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Trump win shows importance of grassroots organizing

We can’t just show up every four years for presidential race

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Donald Trump won, gay news, Washington Blade

Campaign signs in Candia, N.H., on Oct. 14, 2016. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump won. But this was no ordinary election. It has terrifying implications for all of the assumptions we have made about our country and continuing our progress toward true equality. Already Trump has elevated known racists, white power nationalists and anti-gay bigots to the highest levels of our government.

How did this happen? Is everyone who voted for Trump a misogynist racist bigot? We don’t really know the answer to that question. I suspect that people who voted for him have as many reasons as there are votes. What we do know though is that these voters accepted Trump’s racist, misogynist, anti-gay views. Those views were not as important as Trump’s promise that he would make America great.

What we also know is that the Republican Party has systematically suppressed votes by gerrymandering, eliminating polling places, reducing voting hours, cutting back on early voting and ignoring court orders in order to win this election. Those actions took place on the state level, where Republicans control most state legislatures and governorships.

We also know that Donald Trump and his supporters lied about almost everything during the presidential race. We know that fake news sites promoted Trump. We know that mainstream media played a major part in letting Trump’s conflicts, business practices and history as a sexual predator go relatively unexamined. We also know now that Hillary Clinton received about 2.5 million more votes than Trump. And we know that nearly 50 percent of those eligible to vote did not.

What does all of this mean, and where do we go from here? We have been so sure that political progress is linear that we have not done enough of the unsexy work at local and state levels that could protect that progress. Many of us engaged in internecine warfare – which of our candidates was more perfect? It is always easier to criticize the people near you rather than those who truly are your enemies. All of this needs to stop in order for us to resist Trump and his government-to-be. And we must develop new strategies to reach those people who simply voted against the status quo. Calling Trump and his supporters misogynist, racist, anti-gay Islamophobic bigots is not a strategy, no matter how much we believe it to be true.

Over the past eight years we have had the luxury of believing that we could work primarily on our issues because President Obama and his administration would work on the others. That time is over, if it ever existed. We must now take a broader and longer view. We cannot be only for our community. We must work together with all of those who are at risk in Trump’s America. We have to do the very non-sexy work of grassroots election organizing, fighting Republicans at state levels, electing Democrats to Republican-held congressional seats. This needs to begin now, in order to prepare for the 2018 mid-terms and new state elections.

Demonstrations are important and they make us feel empowered. But in terms of actual change, they are not as effective as continual, everyday, determined political work. We can’t just show up every four years for the presidential elections. The election of Trump has shown us that anti-gay, anti-immigrant, racist, anti-poor, misogynist bigotry comes in one package. It is now absolutely clear that if any of us is at risk, all of us as are at risk. We must always keep that in mind in all of the work we do going forward.

 

Michele Zavos is a long-time lesbian activist and founding partner of Zavos Juncker Law Group, PLLC, a family law firm practicing in the Washington metropolitan area. 

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Activists around the world offer potential path forward for American counterparts

Trump’s re-election will not stop fight for LGBTQ rights

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President-elect Donald Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Donald Trump early on Nov. 9, 2016, declared victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. My husband and I arrived in Jerusalem less than 48 hours later.

A Wider Bridge, a group that “advocates for justice, counters LGBTQphobia, and fights anti-Semitism, and other forms of hatred,” months earlier had invited us to participate in one of their missions to Israel. It was my first time in the country.

Our first meeting was at the Shalom Hartman Institute, which describes itself as a “leading center of Jewish thought and education” that seeks “to strengthen Jewish peoplehood, identity, and pluralism; to enhance the Jewish and democratic character of Israel; and to ensure that Judaism is a compelling for good in the 21st century.”

The staffer who greeted us welcomed us to Israel. He then pointed out that Benjamin Netanyahu had been prime minister for nearly a decade.

“Now you will know what it will feel like,” he said.

His comment was cold comfort to many of us who were still reeling over Trump’s victory. It is also one that has repeatedly come to mind as I continue to process the results of the presidential election and what a second Trump presidency will mean for this country, for me as a gay man, for the community that I cover, and especially for transgender Americans and immigrants who the first Trump administration disproportionately targeted.

The U.S. is certainly not the only country in which voters in recent years have elected authoritarian figures who pose a threat to LGBTQ rights.

Viktor Orbán has been Hungary’s prime minister since 2010. Javier Milei has been Argentina’s president since December 2023. Jair Bolsonaro was Brazil’s president from 2019-2023.

Netanyahu was Israel’s prime minister from 1996-1999 and from 2009-2021. He became the country’s prime minister for a third time on Dec. 29, 2022.

Hungary, among other things, has enacted a so-called propaganda law and effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children since Orbán took office. Milei’s government in August closed Argentina’s National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism. Bolsonaro, among other things, encouraged fathers to beat their sons if they came out as gay and said people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 are at increased risk for AIDS.

Sofia Diaz protests her dismissal from her job at Argentina’s National Social Security Administration. (Photo courtesy of Sofia Diaz)

Activists who protested against Netanyahu’s proposed judicial system reforms say they would have adversely impacted LGBTQ Israelis. The prime minister postponed these efforts in March 2023 after a nationwide strike paralyzed the country. Israeli lawmakers a few months later approved them after opposition lawmakers stormed out of the Knesset in protest.

LGBTQ activists participate in a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s proposed reforms to Israel’s judiciary. (Photo courtesy of George Avni/WDG)

Israel, Brazil, Argentina, and Hungary are four of the dozens of countries around the world in which LGBTQ rights have been under attack — and the U.S. will certainly remain on this list once Trump takes office again on Jan. 20. It is certainly a frightening prospect for many in our community, but the activists in the aforementioned countries have not given up, and their American counterparts should not either.

“I’m not saying it’s not easy, but the direction is so clear,” András Léderer, the head of advocacy for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told me in April during an interview at a Budapest coffee shop. “They (the Hungarian government) can try to introduce setbacks. They can make life miserable, temporarily, but, you know, you just can’t go against the entire world in that sense.”

A falafel restaurant in Budapest, Hungary, with a decal on the window that notes it welcomes LGBTQ customers. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Hamas militants on Oct. 8, 2023, killed Israel Defense Forces Maj. Sagi Golan in Be’eri, a kibbutz that is near the Israel-Gaza border. His fiancé, Omer Ohana, with the support of Israeli advocacy groups, successfully lobbied Israeli lawmakers to amend the country’s Bereaved Families Law to recognize LGBTQ widows and widowers of fallen servicemembers.

“It was a big effort, and a big success,” Yael Sinai Biblash, the CEO of the Aguda, the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, told me last month after she attended Golan’s memorial service in a Tel Aviv suburb.

Bru Pereira and Gui Mohallem, co-directors of VoteLGBT, a Brazilian organization established in 2014 with a mission to increase LGBTQ representation in politics, in response to Trump’s reelection said they and others in Brazil are “witnessing how grassroots efforts, particularly from marginalized communities, are crucial in defending LGBTQ+ rights under right-wing governments.”

Pride flags fly over Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro on March 20, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Donald Tusk became Poland’s prime minister last December after a group of coalition parties that he leads won a majority of seats in the Sejm, the lower house of the country’s parliament. President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the conservative Law and Justice party who opposes LGBTQ rights, remains in office as part of the governing coalition.

Deputy Justice Minister Krzysztof Śmiszek is openly gay. His partner, former MP Robert Biedroń, a member of the European Parliament.

Magda Dropek is an activist who ran for the Lesser Poland Regional Assembly in Kraków, Poland’s second-largest city, in April. Lesser Poland is among the provinces that had declared themselves “LGBT-free zones” ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Magda Dropek votes in Kraków, Poland, on April 7, 2024. (Photo courtesy or Dropek’s X account)

Dropek noted in her X post in response to the U.S. election results that Sarah McBride last week became the first openly transgender woman elected to Congress.

Dropek, like others, pointed out Russian President Vladimir Putin and other politicians respond to “antagonized societies” with “populism and (sacrifice) human rights.” Dropek, however, stressed the new Polish government presents an opportunity.

“What happened in Poland a year ago is still an important story that brings hope to others,” she said. “It’s a huge responsibility, but also work, because this is the time to change mentalities and educate using democratic tools. Because we’ve been coping with everything else, grassroots support and organization for so many years, you know yourselves.”

Trump leaves office on Jan. 20, 2029.

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Racism and misogyny are alive in America

Trump’s confounding victory will hurt many people who voted for him

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A smart, compassionate, African-American/Asian woman, in a mixed marriage, runs for president and loses to a felon, found liable of sexual assault, twice impeached, and leader of a failed coup. What could be the reason? 

I understand people are unhappy with the economy, immigrants coming into our country illegally, and many with their lives in general. But none of this can account for the huge numbers of white, African American, and Latino men, who voted for Trump. In a major shift, Trump won Latino men 54%-44% over Harris, and 50%-39% of white men according to NBC exit polls, and 20% of male Black voters nationally. We need to call that what it is and begin to have a real conversation in this country about it. They are all ending up voting for a man whose policies will hurt them. Whether it be a tax on all the goods they buy, or being anti-union, applauding Elon Musk for firing strikers, or giving tax breaks not to them, but to millionaires and billionaires. African-American men should know he refused to rent them apartments in New York. Latino men should understand he will be knocking on their doors looking for possible family members to deport. All of this overridden by their macho fear of being in a country led by a woman. We have seen this before in Hillary Clinton’s race in 2016. Unless we have an open conversation about this, it will continue to happen. 

Donald Trump is a threat to all decent people around the world. He admires dictators and he will emulate them. He will override our judicial system, using the Justice Department to get back at his enemies. We know this. 

On the abortion issue it appears women voted overwhelmingly to pass every ballot initiative, except the one in South Dakota, to keep abortion legal. It went down in Florida because though 57% voted for it the legislature managed to say it would only pass if it got 60% of the vote. Yet clearly, even many of the white women who voted for these initiatives, didn’t see the danger in then voting for Trump. It is very hard to rationalize. I hear all sorts of explanations on the various news/talk fests on cable TV. People pontificating on all sorts of things. Trying to determine who in the Democratic Party is to blame. In 2016 they blamed the candidate, Hillary. She didn’t do enough, went to the wrong states at the end, didn’t connect with voters. This year they are trying not to blame Harris who was thrown into a campaign only three months before the election. So, many are blaming President Biden for not announcing two years ago he wasn’t going to run again and allowing Democrats to hold a real primary. Who knows, maybe they are right. Harris could never escape the animus toward the Biden administration. She tried valiantly, and I think ran an amazing campaign. As I wrote online, we may have lost an election, but many like me ended up falling in love with Kamala Harris. 

There are a few high points from Tuesday’s election, like the victories of two Democratic, African-American women senators, Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware, and Angela Alsobrooks from Maryland. Then Delaware had a double victory, electing Sarah McBride to Congress, where she will become the first elected transgender woman to serve in the House of Representatives. When I write this it looks as if Democrats may actually lose only three senators: Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana, and Republicans won the open seat in West Virginia. Tammy Baldwin will keep her seat from Wisconsin, and in races still too close to call we could see Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and Jacky Rosen in Nevada, keep their seats. Then Ruben Gallego in Arizona, and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, have a shot at winning their races in what were open seats. All these results potentially showing the schizophrenia in the electorate in states that Trump won. They all out-performed Harris in their states. After all, a woman senator they know may be OK, but not a strong, African-American/Asian woman, as president. 

We will be dissecting this election for years to come, historians will be looking at how Trump could have won. But the reality for those of us living in the United States now, those who Trump has insulted and degraded, including women, African Americans, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, nearly everyone one can think of, we will have to live with him and fight back where we can. Hopefully joining hands to do it, as there is strength in numbers. We shall overcome!


Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

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What’s next for the LGBTQ movement?

Trump’s win requires us to organize, focus on protecting trans community

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(Washington Blade photo by Ernesto Valle)

These are frightening times for those of us on the target list of Project 2025, the blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term that he secured in landslide fashion on Tuesday.

Many of us are wondering how this could happen again. Kamala Harris is one of the most qualified presidential candidates to run in our lifetime. She ran against a 34-times convicted felon who staged an insurrection against the government and who faces a sentencing hearing in just three weeks for his crimes. A man who was twice impeached, who courts Vladimir Putin’s attention and approval, and who was found liable for sexual assault. Despite that last fact — and Trump’s bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade — 44 percent of women voters supported him, far more than the polls and pundits predicted.

Those polls turned out to be pretty accurate and Harris was brought down by lingering concerns over the economy and the toll inflation has taken on lower and middle class Americans. Sure, sexism, and racism played a role in this, but too many of us live in a bubble, insulated from the everyday concerns of disaffected blue collar Americans. While many of us crowed about last week’s Wall Street Journal lead story on the booming U.S. economy being the envy of the world, voters in the former “Blue Wall” states were struggling to put food on the table. When you can’t feed your family, you’re not going to vote for the incumbent vice president. 

So what’s next? We’ve seen this movie before. Trump will appoint a series of sycophants to run the government; he will undermine the federal workforce and try to fire as many longtime civil servants as he can. He will have a compliant GOP-majority Senate to rubberstamp his Cabinet and judicial appointees. He will probably ban transgender service members from the military on day one. The list goes on.

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” Project 2025 begins. “This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender awareness, gender-sensitive … out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contracts, grant regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Indeed, Project 2025 seeks to send us all back to the closet. But, as Harris rightly intoned throughout her short campaign: We are not going back.

The good news — and there is some — is that voters for the first time elected two Black women to the U.S. Senate to serve at the same time, Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware. Sarah McBride becomes our nation’s first out transgender member of Congress. She’s a formidable figure and will be an important voice for trans equality in the face of Trump’s inevitable attacks. At this writing, control of the House hasn’t been decided. If the Democrats can manage to flip it, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a capable strategist, becomes the face of our resistance.

We need our LGBTQ allies and advocacy groups more than ever. If you have the resources, donate to Lambda Legal and other legal groups gearing up for the many battles ahead, including over marriage equality. (Some more good news on that front, as California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 3, which will enshrine marriage rights in the constitution of our largest state.) Volunteer your time with your local equality group, especially if you live in a state like Florida with draconian anti-LGBTQ laws on the books. 

No one said being part of a social justice movement would be easy. Sometimes pioneers in these fights don’t live to see the end of the road. Now’s the time to double down on hard work, determination, and compassion, especially for the trans community, which sadly will take the brunt of the incoming attacks. Those of us who are a bit older need to reassure younger voters and activists that their efforts this time are not in vain. Harris’s meteoric ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket and the incredible campaign she ran will make it easier for the next woman to run. That final, ultimate glass ceiling will fall in our lifetime.

So for now, take a breath. Hug the dog. Take a walk in the woods, whatever you need to refocus. Four years is a blip and will fly by. The Democratic bench is deep. And the march toward full equality for our community is unstoppable. Setbacks are inevitable but we learned a long time ago that love wins. So fight on.

Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].

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