1st black woman legislator in Vermont resigns after white supremacists threaten safety of her family

❝ Kiah Morris, the first black woman to ever serve in Vermont’s state legislature, is speaking out about her decision to resign in late September after facing repeated harassment — including acts of intimidation at her home that forced her and her husband, who was recovering from heart surgery, to flee to a different town. Morris, who was first elected in 2014 and won re-election in 2016, announced that she wouldn’t seek reelection this year — despite running unopposed — after facing vandalism, death threats that were seen by her young son, and a break-in to her home while her family was present. Despite her declaring her intent to leave office, intimidation from angry youths who would pound on her house’s windows and doors at night continued until she and her husband, who was recovering from heart surgery, were forced to flee her home in Bennington and move to another town. ❞

❝ Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. ❞

❝ The most original revelation of the current wave of authoritarians is that the construction of overtly antidemocratic dictatorships aspiring to totalitarianism is unnecessary for holding power. Perhaps the most apt designation of this new authoritarianism is the insidious term “illiberal democracy.” ❞

❝ Total control of the press and other media is likewise unnecessary, since a flood of managed and fake news so pollutes the flow of information that facts and truth become irrelevant as shapers of public opinion. Once-independent judiciaries are gradually dismantled through selective purging and the appointment of politically reliable loyalists. Crony capitalism opens the way to a symbiosis of corruption and self-enrichment between political and business leaders. Xenophobic nationalism (and in many cases explicitly anti-immigrant white nationalism) as well as the prioritization of “law and order” over individual rights are also crucial to these regimes in mobilizing the popular support of their bases and stigmatizing their enemies. ❞

#politics #fascism #history

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/

❝ And this isn‘t just about trans people, either. The NYT notes that the Trump HHS is arguing that Title IX protections against discrimination were "never meant to include gender identity OR EVEN HOMOSEXUALITY." (my emphasis) ❞

❝ 1933: the Hitler Administration burned the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft destroying decades of queer & trans research.

Then over 100k people were imprisoned/tortured for not confirming to gender roles.

First you burn the science, then the law, then the people.

The Hitler Administration set up the Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung (Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion) in 1936. The gestapo had an office compiling lists of suspected gay people from 1934.
The persecution of queer and trans people under the Nazis was long and drawn out.

It began by redefining and destroying the science and then quickly escalated to denying human rights and genocide.
None of this is new, not even the violent neutrality of the media towards the oppressed. ❞

So tell me, you “but all politicians are bad”. non-voters. Would the Democrats have sought to erase 1.4 million American citizens from existence?

And who do you think comes next? And do you really think they’re going to stop here?

And don’t ever give me any shit about this not being like Nazi Germany. This is precisely how fascism rose there.

❝ “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into. ❞

Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period

❝ "There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity," the report says, and no government entity collects data on police who are arrested. ❞

In case you thought religious discrimination under the guise of "freedom" was going to end with LGBTQ discrimination.

#religion #gender #politics #discrimination

https://twitter.com/Jill_Ornitz/status/1053354683371261953