We Have the Right to Resist

“Be strong. We have a right to make the universe we dream.”

--Diane Di Prima

I’ve already heard quite enough of this “let’s give him a chance to lead” crap.

My queer, female, Jewish, Latina, immigrant family are, like many of our friends across the country, currently being terrorized.

We have watched and listened as our president-elect--and even some members of our extended family--continue to laugh and cheer for our assault, deportation, and sexual humiliation.

The jump to normalize all of this feels very familiar to those of us who know too much about domestic violence.

We reject that normalization.

Of course some of us will survive the next four years. But some of us won’t. That is what is true.

We have the right to resist.

The government poised to take power has promised to do everything it can to take away my daughter’s right to a safe and legal abortion. We’re looking at a cabinet that may include Newt Gingrich, a man who personally yelled in my face more than 20 years ago that that same daughter should be taken away from me and put in an orphanage because I wasn’t married.

Source: Oakland/MSmith

He, like the president-elect, repeatedly has affairs and dumps wives like garbage--so this has never been about Christian marital values.

“Let’s wait and see what the president-elect does,” the pundits say now. The man is 70 years old. He’s been assaulting and insulting women for decades. He’s been inciting violence against people of color at least since the beginning of his campaign. We already know what he does.

It's like Maya Angelou told us: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

I believe the president-elect is exactly who he has shown himself to be.

Now my president says, “We are all rooting for his success.”

Well, I am not rooting for his success.

The president-elect whines on Twitter that the protesters are “very unfair!” even as he appoints an anti-LGBT hate group to run the domestic policy transition.

Is he kidding me?

Just because a significant-enough minority of the electorate has told us that we don’t matter doesn’t mean we will not protest our own erasure.