I’ve spent most of my life doing what I believe is right. While there is a certain amount of shame I have that my elementary and high school protests were centered on naive “pro-life” arguments, I learned. I learned the arguments that side makes – and then I learned better.
I’m proud of the work I did in college. I’m proud of my activism immediately after that and of the time I spent working in nonprofit agencies.
During my years, I’ve been taught a great many things. Here are a few of them that have served me well:
- I was taught that as a white person, I am relatively privileged and, as such, fighting white supremacist ideology is my job.
- I was taught that as a queer person, it is not my job to teach straight people that I am “just like them.”
- I was taught that actions need to start small, attempt to engage your opponents, and escalate from there.
- I was taught that history is full of moments of tremendous inhumanity and atrocity.
- I was taught that those moments were made possible by people who considered themselves reasonable by pretending there wasn’t anything wrong until it was far too late.
- I was taught that after each of these historic moments, there was always a chant of “never again,” but centuries later, it would happen again somewhere else.
- I was taught that if I am to make the world a better place, I would need to ensure that the last “never again” turned out to be true this time.
- I was taught how to peacefully demonstrate and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.
I am proud of all that I have been taught. But today, we face not hypothetical, but actual Nazis, sitting in our executive branch of government, infiltrating our police, and literally terrorizing our streets.
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This weekend, my fiance and I have decided to go out and face them. I am not going to lie; I am scared, but I am going to face them.
In moments like this, I am faced with all of the things that I wasn’t taught.
- I wasn’t taught how to wake people out of their complacency and make the people who think they are reasonable by not taking action understand that they are making evil possible.
- I wasn’t taught how to face a violent enemy that either doesn’t care if they are hurting you or are glad to do it.
- I wasn’t taught what to do if you’re fighting literal Nazis in the streets.
- I wasn’t taught how to engage in what amounts to urban warfare on the streets of my own country or city.
- I wasn’t taught how to live day by day in a country that is on the brink of becoming that atrocity that we keep saying “never again” about.
I don’t know what to expect and I don’t know how to best fight this. In the face of absolute evil (and make no mistake – these white supremacist agitators are the face of evil), I have to face the reality that I may not survive.
I’m not doing this or saying this because I don’t think my life is worth preserving. It is not because I don’t think that my children need me. It is not because I am deluded into thinking that my family and friends wouldn’t be absolutely devastated by my death.
I’m going down to DC on Saturday because, despite all that I wasn’t taught, there is one thing that I have learned from experience.
If I don’t stand up against evil myself, how can I ever expect anyone else to do so?
I’m going to protest neo-Nazis this weekend & you should too