It’s Time to Share #WhyIResist
Because There Is a War on Women, Children, Minorities, and the Disabled, and I Am a Target
Many of us are in profound grief at the moment as we see decades of hard-won progress in human and civil rights being overturned with the stroke of a pen. The Trump regime has gone zero to sixty in mere milliseconds. In the first week and a half alone, these encroachments are widely apparent. The privileged few in power are determined to leave anyone out who does not fit their whitewashed, affluent, male dominated worldview.
I Resist Because I Am a Woman and a Parent
As a woman, these attacks on choice, health, respect, and yes, SURVIVAL, have my blood boiling. It’s the attitudes that accompany these actions really make my skin crawl. Some people are better than others, some more deserving. People in need or otherwise disadvantaged want hand-outs. Hatred and violence are acceptable and the basis upon which we will make America great again. Locker room talk is given as an excuse for reprehensible comments about women. Women and children are routinely sexually assaulted and struggle to receive the justice they deserve. We are being debased, marginalized, and victim blamed so no one will think we are worth helping.
For at least the past decade, we have watched the GOP move to restrict reproductive and abortion rights, defund Planned Parenthood, attempt to eliminate women from serving in combat, restrict preventative care and screening services, block access to contraception, vote against equal pay for women, eliminate Head Start funding, and cut federal funding for childcare programs. In New Hampshire, they went so far as to far as to propose a bill banning women from having exposed nipples in public, and thousands of bills have been introduced in legislatures around the country that are designed to restrict a woman’s right to choose. This preposterous agenda has quite rightly been christened The War on Women. — Brian Orner
Women are trophies or mouthpieces at best, deserving of exploitation and abuse at worst. The truly disgusting attitudes are the fuel of this tyranny and will take out anyone in its wake. As an unwanted child, I believe very strongly in planned parenthood, both as a concept and an organization. And yet, here we are subjugated to an autocratic administration that claims to be pro-life, while refusing to consider their responsibility with respect to the health and welfare of those lives that are brought into our world.
I Resist in Solidarity With Others
The writing is on the wall: we minority, disabled, and women’s groups are cannon fodder unless we comply with those who have wrested control of our country away from those who embrace equality, inclusion, fairness, and justice. What does it mean to comply? Don’t require or expect any help, don’t require or expect anything you don’t work your ass off for. Don’t complain, either, because this is what useless (to capitalist robber barons) people deserve. Why would you expect anything else?
With a white supremacist, control and domination agenda at the heart of their endeavors, so called neo-cons have declared war on progress. This trend is occurring worldwide. At its heart is xenophobia, racism, sexism, violence, and scarcity thinking. It’s hitting women, children, immigrants, the disabled, and other minority groups the hardest.
Donald Trump has suggested that abortion should be outlawed, that women should be punished, and that females whom he finds wanting are “pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs,” and “disgusting animals.” He brags about sexual assault, he has been repeatedly and again just recently accused of precisely that, and he is now facing a lawsuit alleging the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl.
With Steve Bannon of Breitbart infamy now running the show in the White House, he will apparently stop at nothing to bring his ‘solution’ into being.
Maybe these problems don’t seem to apply to you, but I can assure you that they apply to someone you know. Someone who relies on government benefits, pensions, social security, healthcare, and even food benefits. Most people can’t get by on just one minimum wage job these days, and with these administrations also refusing to consider pay hikes, they are at fault, not the average American worker.
This is all part of a world domination blueprint created by people like Roger Stone, Roy Cohn, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller:
Our Survival is at Stake
These incursions on our democracy hit me in more ways than one. As I mentioned, I was an unwanted child who grew up without a father and was subjected to my mother’s anger, resentment, and abuse until I escaped at age 16. I am the descendant of dissident immigrants who came to the U.S. for freedom. I am mixed race, including five tribes of Native American. I am the parent of an LGBT/transgender kid who is anxious and depressed about our world. I am a veteran of the U.S. Army. I am a scientist.
I feel personally attacked.
But this goes even further. I have some chronic problems related to injuries to my back and hips. I have PTSD and the associated anxiety. I am, in sum, middle-aged, single, and disabled, receiving some disability benefits, but a lot less than I deserve because my one and only witness to what happened in the military (military sexual trauma) is now married and unwilling to give me the statement the VA requires. I would love to work more than I do, but freelance work is hard to find and sporadic.
It is a meager existence, to say the least, but I get by. However, I am extremely worried that the benefits I do receive (including Medicaid and food stamps) will be axed and I will be left with very few options. I have been homeless and greatly fear being homeless again. I believe in the social safety net, but it is being destroyed because those of us who can no longer contribute full-time to the uber capitalist system are obsolete. It takes years at this point to get Social Security disability, even though I spent decades paying into the system. It might surprise you to learn that these are not entirely new problems, but the product of years of systematic cut-backs.
To say that I find this state of our union utterly shocking is an understatement. It is also heart-breaking, especially when I think about the future, our children’s future, that is being created. We have to be willing to take care of people in need, but this administration has made it clear that they don’t care about anyone but the most affluent among us.
I started working at age 13, meaning I put in a good 35 years. I still work, in fact, I just don’t get paid for most of it. I contribute, but not in the right ways, according to them.
In Short, I Am the Personification of All They Hate
While there are those far too quick to label me a ‘libtard’ or a ‘snowflake’ or a whiner crying ‘liberal tears’, I am actually a progressive. Yes, I have socialist leanings, believing it is our collective responsibility to take care of anyone who is brought into this world. No, I am vehemently not a communist. I went to Christian schools as a child and now identify as agnostic with Buddhist leanings. I don’t hate conservatives, or anyone, really. Progressives and liberals care about the whole of humanity, including them. But many people are on a path of service to self or service only to those they find deserving. They are practicing politics of intolerance and nostalgia for a pre-progress world that they controlled and seek to control again.
I believe in progress, especially as it relates to the following definitions:
- more fairness, justice, inclusion, and equality for everyone on the planet
- advancement in general, especially as it relates to meeting everyone’s basic survival needs
- growth or development; continuous improvement on societal and cultural levels
- the development of an individual or society in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level
- thoughtful scientific and technological progress
- abundance thinking over scarcity thinking
- more accountability for those who take the reins of power in our world
What I must clarify is that my version of progress involves the progress of all beings towards certain shared ideals — ideals based on compassion and altruism and taking care of those in need. We progressives know that humanity is more the same than different and we care about the whole of humanity. None of us are free until all of us are free and far too many well-meaning people are enslaved by a system that increasingly attempts to marginalize, demean, shun, and yes, ALLOW TO DIE, many of our deemed-less-than-useful citizens.
We must be vigilant. We must resist. We must protest. Our very lives are at stake.
About Me: I am an anthropologist, futurist, veteran, and Mom to a transgender teen. I am also disabled and now must rely on donations to fund my work. You can support me with a small donation via PayPal or you can donate on a monthly basis via Patreon. Thank you!
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