person, nothing is stopping you.
Actually says people get the most gender affirming surgery, like past the plastic surgery industry. Exists to affirm cis people’s gender. A lot of advances in trans surgery actually came from like plastic surgery, like plastic reconstructive surgery, because it’s so hard to get people to see our medical needs as actually necessary.
But access to medical care and treatment, like cis men take testosterone, trans men take testosterone. We’re not really that different, right? And if you’re more comfortable with your own inner fluidity, that doesn’t mean go take up space in transpaces and be like, hey, we’re all fluid here.
But it means making Broader society, less rigid is good for everybody. It’s just good, and it will help also counteract some of the racism for example, Native men having long hair, and having it cut and violated, or being teased about it part of pushing back on these strict norms that are enforced on us is to make space for us all to have autonomy in determining our identity within community.
And it also, so there’s that part, and then there’s also just like showing up if you have the privilege of being perceived as cis, showing up when trans people’s existence is questioned and utilizing that social privilege. Intervene in the violent rhetoric. Don’t tolerate the open ended questions like, what is a woman?
That Ben Shapiro asks, or the sports bullshit. Just shut it down in your workplace and wherever you start to see it happen. And another thing I think that I want more cis people to start noticing is when there specifically is a trans woman in a space who’s isolated and maybe is the only one.
How often there’s a way higher standard of behavior placed on trans women to make up for the fact that people feel uncomfortable and have disgust reactions because of their trans misogyny. And so there’s way too many stories I know of girls getting literally pushed out of their jobs or their careers or their hobbies or their lives because, they’re trying to adapt and become smaller and smaller to make up for the, Facts that people are uncomfortable with them and like You can notice when that’s happening and you can intervene and not let people talk so much shit on trans women or spread really nasty rumors, and this has happened so many times at this point, I think it’s a matter of reparations that sending trans survivors of violence money, valuing us uplifting The people who are doing the work, like paying attention to mutual aid requests and how often they are coming from the trans community because people are disabled, they’ve survived violence, they might not be able to work, or they might be getting discriminated against in the hiring process redistributing the wealth that you are able to earn.
because of those invisible privileges is a huge thing. It does a lot because trans people know where the money needs to go. If you send me 100 bucks only 20 of it is probably staying with me. The rest of it’s going to get distributed out. And I would also say don’t let disabled trans people shoulder all the burden or do all the dirty work.
In your orgs if you see people in a pattern of volunteering for the hard work all the time, or always carrying, especially Black trans women or even Black trans men share the load and share the blessings. I see a lot of people repost images of Marsha P. Johnson and, she’s been made into this saintly figure.
But there are real life Marshas out here, and they’re starving, and they’re feeding their sisters, and begging money for money on the internet, and during hate attacks, theft, job discrimination, it’s hard to believe sometimes, like, how much people endure, because you’re just like that sounds like a Lifetime TV movie, but it’s people’s lives, and that’s why there’s like a genocide of black trans women in this country, because Okay.
When you get pushed to the outskirts and socially excluded, no one is checking on you, no one’s making sure that you don’t end up homeless, no one’s accompanying you to things or making sending a text to know oh, you’re going out with this person it’s really easy to disappear people when they’re isolated, and I see a lot of people get overlooked because they’re quote unquote crazy or too much or they get seen as scammers or annoying.
When there’s mental health issues in the trans community, and people have to learn, like, when I say get weirder, I mean get more comfortable with the unacceptable parts of human experience, honestly. We need to educate our communities on how to actually process conflict and transformative justice so that trans survivors don’t keep becoming communal scapegoats.
Ending up on the streets. There’s this essay, hot allostatic load. I would highly recommend people to read but most of all, I think the movement needs to interrogate our complacency and our comfort and our sanism, where we have privilege. It’s the same. way you’d confront the anti homeless patterns of thought in yourself and behavior.
You have to understand that a lot of people can’t afford to perform goodness, and they don’t need a carrot dangled in front of them to perform it. They just need to be resourced. And that’s what support Black trans women means to me. It’s not about tokenizing them, it’s about looking to those margins in this so called country and understanding the work that trans people have been doing.
Of course the other thing is we need people on school boards to fight the moms for liberty types and really like people just need to understand we’re everywhere. We can’t be ignored, we’re not going away. And also most trans people that I meet our vision for the future is just It’s just full of love and play and economy and sex positivity and these Christians are miserable.
Who wants the rich hard? They want all of us to be miserable. They’re just trying to drag us into their miserable plays. And they want a lot of us to be dead. So I think protecting trans kids in particular means arming them with the knowledge that all the possibilities for what a human being can be are theirs.
Giving them agency and choice and protection and guidance. That’s a lot. But I’m saying there’s a lot we can do.
Sprout: That’s great. No, that’s really powerful stuff. I appreciate you saying that. On another note, but speaking of arming trans people, there are many groups working to help arm and train trans comrades and save gun use.
What does this trend towards armed self defense mean for the wider left political movement? And does this provide a fracture point from the center that might be irreconcilable? Or are we at a place where the minority armed self defense can be framed? As an acceptable position to be normalized.
Honey: I’m not really sure about Fracture Point.
To me, it’s a matter of survival. All the trans women that I know shoot guns. And even if they don’t actively shoot guns, they know how. I think predators want Their victims to go easy. They target people who are easy victims and Not I’m not saying everyone should carry a gun But at the very least having a baton or pepper spray or knowing how to say no and defend yourself in a way That’s adjusted for the socially violent reality of being a trans woman It’s necessary.
A lot of times a gun is just a way to flat show your power. You can slash a gun It shows don’t fuck with me. I don’t think that we are irreconcilably fractured unless someone believes that we are Right? And so they’re believing that brings that into reality. They want me dead and believe my life isn’t worth living, or my sister’s lives aren’t worth living, or my brother’s lives aren’t worth living.
I can’t engage with them. That person is not a person that I’m really interested in building community with until they back down from their violence. I must protect myself from them and defend my community who support my life, and I can do that from a place of love, but a lot of arming oneself is about power and displaying that you aren’t to be fucked with, and you have dignity and capability to defend yourself.
That’s why the union makes us strong, right? It’s not just about guns and money. It’s about showing that it’s like a I don’t want to say it’s performative, but it’s like showing that you’re ready and you mean business. I think that everyone should read Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender History.
They talk a lot about the history of trans women in leading peasant revolts, or St. Joan of Arc, that kind of thing. Trans coded or gender non conforming people throughout history often lead social change and revolution because once you’ve experienced, like, when you’ve experienced going through the kind of transformation that it requires, and that bravery that it requires, To cross those boundaries, a lot of times you can see other radical truths as well or feel called to really lead the change in your community, and I think with arming ourselves, the Black Panthers didn’t go around just shooting up cops, and I might not really have a problem with I don’t know, some gangs or people doing that.
That’s not, far be it for me to criticize, but at the same time, it does lead to an escalation. The Black Panthers just showed up with guns and dignity and stared the cops in the face. So we’re gonna defend our community and I wish a motherfucker would. You can try me. And if you want to talk about moving to the offensive, we need to talk about street politics and how to build coalitions across The suburbs and the hood and like the different like strata of American racialized class society.
I haven’t read it but a lot of people when I start talking about this stuff say to go read George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye. That’s another episode. I also think a lot of American and especially white trans people turn to guns because that’s the language we know. That’s the way we’ve seen power enacted by our enemies.
But there’s also a lot of power in dancing and art and just showing up and Speaking softly and carrying a big stick vibes. At the don’t mess with our kids thing, like at the disco at the moral panic, our response to that, I got very frustrated with how much energy everyone was focusing on yelling at the fascists, when explicitly from the beginning Had been communicated, we were going to gather there to be visible to the public, being ourselves it’s like political theater we’re not there to fight this larger power, these people with all this money, and who are really aggressive and dangerous, we’re there to show up, be ourselves, and show the public this is who we are.
And that energy got drained away from being a protective circle, partially because of the way they moved things around and people were stressed out. But it just ended up escalating things and there was even one person who was trying to start a fight with Olympia Chud, who is a very dangerous person.
And and he feeds off of that. He loves getting people upset but so we were able to turn that energy around at the end by just having a catwalk. Like I was like, okay, I give up on this circle. We’re just going to use the sidewalk that, the barriers have been put up next to and this like crowd of fascists that had gathered on the across the like across the way and yelling and screaming and Drawing their guns, whatever.
They just dwindled away, because I think seeing people of all genders and body types laughing and wiggling their asses and strutting and posing, they were just so uncomfortable they did not know how to process that. We just played our music really loud, and, there were people in wheelchairs, there were, like, people who had never done any kind of drag before it was really beautiful, it was a beautiful way to finish the day.
And then we noticed that Raleigh was ending and we all scurried out of there because no one wants to be alone with a bunch of frothing anti trans proud boys. But yeah, so I think arming ourselves is important, but also it’s about protecting that beauty and spirit that we are defending, we’re not trying to, we’re not going to go do violence in, The violence is already happening to us by our social position like that’s that goes straight back to Paulo Freire like the oppressed to do not commit violence when they react to the violence of their oppressor I don’t know, I guess that’s one way of
Sprout: seeing it.
Yeah, wonderfully said. Thank you. I really appreciate what you. Brought up there about the tactic of using, joy to counter rage. And, we’ve interviewed quite a few people and then that’s come up a few times, the idea of Oh, fuck yelling at these guys and let’s just enjoy our lives.
And then they depart and so it seems like a tactic that’s worked numerous times to de escalate things in tense situations.
Honey: Yeah, there’s actually a lot of clowns. So in Portland, there’s actually like a group of clowns that go and de escalate like or show up to like right wing marches and stuff.
This is also a tactic they use in Germany. When the Nazis try to reconvene, people often show up in like giant poop emoji costumes or bananas and just mock them and have a good time. They don’t like it.
Sprout: Yeah, that’s great. So in this climate of severe repression of people’s basic right to even exist, it can be very easy to become reactionary ourselves and start wanting to line people up against the wall.
But I think that most people just need some education around trans issues. And to have trans people visible in their communities. I don’t think the average person wants to murder trans people. They might have concerns about the safety of their children, and we can address those concerns while championing and celebrating trans diversity and inclusion in public life.
We can show people that it’s not only possible for a society that is inclusive of trans people to exist safely, but in fact it is trans safety That is fundamental to any healthy social structure. What can anarchists do to keep this empathetic mindset when approaching this hard topic? How can we remember that most people are just scared and alienated and not murderous fascists?
How do we connect with the Christian community in tackling this cancer in their ranks and how can we keep ourselves grounded in the deliberate and intentional actions that we want to be known for?
Honey: Yeah, it’s a real problem with the reaction. Becoming reactionary is an easy way out, but a dark way. I think it is a big ask to There’s so much anger and pain sometimes I do know of there’s a movement to reintegrate trans people into spiritual spaces that was happening like a few years back called trans, it was like a social media campaign where people would hold up signs that say transphobia is a sin, transphobia is haram etc.
If you wanted to look that up, it was by the authors of the Black Trans Prayer Book, Jay Mace. The third, and Deja Baptiste. I think they’re both still around. They’re poet, activist people. And yeah, and I do know quite a few religious trans people, actually. I know many trans people who have converted to Islam or Judaism as a way of, reconnecting with religion.
But Being unable to face the harm or being unable to healthily reintegrate into Christianity after the harm that it’s done. But I know there’s also people, who have been harmed by the fundamentalist sects of their own religions. Yeah, it’s like trans people really belong In sacred spaces too, I think we have a lot of wisdom and perspective to offer there.
I know there’s a trans rabbi in Seattle who I might meet at some point. So there’s already, I think it comes back again to protecting the people that you know, like making sure, and by protecting them I don’t mean Playing white night or whatever, but just checking on the environment, noticing microaggressions and like also noticing the factors that keep people from being involved in spaces or speaking up, and sometimes speaking up. But for anarchists, yeah, I think keeping ourselves grounded as a spiritual task, tapping into our own senses of spirituality, following indigenous leadership, especially like really understanding what it means to be a settler on stolen land and how that will affect you spiritually.
And that, if we turn reactionary, we’re just more violent settlers. Like it’s not, I think it’s really, Society has really shown a light on some of the contradictions on Turtle Island, because, sure, there’s an Israeli left wing and they’re fighting against the Netanyahu regime, but at the end of the day, it’s an occupation that entirely needs to be dissolved and reconciliation needs to happen, right?
I think we just, like, all do need to remember that we are divine, spiritual, and complex beings, however that shows up for you, and not get caught up in this dour, militaristic thinking. And if we’re gonna fight, you have to think about being warriors, not just soldiers, right? Like a warrior, in warrior traditions, people have to study the arts and it’s a communal practice of keeping oneself strong.
It’s not just about fetishizing violence. I barely got into James Dobson because there’s already entire podcasts and books doing that. But it’s very important to know he’s a miserable man. Fascists are taking out their fear, paranoia, and misery on us. They want someone else to blame, and they’re also grieving.
But they only know how to be violent. Sometimes violence is necessary against them to defend ourselves. But I’ve learned and unlearned a lot from elders and teachers in organizing spaces or like even just online, like Palestinian queer leaders and teachers who have to retain their dignity while fighting the aggression of Zionists.
And understand that Israelis are really sick and brainwashed people. I would recommend the film Where Olive Trees Weep with Ashira Darwish for that. And also Yaffa’s Utopia on Instagram. Because a lot of the work that we have to do is cultural work in addition to militant work, I don’t think we have to take their shit or make excuses, but the spiritual truth is that every violence the oppressor does violate their own spirit, too.
It’s that term soul loss, right? Like, when you see Israeli soldiers talking about the crimes they’ve committed and the light goes out of their eyes and they’re just like, Put on this kind of creepy smile and are just like dissociated, right? They’re not able to be fully present with themselves.
They’re self destructive to be so destructive to other human beings. I don’t want that to be my problem, right? And everyone needs to take responsibility for their healing. But everything is connected and woven together. Unfortunately, we are connected to these people with this violent ideology.
And this framing, I see. Standing up to people’s bullshit as part of their own healing, as well as my own healing. If I’ve been taught to put myself down, and I start standing up for myself, I’m healing. If someone has been taught to put others down, and they start getting pushed back and put in their place, they’re healing.
The longer abusers, apologists, rapists, and mass murderers are enabled, the sicker they get, and the sicker the whole planet gets. We have a responsibility to stand up to them. It’s not about punishment. We didn’t actually get to do this skit at Don’t Mess With Our Kids, but we came up with a little bit where performers in white women like Karen drag did this elaborate shrieking grief ritual for a performer dressed as a man who was labeled patriarchy.
Who’s on life support and clearly dead. While these trans nurses were trying to help and watching with a combination of amusement and cringe. And so at the end all these white women prop up this lifeless body and they’re like screaming at their children who are like Hey, he’s dead and they’re like no he’s dead, right?
And they like make him walk out of the hospital and cursing the hospital and the nurses are just like Okay I think seeing what people are doing as a symptom of their sickness does allow us to tap into that compassion. It’s about it’s cult deprogramming, in fact. So the Million Women’s March they’re targeting these vulnerable women and then having them frame themselves as esters, right?
As these like heroines of the story, using this appropriated Jewish story about a woman who leveraged her beauty to save her people from ethnic cleansing. The irony is they’re doing the opposite. What the hell? They’re participating in mass psychosis, they’re being scammed, they’re being grifted, they’re supporting further colonization and expropriation, and a lot of them think they’re doing good.
So we really need to learn how to handle cult deprogramming, like the people Who are least likely to be harmed by that cult deprogramming are those of us who exited it and have healed, but don’t, aren’t target groups for them, right? And learn how to do that restorative process of reconciliation. I have had a few ideas about ways that people could intervene in specifically the Million Women’s March.
I don’t think they’re feasible for me to pull off. Especially given it’s in Washington, D. C. and a month away. But, I know if a couple of broke, disabled, and near homeless transsexuals can rally up the energy and put together a resistance event in less than a month here, that people in the D.
C. area, or who are at least a little bit closer, can probably find the same go in it and then to do that. The idea that I had was that because they’ve chosen their date, October 12th, as Yom Kippur, it’s the Jewish Day of Atonement. So it’s supposed to be this day of asking forgiveness from people you’ve wronged?
And instead they’re like, yeah, no, Day of Atonement means we’re going to like, call for violence against queer people. I really love the level of appropriation there, but yeah, my thought was just that they could be met by people all wearing, cultural costumes and or dressed as ghosts honoring our ghosts and our past and the people who have been killed and who have been wronged the AIDS victims the people who died.
In Germany or like the even the people in Palestine who have been being killed and just meet them with their sort of fervor, their like religious fervor with this silence and like spiritual response I, I wish I could pull something like that off, but I think that changing our tactic from being like, Oh my God, they’re so terrible, like everyone look Cause that’s just, people are going to get burnt out with the outrage and they already are, and we only have so much energy to look at terrible things before we’re just like, what do you want me to do?
And I think centering and grounding ourselves and seeing our resistance as cultural is going to be really crucial to its longevity. Yeah, I think we need activities that are regenerative, and it’s not always stuff that’s draining. So much of what we do is draining. And we want to really honor and uplift and share all that work and beauty that you’ve spoken of today.
Sprout: Thank you for so much for taking the time to come on today. We really appreciate your insight and the discussion around what can be done. We’re big on action in this podcast. Is there anything that we didn’t get to touch on that you still want to cover before we wrap up?
Honey: Yeah one small thing you could do is if you find any of those fascinating little Christian fundamentalist lit, like the parenting lit, the focus on the family stuff in little free libraries and bookstores, you can take it, use it to make word cutout collages or
I never wanted to recommend book burning, but there’s a lot of it’s very fun and very freeing to process your religious drama by scribbling in sharpie in books that these guys made millions off of. I don’t know if I shouted it out earlier, but if you want to learn more about James Dobson, there’s the podcast, I Hate James Dobson, great podcast, very funny, by someone who was raised with his methodology and ended up, Being a successful queer psychiatrist, I think.
And then there’s Strong Willed, which is about that Christian fundamentalist or religious authoritarian parenting styles and how to heal from them. Because these ideas hurt children. There’s a video I remember watching, I’m trying to remember this guy’s name. Might be like something Oliver one of, one of the Christian Fundamentalist Parenting Advice guys.
And he was talking about with disgust about how could a culture reject spanking children and how offended he was that he saw the sign on a freeway that said, stop hurting children, right? I think helping people recognize the ways that they are treating their own children, partially including children as comrades in your work is a really good thing to do.
Not overburdening them with more than they can handle, but like Understanding that our human, the human spirit is in us from the start, right? And the more public services and mutual network, aid networks we build, especially ones that prioritize children and parents and families that allow kids to exist there, right?
That aren’t just hushing them and seeing them as annoyance. The left pole, these fascist churches and ministries have, because a lot of people, they just want a safe place for their families. To find friends and to hang out and find community and spirituality. So yeah, it’s a fight on a lot of fronts, but it’s also just about how we live our lives and at least we’re allowed to have fun and trans our gender on this side.
So yeah, I don’t know, go to drag shows and culture events and meet people where they’re at. Don’t fall into the trap of being a bitter, isolated anarchist, rotting in the woods and glaring at everybody, sure, some of those, some of us are just going to be like that, but not everyone and don’t forget to wear a mask because COVID is killing us too, and trans people at higher rates than cis people.
That’s another episode, but thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure talking with you about this stuff.
Sprout: Yeah, I appreciate it.
Music:
Segment two:
Welcome back to Molotov Now! With some hindsight we can now take a look at the article by Mike Hixenbaugh for NBCnews.com about the actual October 12th event itself.
According to Mike, “Tens of thousands of evangelical Christians gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Saturday [October 12th] to pray for America’s atonement and for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.”
For hours, the gathered masses sang worship songs, waved flags symbolizing their belief that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and prayed aloud for Jesus to intercede on behalf of Trump in November.
The article is titled,”Christians flock to Washington to pray for America to turn to God — by electing Trump” and subtitled, “Conservative organizers of the “Million Women” worship rally billed the event — and the November election — as “a last stand moment” to save the nation from satanic forces.” It is filed under Abortion Rights.
He seems to have spoken to quite a few attendees of the events and asked them why they were there.
“If we don’t stand now,” said Grace Lin, who traveled from Los Angeles for the rally and came wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, “then the enemy will take over our country. If that happens, that’s the end.”
Susan Marsh, who drove from Maryland, said she attended because she fears if Democrats maintain power, her 10-month old grandson will grow up in a nation where he’s pressured to identify as a girl. As she sang and prayed, Marsh waved a large Appeal to Heaven flag — a prominent symbol of the Christian movement to end the separation of church and state in America.
“So many people are hopeless right now,” Marsh said, choking up as she spoke to a reporter. “Our children are going through surgeries that are unnecessary because their hearts are broken and they think they’re not who they’re supposed to be.”
Maryn Freitag was part of a group of about 50 people who traveled from Minnesota. She said she came “to stand with the man who God has selected as the president.” She then gestured to her hat, which spelled out “Trump 2024” in shimmering rhinestones.
Freitag refused to contemplate what would happen if Trump loses to Vice President Kamala Harris: “I don’t even want to go there,” she said.
Sandi Woskie, another member of the Minnesota contingent, overheard the comment. She leaned in and said: “Think Armageddon.”
“That’s right,” Freitag said. “If we don’t turn this nation back to the Lord, we’re on a fast slide into the abyss with no return.”
LaTrece Curry, a Black mother who said she voted for Barack Obama in 2008, drove from Ohio with her husband and four children. She said her support for Trump — a twice-divorced billionaire who’s facing a range of criminal charges related to his business practices and alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election — has led to divisions and arguments with her Black friends and family members. But she believes he’s the only candidate who will set America back on a moral course.
“I do think it is a last stand,” Curry said. “But God has given us so much time. Now judgment will come.”
Phil Heilman drove with his wife from Florida. They learned about the event while attending a get-out-the-vote rally in Georgia hosted by Lance Wallnau, an evangelist who coined and popularized the Seven Mountains Mandate — a growing belief on the American right that says conservative Christians are called to occupy positions of power in seven key spheres of society, including business, education, media and government. Wallnau was among the speakers Saturday.
Heilman said he gets his news from FlashPoint, a TV program that reaches hundreds of thousands of followers with a blend of pro-Trump political commentary and prophetic messages about God’s divine plans for America.
He worries about what will happen if Trump loses, but he said he has faith that Satan will be defeated even if Harris and the Democrats prevail.
“If that happens, it’s not going to be a political solution,” Heilman said. “God will provide other opportunities to take the country back that will be more surreptitious, or underground.”
Heilman, holding a large, red “Jesus Is King” flag over his shoulder, didn’t expand on what that might look like.
One way or another, he said, “righteousness will prevail.”
Mike reports that Lou Engle, the self-described prophet who organized the event, said God told him in a dream to call on a million women to march on Washington in order to restore God’s dominion over the nation. Engle is a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement of charismatic Christians who for years have portrayed U.S. politics as a spiritual clash between good and evil and Trump as a flawed leader anointed by God to redeem the nation.
Engle was there on Saturday and on stage near the Washington Monument, he warned of crime, religious persecution, abortion and the growing acceptance of LGBTQ people
As Mike reports the thousands of women in attendance wore pink shirts with the slogan “Don’t Mess With Our Kids”
Mike also spoke to Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the nonprofit Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Maryland, who said those apocalyptic comments are representative of a dangerous and increasingly widespread embrace of apocalyptic political messaging on the Christian right. The two had a great interview and the following is a long quote from tthe article but it bears saying in full
Taylor, who attended the march Saturday as part of his research, has spent years studying the New Apostolic Reformation and its unwavering support for Trump. He documented in his book, “The Violent Take It by Force,” how false claims about widespread election fraud by Engle and other Christian nationalist leaders helped fuel the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Taylor said he worries that the dire messaging — and the portrayal of Trump as God’s chosen candidate to defeat evil Democrats — could set the stage for more violence.
“This is about activating the most ardent Christian supporters of Donald Trump, putting them into an apocalyptic mindset that says this election is do or die for America,” Taylor said. “The danger is that these folks can easily be converted over into Capitol rioters if the right circumstances come about and if their leaders give them that guidance.”
Taylor — and many others in attendance — noted that the crowd was more racially and ethnically diverse than most conservative political rallies. Churches from across the country, including some majority-Black denominations, chartered buses for the event. Organizers chose to hold the event on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, because it is a day to atone for sin.
Conclusion:
So in conclusion get ready for an interesting election. In the words of Atlanta Antifascists, in their piece An Anti-fascist Guide to the US 2024 Election: “In case of a Trump win, our work, and anti-fascist work in general, will become harder.” And this is undoubtedly true. This is an excellent article and makes a few predictions about what will happen under a Trump or Harris win, and what antifascists should be preparing for and doing now to combat those futures.
As for Harris they say, “From the anti-fascist perspective, a Harris administration would largely continue the domestic status quo of the Biden administration. On one hand, based on prior behavior in office, this is a less damaging alternative to Trump on both the domestic and international level, and we would face less danger of being extra-judicially assassinated. On the other hand, this kind of status quo maintains all current repressive policies and simply kicks the can down the road in terms of fascist political violence. The Harris administration will promise legal and carceral solutions to fascism, and those simply do not work. Laws enacted against fascists are used against anti-fascists in practice: one example is the use of mask laws, which were originally supposed to affect groups like the KKK but are now instead applied by the courts against anti-fascists, anti-racists, and pro-Palestinian demonstrators.”
They conclude, “There will be work to do no matter who wins. Candidates and conditions may change, but our anti-fascist principles should remain the same.”
Again, its is a great read and you should check out our show notes or go to to itsgoingdown.org to read it. These Christian Nationalists are allowing their fires to be stoked by con-men and bastards, they are themselves fanning the flames of their own wished for apocalypse. Judgement i.e. death for all perceived “sinners” is their main goal, it is what they desire more than anything else and for whatever reason, they think Trump will get them there.
Things are extremely heightened right now, and to add the fire and brimstone of God’s judgement into this whole national political scene is alarming to someone who comes from a very Christian background, and knows well the intensity of these beliefs. We have a recommendation: Anarchists need to be aware of effective cult deprogramming methods, and begin training themselves on how to use them to get our friends and families, and yes, even enemies, out of this mess. No one is coming to save us, all we have is each other. If you don’t hear from us before this election just know that whatever happens, we all have lots of work to do outside of this electoral bubble.
Outro:
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Molotov Now! We hope you found it informative and inspiring. Our goal with the podcast is to reach out beyond our boundaries and connect the happenings in our small town with the struggles going on in major urban centers. We want to talk to you if your a big city organizer, we think we have a lot you can learn from, and we know you have much to teach us. If you would like to come on the show please email us at [email protected] with the header “Molotov Now!” and we will be in touch about setting up an interview and crafting an episode to feature you.
We want to give a shout out to our friends at:
- C: Sabotage Noise Productions for putting on awesome benefit shows, including one for The Blackflower Collective, and for being all around awesome people who help us with the upcoming events section of this podcast.
- S: The South Florida Anti-Repression Committee who have launched a solidarity campaign for two individuals facing 12 years for an alleged graffiti attack on a fake Christian anti-choice clinic that does not provide any reproductive care. This Federal overreach and use of the FACE Act, an act meant to protect people visiting reproductive clinics from harassment, is unprecedented. To support this solidarity campaign please visit bit.ly/freeourfighters
- C: We want to thank The Blackflower Collective for their continued support and wish them luck in their fundraising efforts. To support them or learn more their website is blackflowercollective.noblogs.org.
- S: Kolektiva, the anarchist mastodon server, is growing faster than ever thanks to Elon Musk’s stupidity as many activists close their accounts for bluer skies as can be seen in the fluctuation of followers over on IGD’s socials, join at kolektiva.social and follow us and other online activists on decentralized federated internet.
- C: Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network is holding a fundraiser for their weekly meals with Food Not Bombs. To donate visit linktr.ee/crmutualaidnet
- S: The Communique is looking for artist and upcoming event submissions, please write to [email protected] to submit your entry.
- C: Thank you to Pixel Passionate for producing our soundtrack, please check out their website at https://www.radicalpraxisclothing.com and check out their portfolio in our show notes
- S: and Thank you to the Channel Zero Anarchist Podcast Network. We are proud to be members of a network that creates and shares leading critical analysis, news, and actions from an anarchist persepctive.
Remember to check out sabot media’s new website for new episodes, articles, comics, and columns. We have new content all the time. Make sure you follow, like, and subscribe on your favorite corporate data mining platform of choice and go ahead and make the switch to federated social media on the Kolektiva Mastodon server today @AberdeenLocal1312 for updates on Sabot Media projects such as The Harbor Rat Report, The Saboteurs, The Communique, our podcast Molotov Now! and many other upcoming projects.
That’s all for tonight. Please remember to spay and neuter your cats and don’t forget to cast your votes at those who deserve them.
Solidarity Comrades,
This is Molotov Now! Signing off
Music this Episode:
Total Chroma – Driftless
THE GOBS – “13 TALL BOYS”
TIWHWYDPBD -BaptationN
Noble Hobo | Song for a Friend
Chapped – Belladonna Ciao & The So-Called New West Chungus Liberation Front
Even if the End Is Near by Evan Greer
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Angry Metal Guy
Humanidad ↺ Medio
DRANE_GrandEst
WE AND THE COLOR
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