Red Scares and Green Scares/
In class the last few weeks, we’ve talked about ways movements intersect as our lives interconnect, life experiences entangled with one another, gardens and housing and movements overlapping.
For several weeks now, we’ve referred to the old poem, “First They Came,” by pastor Martin Niemöller. The poem’s basic postwar message about the silence in the face of Nazi atrocities is familiar to most out in the streets. Certainly not everyone was silent. The White Roses were killed for posting anti Nazi flyers, others sent to jails and concentration camps for opposing the regime. Still, the point is the same, silence equals death, then and now.
At protests these days, you see signs paraphrasing the old old poem, saying,
“First they came for Mahmoud Khalil …”
And then we started hearing that those protesting at Tesla were being investigated as domestic terrorists by the Justice Department.
“Then the Tesla protesters.”
A few of us had court dates for a peaceful action/ sit-in at a Tesla dealership.
Most of the charges, dismissed....well mostly. Hopefully the courts hold. In the meantime, Wired reports, Musk is tweeting threats to our group. “The FBI Is Investigating Attacks on Tesla as ‘Domestic Terrorism.’ The domestic terrorism designation could give law enforcement sweeping authority to surveil people protesting against Elon Musk’s role in the US federal government, civil liberties experts warn.”
It's all part of the playbook, crash the economy in 1929, 2008, 2020, dems come in and support a safety net. A backlash follows, labelling social supports a welfare state, criminalizing welfare, outsiders, immigrants, society security, environmental safeguards, etc. Red scare, lavender, green scare. Patriot acts and panics follow, civil liberties disappearing. In and out of jail, demos, classes, bars, the usual ups and downs of a crumbling democracy. We've seen it before, these ups and downs, the schizophrenia of it all. Emma Goldman deported, Mahmoud Khalil in detention. It's exhausting. Run the government and economy into the ground, then people will want a welfare state, then a racist backlash follows, again, on and on. So, act up, disobey, hire a lawyer, support a lawyer. We've had red scares, green scares, lavender scares, two months into this we’re having Tesla scares. First they came for Mahmoud, then our group.
“Rise and Resist Will Not Be Deterred by
Government Threats” declared the Rise and Resist press release.
“Rise and Resist is a small, entirely volunteer group of activists dedicated to nonviolent, creative protest. We are committed to fighting back against Donald Trump’s corrupt agenda. The Trump Administration is now threatening us with a federal investigation because of peaceful protests we have organized against Tesla. We are not scared of this threat, and we will not back down.
On March 8, Elon Musk sent out a hostile tweet that blamed Rise and Resist and four other groups for the ongoing Tesla protests.
On March 10, after weeks of national protests against CEO and DOGE chief Elon Musk, Tesla's share price crashed. Musk personally lost $29 billion in a single day.
On March 11th, Trump said that violence against Tesla dealerships will be labeled domestic terrorism. Rise and Resist has never engaged in violence against Tesla dealerships or property.
On March 12, as if on cue, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sent an official notice to Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney General, and to Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI Director, falsely accusing Rise and Resist of acts of vandalism. She maliciously associated us with “domestic political terrorism” and called for an investigation of Rise and Resist by the FBI and Department of Justice. These ridiculous claims are baseless and without legal merit. They are solely designed to crush dissent.
Rise and Resist was founded in late 2016 in recognition of the threat that Trump posed to our democracy. Over thousands of actions in the past 9 years, Rise and Resist has not once engaged in violence or vandalism.
Donald Trump, a would-be dictator, and Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, are destroying the agencies and government functions on which ordinary hard-working Americans depend—throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, endangering social security and veterans' services, jeopardizing climate science and denying healthcare to vulnerable people.
We at Rise and Resist are committed to doing our utmost to stop Trump’s and Musk’s taking a chainsaw to crucial services and jobs, and their attack on the constitutional separation of powers.
Accordingly, on March 13, Rise and Resist protested at the Manhattan Tesla dealership in yet another act of nonviolent resistance.
We at Rise and Resist will continue to assert our First Amendment right to engage in peaceful protest. We will continue to engage in nonviolent activism. We will engage in creative acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in the powerful tradition of the Civil Rights movement until Elon Musk is fired, and Donald Trump and his minions are voted out of office.
The opposition to this fascist coup is proliferating in every state across the country. Rise and Resist is proud to be a small part of this nationwide mobilization. Join the Resistance — before it’s too late.”
Don’t comply in advance, say activists.
Your silence will not protect you either, Audre Lorde pointed out.
In “The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump” As M Gessen points out, it doesn’t stop. “...once an autocracy gains power, it will come for many of the people who quite rationally tried to safeguard themselves and their businesses. That boss from the publishing house is living in exile now, and so is that actress. Of course, many people, including wealthy entrepreneurs, are still living in Putin’s Russia. But they have discovered that to keep themselves and their businesses safe, they have had to cede ever more money and ever more power to the regime — a regime they helped build. Had they withheld obedience in advance, the autocracy that now controls almost every aspect of their lives and their businesses could not have been constructed.”
All week, we talked about it, friends helping make sense of it.
Saturday, a group of us met in Bay Ridge at the Brooklyn March and Die-In for Health Care and Against Billionaire Tax Cuts. Before the march and die and march in front of GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis' office, we all told stories about why we need health care, all of us. Veterans and newbies hope Malliotakis can serve her constituents and preserve Medicaid and other crucial health care funding. Kate of new alternatives told a harrowing pre ACA story of her mom's American as apple pie battle with both cancer and health care costs, opting to ignore the tumors growing in her body as she got sicker and sicker, rather than bankrupting her family to pay for treatment. People from my church and act up, rise and resist and seiu were there, building solidarity. The demo ended with a die in. There will be more of these stories if the health care cuts continue.
Ellen Neipris, wrote:
“March and Die-in fighting back against Nicole Malliotakis’ support for tax cuts for billionaires while her constituents likely lose access to healthcare and Social Security benefits. WHEN HEALTHCARE IS UNDER ATTACK, WHAT DO WE DO? STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!...“Hey Nicole, Here’s what we say! Don’t take our healthcare away!”
Make sure you listen to the full video of Kate Barnhart’s heart-breaking story about her Mother and what we will see more of with healthcare cuts. Thank you, Kate, for sharing with us and for being the inspiring person you always are.”
Thank you, friends.
My friend Brad, posted a note about our poetry reading the week prior:
“A week ago, inveterate scholar and activist @benjaminshepard invited me to read. It was an East Village poetry happening if I’ve ever seen one. 🗣️🪶 @allieryannyc collected signatures inside. Abby from @luckyonb popped out into the bar’s backyard now and then. I read a poem for a dear friend I had just composed on the train ride over. @rdiskinblack rocked us all with a moving poem from the AIDS crisis. I convinced a friend to read. Karen was quiet and that was okay. Chuck brought me a beer. The rain arrived, the poetic power reemerged inside. And Ben’s new book (final slide) already has me hooked, looking at big questions of the cycles and realities of friendships, of what gets forged in the trenches and in the streets. It arrives at precisely the right moment.”
Later that night, I stumbled into a picture of Howard, the subject of Ray’s poem in Ron’s book.
Strange scenes and shadows, movements ever receding, friends arriving, in the distance, departing, appearing, joining me on the couch, in my mind, in books and poems, memories and memoirs,Howard and David, Nico and company.
The feeling was with me all weekend, on the road to Boston and back, hellos, goodbyes, meeting college buddies at 815 am on 6th ave, for a trip back to school, listening to tunes, girl bands, leader of the pack, lost in a supermarket, the cannibal girls, going to godzilla movies at film forum, stopping for a photo at a rest stop, talking about Love and Pop and listening to Shonan Knife sing Top of the World, with a Bear and a Murakami novel I love on tape, thinking about the record stores and dive bars, we saw there in 2019, a trip to Dug, an underground spot, across from kinokuniya in shinjuku, in Tokyo, where... says the master in .."Norwegian Wood"...
“After German we caught a bus to Shinjuku and went to an underground bar called DUG behind the Kinokuniya bookstore. We each started with two vodka and tonics."I come here once in a while," she said. "They don't embarrass you about drinking in the afternoon."
"Do you drink in the afternoon a lot?"
"Sometimes," she said, rattling the ice in her glass. "Sometimes, when the world gets hard to live in, I come here for a vodka and tonic."
"Does the world get hard to live in?"
"Sometimes," said Midori. "I've got my own special little problems."
Between scenes, our protagonist is getting lost reading the Magic Mountain, just as we all have, thinking about the way we all go there, even the characters in Norwegian Wood.
In Boston, I meting with dad's old army buddy from sixty years ago in Ft Benning,
And drove back with Norwegian Wood playing, dreaming the way back to holy Brooklyn.
Reading Murakami late into the night.
Waking the next day to the familiar lament:
“Exile on Elizabeth Street, Eviction Is Back On for Lower Manhattan Greenspace reports the Broadsheet:
“Officials from the administration of Mayor Eric Adams may padlock and evict the Elizabeth Street Garden (a publicly owned lot that connects Elizabeth and Mott Streets at mid-block, north of Spring Street and south of Prince Street) as soon as today.”
Sigh. They are just salivating to take public space away from the people, a space where people meet and breathe fresh air without paying anything. Nope just condos and housing no one can afford.
Is it for affordable housing, asks a friend.
Always the argument, I reply. So many gardens bulldozed for affordable housing that never quite arrives....You know I'm a social worker, who worked in affordable housing. So yes i'm familiar with those who think of this as a zero sum game as if it's one thing or another, housing or clean and clear skies and open space. I am quite familiar with those who argue we need to bulldoze all green spaces for affordable housing that never quite comes. I've seen it for a long time. It's never good to have real estate developers with too much influence on a city.
First they came for the gardens, then the city, then democracy.
Support a lawyer, the aclu, the national lawyers guild.
PS on Sunday, make an afternoon of it for our book reading on friendships at 3 and a service for long-term act up member, Nanette Kazaoka at 430, at the Center.
3 PM
On Friendship and Movements, ACT UP and Queer Activism, reading with Ron Goldberg, author of Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York The Bureau of General Services Queer Division at the Center –3 PM March 30th 208 W 13 St, New York, NY 10011
430
Join us on Sunday, March 30 at 4:30 pm at the LGBT Center in NYC as we celebrate the life and legacy of longtime ACT UP member Nanette Kazaoka. Nanette was a fearless advocate for people with HIV, particularly in the early days of the AIDS crisis when she joined ACT UP/NY.
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