January 20th, my friend Jennifer Flynn Walker put out a call:
“Emergency Rally! Please get to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC on Saturday (Jan. 27th) 1pm. There's a bus from NYC (leaving 7am from the LGBT Center)...We are sleepwalking into a dictatorship. The elite in Davos predict that Trump will win and if he does, he will implement the plan laid out in Project 2025 which will erase queer identity and round up immigrants in tents with a militarized government agency. I know it sounds wild, but you can read it here: https://www.project2025.org/policy/ Or broken down in easy-to-read sections by the volunteers at Stop the Coup 2025: https://www.stopthecoup2025.org/chapter-breakdown I haven't asked you to protest in a while. This is really serious. We need to shine a light on the danger. This is beyond what we thought might happen under Trump round 1. Please join us.”
My friend Anne-christine d'Adesky, the founder of the Lesbian Avengers and author of The Pox Lover, a memoir about ACT UP in Paris and New York in the 1990s told me about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for hundreds of retrograde bills, erasing government categories around sexual orientation and diversity, on the way home from a demo last fall.
“Its kindov an ACT UP moment,” said d'Adesky, at the time.
I started going to meetings.
The first action was in DC on January 27th.
The teenager would join me, leaving our house in Brooklyn at 615 AM on Saturday morning, to make our way to 2 train to 7th Ave.
Wondering if I was late, I thought of Tim, the ACT UP veteran, who used to always greet me, holding a space on the bus. I know he would have been here if he were still around.
Arriving at the Center on 13th Street, there’s always a tinge of excitement, a sense of history, of ACT UP meetings and town halls, that we have been here before. We can make history again.
The first to greet me on the bus were Jennifer Flynn Walker and Eustacia Smith, and then Jay W Walker. He called us together, recognizing the anniversary for the Matthew Shepard political political funeral arrests from October 19th, 1998, when were all swept up by the police. Arriving at mid-town that evening after work, in October 1998, I saw Jennifer getting arrested, the first of several hundred, as the police rolled in, pulling the organizers off the street, leaving thousands of people to roll through the streets, as police rode over people, and the crowd pushed back, joining others arrested, including Sylvia Rivera and Leslie Feinberg, Charles King and Keith Cyler, RIP. From that night forward, it was demo after demo, night after night, campaigns against murders of queer people, immigrants, outsiders, and waves of Diallo protests, “Its a wallet not a gun, police misconduct, 101.” “Bash back against the bullies in blue!” declared the sigh Tim and Mel carried. Wave after wave of protests against the World Trade Organization, the Battle of Seattle, IMF meetings in DC, battles for global justice, World AIDS day, for peace and justice, for communmity gardens, Bob Kohler’s funeral, bike lanes, against pipelines, occupying, Black Lives Matter, etc. getting ahead of myself, here. My activist memoir begins with these arrests, through the carnage and abundance of the years battles and fun ahead, with each other.
“I met these three awesome people just over 25 years ago planning actions against hate crimes in the wake of Matthew Shepard's and James Byrd's murders,” wrote Jay W Walkter on facebook. “And we're still at it! Adore and respect you, Jennifer Flynn, Walker Benjamin Heim Shepard , Eustacia Smith!!!! #October19thCoalition #StopProject2025.”
What an adventure.
Just being around them has pointed me toward something wonderful, a place where we believe in ourselves, we meet in the street, getting arrested, reducing harm, hearing each other’s stories, lamenting our errors, and acting up when we need to. Charting activist trajectories from there, the converses and divergences open into countless tributaries, stories with some of my favorite activists, as our stories move from here to @actupny @cpdaction and @riseandresist and into our current moment, still at at.
On the road to stopthecoup2025, I talked with ACT UP co-founder Eric Sawyer about why he was taking part. "The Heritage Foundation has already destroyed Row vs Wade and packed the court with fascists. They want a theocracy not a democracy. They've asserted their power far too long. It's time for someone to call them out." #stopthecoup #stopproject2025. Fight against the “Heritage Foundation and their Project 2025 to turn the US Government into a Dictatorship! Learn about their plan and fight back!”
Lately, Eric has been working on creating an AIDS memorial overlooking the ocean in Fire Island.
I’ve sat with him on the bus to DC dozens time for dozens of actions.
Across from him Jason, of ACT UP, pointed out that a lot of the anti LGBT laws in Uganda trickle in from Heritage and Arizona hate groups. Its time to push back.
Jay W. Walker was there to spread awareness about the evil that the Heritage has been doing, pushing law after law that target difference, putting a premium on “conformity.”
"They have been under the raidar for 50 years,” says Walker. “They tipped their hand with Project2025. It's a conservative movement, a Christian theocratic movement that erases separations of church and statem, with a slow progression of laws making their way through local legislatures, hundreds of anti trans laws, fights against diversity, language around sexual orientation and gender. "We're here to raise awareness" says Walker.
My friend Ken Schles, a photographer and environmentalist who has been on dozens of these trips to DC to slow i the trips to fight the rightwing tilt of the courts, was on the bus reconnecting with old friends from the Center for Popular Democacy. "Life is full of contingencies,” he tells me. “You never know how things will be affected. Project 2025 is a power grab. Heritage Foundation and the Koch brothers together. They see this as a move. Project 2025 is a power grab. It's a way to be a part of the conversation. They are pushing; so we are pushing."
In the meantime, my friends in Berlin were in the streets all week fighting the Alternative for Deutchland’s proposal to deport immigrants and those they deem not sufficiently German, a chilling proposal for a good many Germans. I wish we could say the same thing here. In the US, the American left seems almost nihilistic about the prospects of another Trump term. Its terrifying. He’s literally echoing the same message as the German right, with his roots in fascism, talking about racial purity and calling for mass evictions. Yet, people sit with their jaws dropped, seemingly hypnotized by the spectacle of it all.
And the problems continue.
During a rest break, my friend Son and I talk the efforts to get food and survival supplies to migrants arriving on Act B and 7th Street.
Jennifer and I catch up, chatting about schools and her campaigns to get people housing.
Back on the bus, Jennifer calls for us workshop the chants,
“Trump traiter, dictator!!!!
“Keepdemocracyslive, stopproject2025 “
“Heritagefoundation,adangertothenation!!!!”
“Trump traitor, DICK-tator, bye bye, see ya later”
“Fight, fight, fight, they're coming for your rights!”
“Keep Democracy alive! No Project 2025!”
“The Heritage Foundation is hazardous to the nation!”
By noon, we arrive in DC.
In DC, Anne-christine d'Adesky greets everyone, providing background on #project2025:
"We are here to call the Heritage Foundation toxic..." says d'Adesky. "This is an attack on our democracy, a to dismantle our democratic system. Many people do not know about it. It's a plan modelled on Viktor Orbán, a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. He has worked to dismantle democratic institutions, undermining Europe’s mission to be inclusive and supportive of democratic instuitutions. This is pushed by religious groups to give the GOP unprecedented political power. We believe in the constitution and pluralism. We've done a lot. There is a lot we can do,” Closing d'Adesky reminds everyone, “We need to stay united, to defend ourselves, to defend libraries, fight book bans, fight autocracy.”
“Fight fight fight, they are coming for our rights,” we chant.
Speaker after speaker connect the dots between attacks on public education and healthcare, global health and US aid abroad, AIDS services and housing, struggles against white supremacy and Donald Trump, separations of church and state.
Finishing speakers, we protest to the offices of the Heritage Foundation.
“We’ll be back! We’ll be back!” we chant.
d'Adesky passes me a pin.
“ The gop has a list. You are on it. Stop the coup."
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