Iamconservative
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” After being threatened with a defamation lawsuit, this saying has never sounded more like a truth. But I also realize this saying goes for the cannabis industry in general, I can’t draw a line for you.
It was a quick scroll through my Instagram DMs that brought Bess Beyers to my attention. The most recent message waiting to be accepted or rejected came from a user with the name @exposinginjustice, who left a handful of blurred out pictures and a message that said, “For fear of personal safety, this account won’t be up for long. But we have to get the word out there. WE HAVE TO STAND UP IN TIMES OF OPPRESSION.” I clicked on the profile out of curiosity to see what the mystery was about, only to fall into a twilight zone of a shifty conservative.
As eye-catching as the Instagram posts were, some saying “Bess Byers Stands Up For Breitbart News” in big black letters, and others just her echoing alt-right sentiments, it was crazy how quickly my craving for curiosity turned into disgust. Instantly I felt my stomach drop at the thought of having to hold someone so “beloved” in cannabis accountable for their deeply ingrained white supremacist sympathies and tendencies. I started shaking. I posted a few quick videos onto my IG story, and gave a brief overview of my shock, and I told my followers I would go into detail later that evening. After gathering myself and a few receipts on Bess, I posted a picture explaining my confusion and disgust on how a woman who claims to want to end sexual violence against women openly believes that birth control and progressive sexual education shouldn’t be paid for by our government. I went into detail about how the lack of access to birth control and federally-funded sex education programs put young Black and Latinas at higher risk for teen pregnancies compared to their white counterparts. I explained to her that her political stance wasn’t just politics, but advocacy against the health and future of real-life women and girls.
I’ve talked about this on my platform before — just because someone is involved in cannabis doesn’t make them progressive. In fact, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a white woman getting called out for privileged behavior in cannabis. Y’all remember Permit Patty? But the huge difference is that Bess isn’t on the streets calling cops on little black girls selling water. She’s connecting to historically-racist and homophobic politicians who support her backwards tax-free and anti gun control agenda. All the while reaping the benefits of an industry that was built on and is still running on QTBIPOC culture and bodies.
I was pissed and unsure of the best way to react. I thought for a while and took the time to lay out the facts, only to be assaulted with a bombardment of statistics and numbers that didn’t correlate with the conversation. Throughout our many comments and DMs to each other, I couldn’t shake the disrespect and annoyance that Bess was adamant at staring at a shrub of solution, rather than acknowledge the burning forest of issues surrounding it and all the people she’s cast into the flames. When an already-privileged white woman talks about how she doesn’t want to pay taxes, that she’s anti gun control and she that she supports Breitbart News… it’s time to take some flash pictures, wake up and get the fuck out.
Fortunately *heavy sarcasm,* I took communications for a semester at my local community college, so I’m ready for her well-groomed conservative Leadership Institute seminar training. Unfortunately, there’s only so much conversation that can happen with someone who doesn’t fully grasp their privilege and doesn’t want to. So here’s me, once again, explaining how dangerous and hypocritical conservative views are to cannabis.
Bess Byers considers herself to be “fiscally conservative, socially liberal,” but what does that really mean? Take Planned Parenthood for example. Even though she’s pro-choice, if the government defunded the $528 million they received last year from Medicaid reimbursements, like ex-politician Paul Ryan and her want, it would leave 60% of the 2.5 million patients that use publicly-funded Medicaid or Title X, at risk of not being able to access safe reproductive care. Being pro-choice in moments like these doesn’t matter when you’re willing to risk having Planned Parenthoods shut down in states like Missouri, where their clinics are the only places women can get abortions.
That’s the contradiction of being “fiscally conservative, socially liberal.” You can’t have social equity without financial equity. The idea that we’d all benefit from not paying taxes is a dangerous one. It doesn’t help redistribute the wealth to marginalized communities, it just makes the already-wealthy wealthier by not having to pay taxes for their much higher incomes. Think of taxes as the price we pay to live in a civilization. Taxes pay for our teachers, sex education, road infrastructure, retirement benefits and so much more that wouldn’t exist without them. Pulling federal funding from programs like these will be the bell you can’t unring. The thought of states being able to rollback landmark Supreme Court rulings like Brown v. Board of Education, Obergefell v. Hodges or Miranda v. Arizona, makes me break out into a cold sweat.
“Limited government” may sound nice to some, but denying the racial disparities behind hot phrases like this is harmful. When conservatives like Robert Mercer, who support small government, get reported saying things like “government helps the weak get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes,” it can make people do some double takes. There’s this argument that if communities are deprived of tax funds, they’ll rise from the generations of systematic issues and band together, creating this utopia of voluntaryism. This is really just another way for the government and white folks to wash their hands of a system that has allowed them to accumulate wealth for decades while keeping QTBIPOC down with Jim Crow laws, school to prison pipelines, wage gaps, redlining and any other institutionalized discrimination they could throw our way. All while still wanting to hold onto federal rulings like, the right to bear arms. Like, y’all know you can’t pick and choose, right?
This whole situation has been made so much more frustrating and triggering by Bess’ doubling down and complete deflection whenever presented with glaringly obvious connections between her political stances and white supremacy. Instead of jumping straight into how Social Security is going to run out in 2034 (which isn’t true), Bess could have taken this opportunity to really evaluate the lives she’s willing to put at risk for a national deficit that has been driven up by Republicans to use against Democrats. But she did what many entitled white folks do when held accountable for what they say: she showed the cracks in her white fragility.
First, by ignoring the deeply racist parallels between her fiscally conservative agenda and all the other Republican politicians she’s taken pictures with and posted onto her political account, @agenempowered. Secondly, by diminishing the human rights issues I have with her anti gun control and tax free dystopia, and stating lazily “you disagree with my solution.” Thirdly, she called me a “bully” for not backing down, which if we’re being 100, is her just trying to put me into the “mad black woman” stereotype. But guess what, Bess? I am mad.
It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Bess is not just working in cannabis, but being upheld as a martyr for censorship. Meanwhile, she defended Breitbart news and still does under the bullshit guise “I believe social media censorship on ALL sides is wrong.” It’s horrifying to see someone who works so closely with cannabis media outlets defending alt-right news. I mean, considering Breitbart has been spoon-feeding alt-right, half truths to new age Nazis and its ex-executive chairman helped get Trump elected, it’s safe to say they’re blurring the lines of “free speech” to fuel hate. So why defend it? Also, let’s not ignore that Steve Bannon decided to support Donald Trump for president after he started fueling the racist “birther” conspiracy to angry whites. The same alt-right conspiracy that Bess is partial to.
The same goes for her anarchic beliefs on gun control. For instance, on the day of March for our Lives, Bess thought it would be a good idea to use her platform to advocate against gun control because, “Our country (is) $21 trillion in debt and blatantly corrupt politicians, I truly believe we should arm and educate ourselves.” Once again choosing the national debt over innocent lives, all the while completely disregarding real facts. An opinion like “I believe a gun ban or increased regulation will only perpetuate a prison system and the police state,” is actually deadly. Also, how does that work? What news source is fueling this unfounded theory? The United States rate of violence isn’t any different than any comparing Eastern nation — the big difference is our rate of lethal violence. What could possibly cause that? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because the United States has the most guns in the world. Which goes hand in hand why we have the highest rates of gun death in the developed word. The latest scientific research has shown that “The simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearm restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths.” No amount of gun training can protect people from someone’s racism. We see time and time again white cops and civilians shooting down unarmed or legally armed black folks because those same white people are unwarrantedly scared. I mean, if Bess is calling me a “bully” just for holding a mirror to her face, it makes me wonder what would make her feel threatened enough to pull the trigger and possibly someone’s life? She did reply back to a comment that said: “Glock 27? To me, gun control means hitting what you aim at…” with a crying laughing emoji and praise hands.
Tragically, so much of this will probably go over Bess’ head, just like the many other comments she’s refused to reply to but has used in her Instagram captions (more on that later). Rather than acknowledge the contradiction in being “socially liberal, fiscally conservative,” she’ll probably list off how her “first boyfriend was black” or maybe spout off how she “does not trust the same government that’s oppressed minorities for centuries to provide a solution.” Without ever understanding that you don’t have to wear white hoods and burn crosses to have racist intentions. And using the oppressions of QTBIPOC around you, doesn’t hide yours. Seriously all you have to do is a quick look through Bess’ political Twitter feed, to see who she was supporting in the 2016 elections.
