by Coco Das
The Supreme Court is back in session, and we should do three things:
• Be terrified.
• Cast aside illusions about the normal channels stopping this regime.
• Prepare to take to the streets and stay in the streets week after week, then day after day, refusing to stop until our demand that the Trump/Pence regime must go NOW is met.
We don’t how they will rule on all of the upcoming cases, but if we look at the trends, there is great danger that the Trump/Pence regime’s program of white supremacy, misogyny, Christian patriarchy, and xenophobia will be advanced – effectively banning abortion, pushing LGBT people back into the closet, and furthering the war on immigrants. SCOTUS will potentially make it legal for employers to fire someone for being gay or transgender, uphold Trump’s overturning of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and give states the green light to shut down abortion clinics with sham “medical” requirements.
Let’s review some of what the Supreme Court has already achieved for the fascist movement.
• Upheld the Muslim Ban 3.0, rendering nearly every person from 6 Muslim majority countries ineligible for travel visas or green cards. The Center for Constitutional Rights reports that the Muslim Ban has, “indefinitely separated families, disrupted educational and academic pursuits, kept individuals from life-saving medical treatment, harmed the U.S. and world economies, stigmatized migrants, and stoked the flames of hate.”
• Ruled that Christian fascist “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” did not have to follow California law on providing information about abortion and contraception services offered by the state. These crisis pregnancy centers exist to coerce women and girls to bear children against their will and are medically unethical and dangerous.
• Sanctioned discrimination against LGBT customers by stating that a lower court ruling, in favor of a gay couple over the Colorado baker refusing to serve them, showed “clear and impermissible hostility” toward religious beliefs. This is a dangerous precedent for further Christian fascist attacks on recently won LGBT rights.
• Refused to uphold voting rights and overturn racially discriminatory electoral maps in Texas.
• Reinstated Trump’s Ban on transgender troops.
• Allowed the regime to block Central American migrants from applying for asylum.
• Allowed the regime to begin using $2.5 billion diverted from the Pentagon to begin construction on the Border Wall.
A piece in the New York Times correctly states, “The new term offers no shortage of opportunities for the conservative justices to block or roll back rights for certain groups – for example, women, L.G.B.T. people and undocumented immigrants brought to America as children – while bolstering rights for others, like gun owners and those who would knock down the crumbling wall between church and state.”
This is serious. The stakes are high. No more sitting idly by watching and waiting while laws are remade, norms are torn up, and people’s lives are destroyed!
This is a moment when we – people of many different views and experience – must act together in mass, sustained, non-violent nationwide protests that continue until the Trump/Pence regime is removed from power. We begin with protests in NYC and LA on Saturday, October 19th, and continue with nationwide protests for four more consecutive Saturdays that gather more people and momentum – so that in the weeks and months that follow, the movement grows to tens and hundreds of thousands and millions.
We cannot leave the future of humanity to the normal channels of impeachment – confined to a narrow investigation of the Ukraine scandal – or the courts, rapidly being remade by the Trump/Pence regime.
We must seize on the impeachment crisis now erupting, taking history into our own hands and turning dread for the future into a force for hope!
Puerto Rico and Hong Kong show us how:
#TrumpPenceOutNOW!
In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America