No Kings Changed My Mind About America's Future
Before this weekend, I couldn’t stop thinking about fleeing the country. No King’s made up my mind.
Readers of this newsletter know that, for the last year or so, I've been weighing whether or not I should flee the country for my own safety. As a high profile trans writer,the only publicly facing trans person associated with MSNBC, and also a very vocal critic of the Trump regime, images of getting snatched out of my apartment by masked federal agents have been haunting my nightmares.
Every time Trump makes new threats against trans people, journalists, or liberals, I stop and take note that I am all three of those things, and the panic begins again. The sensation starts in my heart and then radiates outward from there, sometimes conquering my nervous system to the point where I can only manage to lie down on my couch all day and watch another historical epic to distract myself.
That all changed on Saturday when I made my way to the downtown area of my Western Massachusetts town with some friends for our No Kings protest.
I didn't carry a sign and wore a plain grey shirt. I took part in no chants. I'm first and foremost a journalist, but I'm frequently smeared online as an activist. I went to No Kings as a journalist with an eye towards writing about it this morning.
I know some online, including people in my own circles, thought the protests were cringe or not radical enough or whatever, but I came away from the day with something new in the Trump II era:
Hope.
Just like I've seen my leftist friends online cringing at No Kings, I see those of a centrist bent calling for the protest to remain solely focused on the tyranny of Trump. That we can tackle other issues, like trans issues, or immigration rights, later, once Trump is dealt with.
I think these people fail to understand what brought people out on Saturday. At a protest against Trump, many of those people downtown were there because of how trans people are targeted and they've had enough. They were there because they see their Hispanic and immigrant neighbors getting snatched off the street, out of schools, or out of work by nameless masked thugs contracted with the federal government.
It's not just Trump's tyranny that makes people turn out for something like No Kings, it's the expression of Trump's tyranny. We are recognizing injustices stemming from Trump's lawlessness and want to do something. We don't compartmentalize issues. These issues don't exist in siloes. Someone could see a teenager from my home state kidnapped and trafficked across the country by ICE, and also see Fenway Health in Boston discontinue their youth gender affirming care program and get mad at both. Both are expressions of Trump's corruption of government power.
Trump is using power to achieve conservative policy goals. You can't divorce the use of power from the policy that power is being expended upon.
I don't like crowds, and we skirted around the main protest area downtown, reading everyone's signs and looking at the various costumes. I live in a very gay town, so I wasn't surprised to clock as many trans people as I saw at the protest, but I was surprised by all the cis people I saw showing support for trans folks.
Signs, hats, shirts. Old people, young people, and people like me in between. In Trump's tyranny, these people see the threat to their trans friends and neighbors.
When you're an independent journalist and writer, toiling away, following every ounce of bad political news every day, it can be very lonely. When you picture yourself as on your own in your little apartment it's easy to imagine federal agents descending upon your woodsy little town and disappearing you.
You forget that there are others nearby who also see the danger and will turn out if something like that goes down. When all else is lost, we have our friends and neighbors. Yes. even if you are trans, or a journalist, or a liberal, or even all three.
The No Kings protest has me thinking that perhaps it's safer where I am, in a bright blue town in a bright blue state, than I first thought. Sure, I could find more safety by moving overseas on a digital nomad visa. I could continue covering US politics from afar. Journalists from other countries have been forced to do this, but not Americans. But I'd be giving up the only home I've ever known. I'd be abandoning my kids and my parents.
So I've decided to stay and continue the fight. Here in my town, amongst my neighbors. We are stronger together.
We are going to win.
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Thanks so much everyone, have a great week!
-Katelyn
