As a kid, I used to fantasize what it must have been like to live during a pivotal moment in history. For sure, I'd have been one of the good guys. My dad was a contractor, and I planned to have him build me a house with a secret room so I could hide Jews if Nazis ever rose to power here in our country.
But while history repeats itself, it's never quite the same, is it, and the differences throw us off. I didn't think I'd need to be standing up for Latino immigrants. I didn't expect I'd need to stand up for Palestinians. I didn't even know trans people existed. But I now find myself in a time when we all must come together to take a stand for all oppressed people.
On April 5, protesters will rally at Angle Lake Park in SeaTac and march to the federal detention center near the Angle Lake light rail station to call for the end of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and demand funding of public schools, support for immigrant and trans children, and the defense of public workers and services. The most recent attacks on immigrants, free speech, trans people, federal workers, and education are all deeply interconnected. This Angle Lake protest is part of a network of nationwide protests taking place on April 5.
Latinos who voted for Trump hoped to get rid of the "bad" immigrants. Just the ones who commit crimes. But there are already laws against crimes. Laws that have penalties. If there weren't laws already on the books, the actions we disapprove of wouldn't be crimes, they'd merely be actions we disapprove of.
We see videos on YouTube now of some of these voters, surprised to find it's their own family members being arrested and deported. "But we're the good guys!"
Rural folks who voted for Trump now find that farm subsidies are disappearing, that funding for rural and small-town hospitals and clinics is being cut off, that their library and postal services are being attacked. "We just wanted the financial waste to stop! We're not waste!"
I've heard gay friends say we need to stop standing up for trans folks because they're an anchor dragging us all down. They don't seem to understand that sacrificing one member of the family will never be enough to appease those who have proudly promised to destroy all LGBTQ+ people.
Many of those who oppose antisemitism are fine with non-violent, non-criminal folks like Mahmoud Khalil being arrested and disappeared without due process. "We don't like him! If our system protects the rights of people like him, it's okay to break that system!" And then when they find themselves targeted for protesting attacks on VA hospitals and social security, they're confused. "Wait a second! What happened to freedom of speech? What happened to the right of free assembly? The right to protest?"
The problem with allowing abuses against people we don't like is that there will always be people in power who don't like us. CEOs don't like workers. They want all the money for themselves. The wealthy don't want to pay their fair share in taxes. That's the job of the little guy. And they'll "donate" to politicians to make laws that criminalize our efforts to demand they do pay.
Our only hope in resisting this push toward fascism, this threat against unions and workers, against all of us who aren't the most privileged members of our community, is to hold a united front. We can have our differences, but our main goal must be to stop fascism. We can worry about the differences later. Those on the right are good at pushing us to argue with each other, but divide and conquer as a strategy works only if we go along with it.
No one gets left behind. We don't sacrifice people we don't like. We all have rights and we don't allow those rights to be stolen from any of us.
We don't like immigrants? Too bad. We stand up for them anyway and let the laws already on the books take care of crime. We don't like trans people? Too bad. We stand up for them anyway. We don't like Palestinians? Or Muslims in general? Too bad. Everyone gets to keep their rights or we will all lose them.
No one gets left behind.
The worst part of living during a pivotal moment in history is that it sucks. It's hard. It's confusing. It's scary. We want to resist, but we aren't sure how.
We need to find our strengths and do what we can. Some of us can email or call our senators and representatives. Others can babysit for friends so those friends can meet with the city council. Some of us can design fliers or pass them out, we can donate to strike funds, we can find other ways to offer pro bono work that supports both mutual aid and mutual defense.
Ultimately, what matters is that we try. Doing something is better than doing nothing. Maybe we can't bring ourselves yet to do the scariest things to resist, but we can at least do the minor scary things.
Let's resist now before we do need to start looking for houses with secret rooms, where it will be the people who still believe in freedom and democracy — us — who need to hide.
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A climate crisis immigrant who relocated from New Orleans to South Seattle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Johnny Townsend wrote the first account of the UpStairs Lounge fire, an attack on a French Quarter gay bar that killed 32 people in 1973. He was an associate producer for the documentary Upstairs Inferno; for the deaf gay short Flirting, with Possibilities; and for the upcoming documentary on break dancing, Breakin' Barriers. His books include Please Evacuate; Racism by Proxy; and Brace for Impact.
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