Kit O’Connell on Growing Attacks on the LGBTQ Community and Abortion Access in Texas

Explicit content warning

04/23/22 • 67 min

In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with Austin based journalist Kit O’Connell about the growing attacks on abortion access and the LGBTQ community across Texas. We discuss how anti-LGBTQ legislation, pushed by a wave of far-Right conspiracy theories that have repackaged trans and homophobia into a panic around “groomers,” is creating an atmosphere of fear and escalating calls for violence.

As NPR wrote:

Anti-trans rhetoric in Texas has grown louder in the past few weeks. Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion that likened gender-affirming surgery — a procedure that gives transgender people a body that aligns with their gender identity — to child abuse.

Days later, Gov. Greg Abbott doubled down with a letter calling on professionals, including teachers and doctors, to report parents who give their children gender-affirming care. The letter added that there would be similar reporting requirements for the general public, and consequences for those who don’t report.

Rachel Stonecipher has been fired from her job teaching at a high school in Irving, TX after she objected to the district's decision to remove rainbow stickers from her classroom window. Ms. Stonecipher also ran the school's Gay-Straight Alliance. https://t.co/qFYrEwX67S

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) April 22, 2022

O’Connell went on to report:

Despite a temporary halt to politically motivated child abuse investigations of families with trans kids, parents and advocates say they continue to live in fear as anti-trans moral panic sweeps through the Lone Star State’s GOP base voters and their leaders.

Texas continues to look for other ways to put pressure on trans kids, their parents, and their health care providers. In late March, Paxton’s office filed new investigative demands in a civil case against two pharmaceutical companies, Endo Pharmaceuticals and AbbVie Inc., which provide puberty-blocker drugs. Although approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of children who enter puberty early, they’re also prescribed (with the backing of experts like the American Medical Association) as a way to delay puberty in transgender kids who are too young to receive other forms of medical treatment such as hormones.

Recently, right-wing pundits and online trolls began promoting the notion that adults who support trans or queer kids are “groomers” or pedophiles – which is a modern spin on a very old form of homophobia. One mother of a nonbinary 12-year-old (who uses they/them pronouns) told us that widespread bullying in an Austin-area public school put her child in crisis, ultimately resulting in their hospitalization for emergency mental health care. (The Chronicle agreed to keep the family’s identity anonymous.)

In one particularly harmful incident, her child’s teacher claimed, in front of the classroom, that the reason her child is transgender is because they were groomed by their queer parents. Their mother told us, “Once the directive hit I was terrified that the teacher would report us.” Abbott’s anti-trans “abuse” directive has also made the entire process of getting health care for her child fraught with risk. “It’s really scary having to disclose [their] gender identity,” she wrote. “Because we never know who is safe and who is a bigot.” Like many families with trans kids, she’s considering leaving the state, though her financial situation prevents them from leaving immediately. “We thankfully have a lot of support from friends and family that would help [us] relocate if things got worse here.”

We also discuss increased attacks on abortion access and how people are organizing to push back on multiple fronts.

More Info: Kit O’Connell on Twitter, Fear, Anxiety for Trans Kids Under GOP At...

As NPR wrote:

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) April 22, 2022

O’Connell went on to report:

We also discuss increased attacks on abortion access and how people are organizing to push back on multiple fronts.

More Info: Kit O’Connell on Twitter, Fear, Anxiety for Trans Kids Under GOP At...

Previous Episode

Modibo Kadalie on Capitalism, Slavery, and the Rise of Maroon Resistance in the Great Dismal Swamp

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, with speak with author, organizer, and people’s historian, Modibo Kadalie, who talks about his new book Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, the Great Dismal Swamp, and the Human Quest for Freedom. We are also joined by Andrew Zonneveld, who wrote the book’s introduction.

From the book’s description:

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, many African people who were enslaved in North America emancipated themselves and fled into vast swamplands and across colonial borders, beyond the reach of oppressive settler-colonialism and the institution of slavery. On the peripheries of empire, these freedom-seeking “maroons” established their own autonomous, ethnically diverse, and intimately democratic communities of resistance.

In this new volume, Modibo Kadalie offers a critical reexamination of the history and historiography surrounding two sites of African maroonage: The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina; and Fort Mose in Florida.

In these communities of refuge, deep-rooted directly democratic social movements emanating from West Africa converged with those of indigenous North Americans. Kadalie’s study of these sites offers a new lens of “intimate direct democracy,” through which readers are invited to re-examine their notions of human social history and the true meaning of democracy.

Together we discuss how global capitalism rose out of racialized slavery in the so-called Americas, how the plantation system created a political, racial, and ecological model which clashed with Indigenous forms of life, and we map out the rise of resistance communities in the forms of maroon societies that included both runaway slaves, Native people, and poor whites.

We end by discussing what an autonomous approach to archeology and people’s history looks like and what the lessons of the Great Dismal Swamp are for today’s anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles.

More Info: On Our Own Authority publishing, Intimate Direct Democracy, various talks with Modibo

photo: Wikipedia Commons

Next Episode

This Is America #165: Report from Grand Rapids; Direct Action Reports; Eviction Wave in NYC

Welcome, to This Is America, April 30th, 2022.

On this episode, first we present an interview with someone on the ground in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who speaks about the recent round of street protests that kicked off following the brutal police execution of Patrick Lyoya.

We then are joined with Marcela from Feel the News as we discuss Eric Adams, the eviction crisis in New York, and attacks on the houseless.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

Living and Fighting

More from rally ⁦@GRPress⁩ pic.twitter.com/FbO6jO3vMv

— John Tunison (@johntunison) April 16, 2022

Over the past week, thousands continued to take to the streets in Grand Rapids, Michigan following the police murder of Patrick Lyoya, a “refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo—who was killed by a Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer on April 4th. Lyoya was fatally shot in the head while laying face down on the ground” following a police traffic stop. Following Lyoya’s murder, protesters held the streets for hours each night essentially laying siege to the embattled police station.

pic.twitter.com/cbB3t7Y2pM

— James Croxton (He/Him) (@jwcroxton) April 17, 2022

There was also a rowdy night-time solidarity demonstration in Portland, Oregon. As Double Sided Media wrote:

On the evening of April 16, nearly 50 people in black bloc gathered under the pavilion at Portland’s Peninsula Park for a vigil and march in honor of Patrick Lyoya...A local Starbucks Coffee Shop was the scene of both window smashing and firework-launching. The nearby bus stop—one of several throughout the night—was also smashed. Banks, too, had their windows smashed and received spray-paint.

The crowd arrived at its apparent destination—the Portland Police Bureau’s North Precinct—after about 45-minutes and confronted a rooftop police officer with a firework launch. Three PPB cruisers full of officers in riot gear appeared shortly after a dumpster inside the precinct’s parking garage was lit on fire...The crowd dispersed in various directions as soon as the police arrived. According to a PPB press release, no arrests were made...

As Canadian Tire Fire has been reporting, actions in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en and against Coastal Gaslink remain ongoing. In so-called Olympia, according to a communique posted to Puget Sound Anarchists:

On April 20th some anarchists...armed with a bottle of brake fluid and a can of expanding spray foam to carry out an act of solidarity with the ongoing resistance of Wet’su’weten land defenders and their supporters. The fight against CGL and its funders has been long and inspiring, and one that we feel needs to be more supported, especially through direct anarchist tactics. The colonial project is ever expanding, and its allies and funders are in every neighborhood and on every street. These are our enemies, and the makers of artificial deserts. They must be attacked– by any means and at any given opportunity, no matter how big or small the enemy or the action may seem. We do not expect this small action to stop the Leviathan and bring about healing to this near destroyed planet, but we hope to channel the spirits of this land, the lifeblood of all water, and the goblins of anarchy. We want to inspire destruction to all manifestations of colonial powers and institutions. We need it. The struggle on Wet’suwet’en territory is one that has explicitly called for and employed anarchist tactics, and we encourage you all to heed that call and support their actions through your own.

Meanwhile in a communique posted to Montreal Counter-Info, another group wrote:

Over the past 2 months, the RCMP has ramped up their continued harassment and intimidation of the people living at and defending the Yintah from CGL, at km 44 camp, on Gidimt’en territory. A few days ago, cops decided to arrest someone, using the pathetic excuse of “mis-identification”.

We believe that active solidarity is always important, even more so when our comrades are facing repression. This solidarity can be expressed through easy attacks, which br...