Part II. A Post-Roe America

"White Women You Said You Would Riot."
Dobbs Decision Day, 2022.

DOBBS’ DECISION

In May of 2022, a decision was leaked from the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) had been asked to rule on the constitutionality of an issue that had been settled in 1973. Roe v Wade ensured the federal protection to abortion access, and now it was poised to fall.

Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organized challenged the precedent that the United States Constitution conferred a right to abortion access. Roe had ensured that under the right to privacy on medical decisions between women and their doctors. Mississippi sought to undo this protection, through a 2018 law, as has every Republican state since its inception. They passed restriction after restriction, skirting as close as they could to mandating forced births, testing the edges of where their cruelty could go.

Conservatives had been intent on destroying Roe the day the landmark decision came into effect. As we would see through scores of other actions, they focused on their attempt to control the right to choice. For many right-wingers this was a rallying cry. Abortion has always been a hot-button issue, and the anger among the right accused their opponents of murder. The dehumanization and hatred is something that will be discussed in great detail.

However, it bears repeating of a few facts. The majority of the country, about 80 percent from consistent polling, approved of access to abortion, or at the very least did not think the government should have power over the procedure. The majority of abortions nowadays were conducted very early on in the process, and often simply used pills, despite the horrific videos and stories that conservatives concocted in their minds. States that ban the procedure or place restrictions on whether an abortion could be provided, saw higher than average infant and maternal mortality rates.

Banning abortion did curb the procedure, it just made it dangerous for women. This was evident by the fact that abortions had actually declined yearly since 1973, as other forms of birth control became widely available. It was never about the “baby”, because if so the GOP would push for free lunch programs at schools, subsidized housing, food stamps, and more. And it wasn’t about women, because as history showed, maternal death rates were much higher due to unregulated procedures and “back-alley” abortions.

The leak revealed what we knew all along. That the Republicans were working to every end of the earth to undo the right to choice, and that they were going to win. The explosive document showed that come June of 2022, when the case came up on the SCOTUS’s docket, they would undo the nearly 50-year-old precedent, and enable right-wing states to criminalize health-care due to their Christian fascist ideology.

While we have absolutely no respect for the SCOTUS, which has consistently ruled on behalf of moneyed interests, and against the rights of self-determination for indigenous communities; we also understood what the right-wing intended. That they would do everything in their power to control the SCOTUS, and with newfound power, undo every progressive step made to expand rights in this country.

The Trump Administration entered in an era, where a seat on the SCOTUS remained unfilled, due to the undemocratic actions of the Republican Senate under Obama. During the Obama years, Antonin Scalia passed away months before the Presidential election. Age-old hatred for democracy and sheer racism against the President, caused the conservative wing of the party to refuse to fulfill their constitutional duty of voting on instituting the nominee.

They claimed it was due to it being an election year, which we would witness in the Trump Era to be nothing more than a bold-faced lie. Merrick Garland, now the Attorney General under Biden, was blocked from even being voted upon, effectively leaving the appointment unfilled until the Republicans could control the seat. This they used to win the 2020 election, promising their wing that soon rights like marriage equality and abortion access could be done away with, and the nation could embrace its roots in Christian white supremacy.

Scalia was the beginning of the attempt by Republicans to institute Christian Fascism. He was nominated by Reagan, and his legal briefs pushed for extreme presidential power, akin to a dictatorship. He advocated for the “unitary executive”, a philosophy that Trump seeks to use in his second term, to become “dictator for a day”.

It was his legal thought that allowed the Bush administration to institute sweeping presidential powers, to counter “terrorism”. Post-9/11, this country saw a resurgence of Islamophobia, and ultra-nationalism. The same ultra-nationalism that led us to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. That caused us to pass the PATRIOT act, which created a surveillance state that practiced torture.

Trump’s administration entered the White House in January of 2017. It began by nominating Neil Gorsuch. A benign “centrist” judge, he was the first to bend the court towards the right.

Then in 2018, Anthony Kennedy retired his seat. He claimed to be centrist. Yet as another Reagan nominee he understood what he was doing. He made way to allow another right-wing judge to fill his seat.

In 2018 his name was Brett Kavanaugh, another circuit court judge with a conservative history, and a direct choice of the fascist Heritage Foundation, like Scalia. In his nomination, he was under fire for sexual assault. However, akin to the nomination of Clarence Thomas, all proof of his abuse was swept under the rug.

Ignoring calls to resign for her age to make way for another feminist judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg held onto her gavel. Liberal types revere her as a saint, for she did make landmark strides in furthering women’s right to autonomy. But those of us who understood systemic issues recognized her part in enforcing the status quo, and her seeming addiction to power despite facing death. And she passed in 2020, two months before the Presidential election.

Despite their claims of refusing to meddle with a presidential election, the Republicans and Trump immediately put up their nominee. Amy Coney Barrett was chosen and presented the worst iteration of the Christofascism that the Republicans sought to create. As an ultra-Catholic and staunch nationalist, she had been part of a cult which subjugated women. One where she answered to the term “handmaiden” like the Atwood novel that many liberals read as the extent of their political education on the fascist movement in the States.

Now she sought to practice the principles of her extreme religious beliefs in the seat of the most powerful court in the government.

The court did rule consistently against Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, to paint themselves as nonpartisan. But as we understood, it was only an act.

The Dobbs decision document also revealed another concerning fact. The fundamental right to privacy underpinned the progress made in the courts over the last decade. The right to privacy and to prevent overreach from government, was used to justify legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015. The government could not criminalize homosexuality or transition due to this precedent. Yet as we knew, these would be a source of organizing for the right-wing in the coming decades. For years they railed against a society that had decided to move past religious bigotry and allowing their beliefs to influence policy.

Even without a Republican at the head of government, they could continue with their right-wing movement to undo the progress of the last ten years. The Dems were also part and parcel to this dangerous decision in American politics. As we all witnessed, the Dems didn’t care about us. Under Biden, the right-wing overturned Roe, the arrest of migrants continued, the infrastructure collapsed, bills targeting trans youth became commonplace, and nothing fundamentally changed. While abortion access had provided the Dems the votes they needed to secure seats, despite the 50 years they failed to protect it; this single issue threatened to outweigh the failures of the Diden administration.

The Christofascist movement that had catapulted Trump to power, was not going away. After the storming of the capitol, and the attempt at a coup d’etat, the Republicans understood that their war against minority rights would need to continue at the local and state level. Meanwhile, a case from Mississippi waited in the courts, for Barrett and the now majority right-wing SCOTUS to rule upon women’s right to choice and abortion access.

***

Another development on the issue of bodily autonomy occured south of the border, as abortion access moved in the opposite direction of America.

In Mexico, the Uprisings started two months before the murder of George Floyd, during March 2020, as the lockdowns began to be instituted. In early March of 2020, the women in Mexico called for a General Strike by women and those that supported the feminists.

Their Uprisings began a few weeks before the global pandemic caused the country to fully lock-down. With millions of Mexicans unable to work due to the global pandemic, the failure of national medical systems, and the tension of that time; 2020 was once again the perfect storm. The women-led movement focused on the high rate of femicide and violence against women, and only gained traction as millions were stuck at home.

Most importantly, they demanded the right to abortion access, and the undoing of laws that blocked the procedure. To Mexican women, they knew the issue of their freedom lied in their ability to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. A majority Catholic country, abortion had long remained illegal in States across the land.

While protests, much like America, erupted beginning in 2017, it took 2020 to come to a head. 2017 had seen a feminist movement, calling out cartel violence and the murder of women with impunity by both gang members and Mexican authorities and police. Journalists were randomly murdered. The Mexican State was corrupt, controlled by cartels, especially at local levels. While the cartel ruled through fear, the state ruled through violence, having slaughtered a number of their own citizens in schools and protests.

Fueled by the unequal power in Mexican society, and the truly horrific levels of violence against women, the feministas organized against Mexican authorities. As the world burned in 2020, the fires spread to Mexico. It began in earnest on International Women’s Day.

March the 8th of 2020 saw the largest protests against the federal government. While scores of protests had taken place across the country, in cities like Nogales and Tijuana, Ciudad de México (Mexico City) became the focal point of a day of rage.

M8 2020 is a day that will go down in Mexican history. It defined the women’s movement of that year and onward. They wore green, a reference to the various feminista movements that erupted across Latin America in the last decade. Green represented reproductive rights, and they raged from Chile to Mexico.

The police responded in force. They showed up on the streets of Mexico City like an army, with riot gear and chemical munitions (no doubt supplied by American police and weapons manufacturers).

Photos and videos capture the bravery of these women. Facing tear gas, feministas resisted the police that enacted brutality. They were hit with tear gas. Many of them, like us in the early Uprisings in America, had homemade gas and painters masks, to counter the gas. Women rushed to the frontlines, to pick up the canisters and throw them behind the police lines. Some brought hammers to break open the shield lines. They spray painted the riot shields, which made it impossible for the cops to see through, and kicked them back over and over again.

Alongside the Hong Kong protests of 2021, activists studied the tactics of anarchist women, who raged against the state. The feministas were known for fully embracing the use of ski-masks and balaclavas. They covered their identities, for fear of murder, and challenged the government directly on the streets. And they too wrote “ACAB”, understanding the tie between militarized policing and the violence of the state.

M8 marked the beginning of the militant movement against femicide in Mexico. Identical to their neighbor to the North, they saw large-scale protests against police brutality. Theirs was truly a struggle for life and death. While not all problems of violence have been shifted, unlike America, their movement carried forward in the years after.

They saw the laws begin to change in 2021. In September of that year, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that no longer would the right of a fetus be equivalent or overrule the right of the life of a woman. While it was not full legalization, it marked the beginning of decriminalization across the country. Across the various states that comprise the nation, abortion began to be decriminalized and legalized in Mexico.

It is important to study the feministas, and note the vast differences in Mexican and American society. In Mexico, the M8 movement altered the laws to expand the rights of women in the land. In the USA, a racist and fascist backlash to the Uprisings saw sweeping legislation that targeted the right to protest. Mexico moved to meet the demands of their women, while state governments in America moved to criminalize the culture war, and restrict women’s access to abortion and healthcare.

On June 24th 2022, the SCOTUS ruled to overturn Roe v Wade. They ruled, as the leaked decision predicted, in favor of taking away a fundamental right in society for women. We were moving backwards, as Mexican society moved forward. This reactionary decision ignited a new culture war in American society, one which threatens the very freedoms that we had come to know, and one that threatens to see us descend into fascism.

THE POST-ROE PROTESTS

Portland, Or. — Upon the news that abortion would soon no longer be the law of the land, American women took to the streets. All around the country, emergency rallies gathered to demand that the SCOTUS change their supposed ruling. They urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the dangerous precedent they set in their decision.

The leak, published by Politico on May 2nd 2022, marked the largest breach of the court’s confidentiality. It ignited a firestorm immediately, both from those whose rights were set to be undone, and those who sought to take away their rights in silence. Both parties tried to place blame on one or the other. However, the highest court of the land should not operate in secrecy. The SCOTUS should be abolished, and judges should not be venerated as lords in our democracy, kings and queens that can destroy fundamental rights.

Regardless, the right to abortion became a rallying cry. So the next day, the 3rd of May, I biked downtown, to the rally called for in front of the Injustice Center, in the Park Blocks. It was a few days before my 23rd birthday, and two days after May Day. As such, the anarchists felt it was a pivotal time, and we took to the streets to support reproductive rights.

The Federal Courthouse is still boarded up, and that day, a message was tagged on the cinder blocks that held down the horrid fence where we faced off with the Feds two years prior. It read, in pink paint “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL”.

I showed up to a rally at Chapman Square of a few hundred. It was called for by Portland DSA, who did well to muster numbers in the wake of the leaked decision. It was mostly liberal types and folks bearing signs demanding that their rights be respected. The signs were creative.

A few speeches were given, in which we were urged to protect abortion access in our state. One of the DSA types spoke at length about the new “Underground Railroad’’. While the original Underground Railroad was a network that helped black people flee the South, during the times of slavery; the new term referred to the new wave of criminalization of abortion access. Through nationwide networks, we needed to aid and abet abortion. This meant facilitating the safe travel of women from conservative states with stringent restrictions, and outright bans, to states like ours, where we had a number of resources for women seeking the procedure.

With that, the rally came to an end. It was a bit disconcerting. I expected immediate rage from women that understood their fundamental rights were on the chopping block, but it was hard to push militant tactics, in a state that codified abortion rights.

In the meantime, the urgency was pointed out on social media. Activists discussed the M8 movement in Mexico, and the tactics used to secure a landmark victory for feminism. They created art and graphics in green and purple, the color of the feministas. A meme was posted on Instagram that I couldn’t help but share. It portrayed a protester dressed in black bloc, wearing a helmet to shield from flashbangs, a shield to defend against oncoming rubber bullets, a gas mask to counter tear gas, and a hammer to break open riot lines. Above it, “Reproductive Autonomy Gear, Circa 2023”.

As I witnessed, everyone was angry and wanted action. The liberals remained discontent at the Republicans for reversing the right to abortion access, the anarchists understood our battle was with the state that led us to the same austerity politics. White women had sworn, as they took to the streets in 2017, against Donald Trump, that they would not willingly accept the overturning of Roe.

A week and a half later, on the 14th of May, another rally was called to gather once again the park blocks. This time, a crowd of several thousand showed up to protest the reversal of Roe. It brought all types of political activists, from anarchists to Democrat women (who celebrated Biden ignoring the fact that this was occurring under his watch and with a Democratic majority in Congress).

The famous World On Fire Department (W.O.F.D.) fire truck stood idle on Third Avenue and Salmon Street. The driver had provided support to protests for years, especially during the long hot summer of 2020. On the top of the truck, he often switched out billboards. This time, the message read “REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS FOR ALL”. On the side of the yellow vehicle, a white banner hung that read “WHITE WOMEN YOU SAID YOU WOULD RIOT”, with pictures of Molotov cocktails.

There was a real juxtaposition to the rally, which some were beginning to get agitated by. The anarchists and the antifascists stood at another corner of the park, watching the display of many people giving their speech to be recorded. Alongside every road and entrance leading to the open park, signs and banners were brought. Some were hand painted, some were printed, but all urged the government to respect the fundamental right to medical privacy.

A series of speakers kept the crowd in place for hours, giving all sorts of talks, one after the other. Several people shared their campaigns to run for offices in Portland and the greater Metro. Fair-weather protesters that snapped selfies with their signs, often with the logo of Planned Parenthood. The Women’s March under the Trump administration, also called for their members on the list to gather at the daytime action, in their pink pussy hats. Above the crowd surrounding the platform, I spotted the black flag of Anarchy, with the circle A.

While we appreciated the liberal support, we knew they would be gone in a week, and that they failed to understand the fundamental flaw in American society that had led us to this point. The Dems that they held as their saviors in this dark time had also refused to codify Roe for 50 years. They protested Trump’s fascism, but during the Biden administration they had remained silent as the GOP delved fully into the culture war,.

The liberal women who voted “Blue no matter who” despite the evident failures of neoliberalism and the Biden administration, were often dressed in their red and white Handmaiden costumes. The series had been a culture flash-point under Trump. The book depicted a world in which America descended down its roots in a patriarchal and Christofascist movement. They were now seeing Margaret Atwood’s book become a reality, and so pulled out their red dresses they wore during the Trump years. Yet, I understood that this would be the extent of their protest.

Some party-members arrived and tried to get people to sign their petitions. As an anarchist, I urge anyone at these bening rallies to refuse to sign your name onto a ballot measure in a protest. These lists can often be honey-pots by local authorities. It’s the same thing with RVSP-ing to a protest. The campaign may be real and something to support, but why put your name on a list?

An infamous hate preacher from Seattle named Matthew had shown up to agitate the crowd. He was joined by the other hate preachers that had made a name for themselves for standing at the entrance to the Portland Saturday Market every week as they screamed and ranted about Christ, and the dangers of homosexuality and smoking marijuana.

We weren’t having it. They showed up to show off that they had won over the court, and soon they would be able to go after women they sought to control. It was disgusting, and soon a group dressed in black began to confront them. They’d kick the speakers and try to steal the microphones attached. Some screamed at them and flipped them off. I spotted a lesbian and a gay couple making out in front of them at times, which made the men furious.

Finally, some of the hate preachers were hit with pepper spray, and their signs were stolen from their posts. The antifascists grabbed a book they carried, and brought the sign into the street. Then they began to burn the hateful placard.

This caused a number of older liberal types to throw a fit. They chastised us for harassing the men who showed up to spread hate. They wanted us to listen to them give speeches in the center of the square, instead of directly confronting those who supported Christofascism. An old man tried to extinguish the flame. I stood in front of him and told him to fuck off. It was laughable truly, how upset they were with the burning, but not with the men screaming about “fags” and “commies” destroying the nation.

But burned it did, and the book and poster went up in flames. With that, the fundamentalists packed their things and headed home. Matthew was soon arrested, once again, for disturbing the peace, and dropped off in another part of town by the Portland Police. The situation was handled well by the antifascists, as the liberals attempted to police our behavior.

As the rally waned on, a large group began to be extremely irritated. It was much of the same propaganda that told us to register to vote, that our vote would undo this dangerous precedent; discounting the fact that the Democrats had held a majority for a number of various years and administrations, and as such should have codified Roe v Wade. But as we anarchists and antifascists understood, the Dems relied on the manufactured rage of protecting Roe, promising every election cycle to protect it by law, just so they could get the votes. They too maintained the status quo.

Because of the endless speeches from people seeking publicity and asking that we vote for Dems once again, we began to line up towards the speakers. I was in the back of the crowd, on the sidewalk, to capture the scene. A group of leftists began to disrupt the rally. They were done waiting around to march, and so made their discontent known. One anarchist took the mic, and called out the lack of action, and the black and brown communities that had been targeted for years, by shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics in their neighborhoods, without much liberal outcry. Now that white women were the ones facing oppression, they cared.

It caused infighting amongst the crowd. Afterwards, we lined up on the street. The W.O.F.D. truck moved to the front, ready to lead the march forward. Eventually, members of the crowd that wanted a real protest joined us. They waited for us to demand real action, and they too were tired of standing in a circle. The rally waned out and now they were ready to march.

And march we did. It was a powerful protest, as thousands flowed down 4th Avenue. We streamed into downtown Portland, all the while chanting “MY BODY! MY CHOICE!”

A few activists brought flares, which they lit as we moved past the Apple Store. Cloud of green and purple billowed above the crowd, covering the marchers in smoke. It was beautiful, as young and old marched hand in hand to demand that Roe be upheld. It remained “peaceful”, a procession around town.

Eventually the march returned to our rallying point. We were thanked for our attendance, and asked to continue to show up for abortion access. This would not be the end, and we would see who would return in the coming months.

***

All across the country, we organized against the downfall of Roe. A month later, on June 24th 2022, the Dobbs v Jackson decision was announced. The peaceful protests that erupted in the States, failed to defend Roe. The justices undid the fundamental right to medical privacy in a controversial 5–4 ruling, as we expected. It marked a dark day in American history.

What should be pointed out is that resistance took many forms, and not all protests followed the controlled protests that Dems demanded, despite their supposed disdain of the Dobbs decision. Reproductive rights required a diversity of tactics, and activists began to take matters into their own hands.

Many of them had learned from the George Floyd Uprisings. We activists knew how to organize. Another lesson was from the fallout of the Capitol attack on January 6th (and the incidents at various State Capitols throughout that long dark day, from Olympia, to Salem, to Sacramento). The police’s response was clearly unequal, as we saw from the protests during the long hot summer of 2020. It would again be made clear, as abortion activists flooded the streets of the capital cities in states that passed the most inhumane restrictions on abortion access like Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

In Arizona, at the State Capitol in Phoenix, abortion activists held an emergency rally. Arizona had chosen to temporarily block abortion access, based upon an 1800s law and questions of “legal clarity”.

Thousands of people filled the plaza, in front of the large stone Senate building. They marched through the city, and returned to the government structure, in thousands. The State Senate was in session, and the activists let their discontent be known as droves continued to gather on the campus.

According to police, some protesters began to beat their fists on the doors. This simple act caused scores of law enforcement officers to line the rooftop. They began to fire down canister after canister at the protesters on the ground. Some were thrown back, but from their position high above the crowd, the capitol security were able to force thousands to move off of the campus with tear gas filling the entire square. A monument was vandalized, and to this, they unleashed even more gas into the night.

All around the country, millions gathered at their State Capitols, particularly in the states with the most extreme laws ready to be put in place once Roe fell.

In light of the leaked decision, the home addresses of the SCOTUS members were revealed to the general public. Posts that shared these locations reminded us that “those taking away your bodily autonomy, have names and addresses”.

As such, activists began to show up in the neighborhoods of the justices, challenging them head on. Direct actions were called at the multi-million dollar estates of justices like Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and the rest that ruled against the rights and lives of women.

These gatherings at their private residences became controversial. Liberals asked us to protest peacefully, without “threatening” justices. Op-eds were written criticizing the left for refusing to take the decision lying down. They claimed to support the right to assemble, but asked that we follow the “peaceful” route of demonstrating on the sidewalks with our signs, at City Halls. The Dems desired controlled opposition. We understood that the issue was a matter of life and death and that the justices didn’t deserve to be comfortable while setting the country down a dark and dangerous path.

Due to the escalation of tactics that saw about a hundred people rally in the SCOTUS’ upper-class suburban homes, the Dems condemned the left. They denounced the protests, and worked quickly to counter the insurgency across the country. The White House released a statement, claiming that while Biden supported the first amendment, he did not condone “violence, threats, or vandalism”. To note, none of the few rallies at their houses resulted in a single instance of these acts. And even if they did, it was the least they deserved.

Their insistence was that protesting for our rights could lead to a precedent which influences the judges decision-making. A year later, we would discover that all of the justices were taking bribes from private parties. Thomas was the worst of them, having a home bought for him, his children’s colleges paid for, and flights and vacations paid for by wealthy right-wing benefactors. To that, the Dems continue to do nothing, despite the illegality of these attempts to lobby the court.

Instead, they focused on silencing the activists. With bipartisan support, Congress moved quickly to criminalize these protests. They voted overwhelmingly to finance the Supreme Court Police to provide 24-hour security details to all members of the SCOTUS. They couldn’t act or vote to codify Roe, or relieve student loans, finance the government, or meet the demands of the hundreds of millions that supported the right to choice. But they could target protesters with severe penalties and fines, while defending the court that did not represent public opinion. States like Florida celebrated the move and passed their own laws to criminalize the right to petition public officials.

Another point of contention was the protests against the Catholic Church. The Catholics represent the largest voting block of those that worked to overturn bodily autonomy. Their fundamental views sought to influence the government, to ban abortion access. In this country, churches enjoy a tax-exempt status, and as such should not use their religion or platform for political organizing. The two most fanatical and fundamentalist justices in the SCOTUS, Barrett and Thomas, were also staunch Catholics.

They represented a minority in the court of public opinion. The evangelicals were only 20 percent of the country, the same vocal and vile minority that supported the MAGA movement. Now they worked to criminalize reproductive healthcare across the country.

The Catholic Church had been under fire since the year before, when the United States and mostly Canada, began to discover the evidence of genocide in their “Indian Schools”. For years, and until the 90s, Catholic schools had kidnapped thousands of indigenous children from their communities. They claimed to provide assimilation into white society. Yet, forensics studies on the former grounds of these schools had uncovered the bones of native and first nations children.

In the wake of the discoveries, native tribes called for justice for the children they had starved and slaughtered. In Canada especially, numerous empty churches were lit on fire. Indigenous groups across the states protested Catholic leadership, and demanded reparations. I attended one such rally in Seattle in the summer of 2021, where we laid the sandals and shoes of children on the steps of the Catholic Diocese. A year later they once again became the target of activism against the Christofascism they were helping to institute.

In 2022, they once again earned the justified rage of activists, not to mention the pedophilia that runs rampant through the clergy. Protests in numerous cities like Boston, New York, and Chicago disrupted Catholic Mass. Attendees would attend the services and storm into the halls, screaming out “MY BODY! MY CHOICE!”.

A protest in Olympia in June 2022 had also taken place at the Catholic church. This was met with members of the “Capital City Proud Boys”, a hate group I was all too familiar with. Activists reported that the cowards were easily kept at bay. Despite the numerous threats, the protest continued.

Churches that had advocated for the downfall of Roe were justly targeted for months. Scores of churches were vandalized and defaced. Often, buckets of red paint were splattered on the entrances, representing the blood of women they had on their hands.

Then, the activists began to organize against the dangerous “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that were exposed in the wake of the overturning of Roe. These “clinics” and “centers” had operated for years, funded by dark money from evangelical groups and Christian churches. They would present themselves as a place to receive emergency care for women going through pregnancy. While millions of women arrived to seek abortion access, as they could not carry the pregnancy to term, the clinics lied to them outright. They spread misinformation about the “risks” affiliated with seeking the procedure. They presented their outdated religious views as fact, such as their notion that life begins at conception. They forced women to birth despite not providing resources to ensure that upon birth, the child would be taken care of.

So these crisis pregnancy centers became the target of various direct actions across the country. They too were vandalized, to be forced to close so women could be provided real healthcare at Planned Parenthood and the like.

One such direct action took place at the end of May. A rally gathered at Grant Park, in North-East Portland, as night fell. It was advertised as a bloc event, and so I wore a balaclava to cover my identity. I biked up as the park was shrouded in darkness. Over 100 figures, dressed in black and masked up, gathered in the shadows. A few protesters in plain clothes joined as well, carrying signs. They also wanted action against those taking away their rights.

I helped to cork on my bicycle, and soon we were off. The march rolled down 33rd Avenue, crossing underneath the Veterans Memorial Highway. “What Do We Do When We’re Under Attack,” the protesters chanted. “STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!”

A few flares led the procession, moving fast towards the target. It was a short march. We made it to a crisis pregnancy center. Immediately, activists began to cover the center in spray paint. The name was covered with a message supporting abortion access. A few windows were busted out. Then a firework was launched towards the empty office.

With that, the protesters moved quickly back the way they came. We marched back to Grant Park, where we dispersed into the dark night.

Then at the end of June, an abortion access rally was called for at Colonel Summers Park. Once again I got on my bicycle and showed up at the gathering spot. A few speeches were given, and it saw all types of community members show up in support. The flier had advertised that the event would protest a local crisis pregnancy center.

Portland Police were already walking through the grass and around the park. They had pulled over someone a few blocks away. By the time we biked over, at top speed, the cops had let them go. PPB was attempting to intimidate those they had deemed their enemies. They harassed a few people simply sitting in the park, for wearing masks. When I recorded them they were trying to seem patient. I asked one member why he wore a Pirates hat with the yellow P. “Is that for Proud Boy?” I asked, to which they were offended and stated it stood for Portland.

They walked off, irritated at the lack of communication from those they harassed. I spotted scores of undercover cops walking around the vicinity of the small park on Portland’s Southeast. Squad cars continued to circle the area.

Eventually we gathered on the street to march. Just a few blocks down, there was another one of these crisis pregnancy centers, called “First Image”. This was the target we made our way towards. I worked with the corkers to block roads, as the mass of nearly two hundred walked south towards the site.

The cops in their cruisers used their cars to block the streets blocks away. While they pretended it was to facilitate “public safety” and the “right to protest peaceably” (they released a statement to that effect in the wake of the overturning of Roe) we knew their intentions were not honest. Police on motorcycles continued to circle the demonstration, as they snapped photos. They were here to surveil, as well as to prevent the general public from witnessing the event.

Once we arrived, several vans were already parked along the street. These were construction crews, who were boarding up the windows of the building. They scrambled into the trucks and white vans, shaking their heads at the mob of people marching past their vehicles. Police on motorcycles swarmed around the area.

The building was ugly and gray, and had wooden boards blocking the windows in case of damage. The protesters made quick work. The entire edifice was vandalized with words like “ABORTION IS A HUMAN RIGHT” and “ABORT THE COURT”.

A notorious right-wing woman, who called herself a journalist, showed up as well. She tried to block activists from spray-painting the facade. It was useless, as the over 200 hundred continued to tag, while moving around the property. I snapped a photo of her, framed perfectly by the words “FUCK YOU” and “‘PEACEFUL’ WON’T MAKE CHANGE”.

The time there was brief, and we eventually returned to the other side of the street. Then we marched back to Colonel Summers Park, where the police followed us once again. We dispersed as the sun was still above us, and went our separate ways.

After that, the protests dwindled. Small actions continued to occur, usually organized among affinity groups. They were not advertised, but rather, those who took direct action would often write up a communique on the theory and praxis behind the vandalism of specific targets. These communiques spread via social media, in the hopes that it would inspire other anarchist groups to take action.

While I had hoped that this would push liberal types towards engaging in insurgency against the state- the direct actions that normally “peaceful protesters” joined worked to radicalize them- it did not provide the fuel for another long hot summer of 2022. Instead, the overturning of Roe became a source of political organizing and fundraising in the years to follow. The fight for bodily autonomy would be moved to the courts, the ballots, and the polling places.

The West Coast, from California to Washington, all moved to place extra protections for abortion access, as the Dobbs decision officially became the law of the land. States like Idaho, Utah, Texas, and Florida soon became the center for the most extreme versions of laws that targeted women and abortion providers.

Since the overturning of Roe v Wade, groups like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union worked to sue states on their heinous bans. They successfully overturned 6 bans, in Arizona and Virginia for example. Women have also taken to the polls, to codify reproductive rights or overturn bans, in states like Kansas and now Ohio, which protected abortion access in their state constitution.

Mutual aid groups began to organize the “Underground Railroad” that was needed in the wake of the reversal of Roe. Groups that would assist women in crossing state lines for reproductive healthcare, and would send the Pill to those stuck in fascist states. They would aid and abet abortion and risk their lives to ensure they saved others.

The downfall of Roe marked a dark shift in American society. A dark trend that would allow the right-wing to begin to go after the rights that millions of Americans had come to enjoy. They wanted to shape the country to enforce their religious views, and abortion access was the first step. For years their only platform was the culture war that they engaged in against progress and leftism. Now the culture war came home.

THE CULTURE WAR

Because they had no real policy points, and had risen to power off of the hatred that fueled right-wing activism, the Republicans engaged in a culture war. While it was Nixon’s campaign that embraced it, the culture war began in earnest with Reaganism, and the supposed “moral majority”, which was truly only 20 percent of the country.

Since the progress of the Civil Rights Era, the GOP had viewed the expansion of voting rights and the end of segregation as the source of society’s evils. The GOP used manufactured outrage to garner votes from people whose problems lied in the capitalist system, not the inclusion of black and brown, and gay and trans people in our the American system.

Nowhere was this laid out better than the self-admittance of the “Southern strategy” by a former campaign member for Ronald Reagan. As was recorded, instead of being able to use racism to win elections, they now needed to use new terms. So now politicians, rather than targeting communities of color blatantly, would rally their supporters against food stamps and the “welfare state”. They painted the welfare system as something used by “lazy” people of color, despite the fact that the majority of food stamps recipients are poor white families in the South. The racist language they had used to win for years was now no longer socially acceptable so they had to create new sources of hatred.

The Christofascist movement that had catapulted Reagan to power, promising to bring “God” back to government, became the root of Republican organizing around the Obama years. While many things remained the same, some progress was made in the decade of Barack Obama’s administration. One such right was marriage equality, which passed the Supreme Court with a majority vote in 2015 in the landmark case Obergefell v Hodges.

States were forbidden from denying marriage licenses, and the privileges and tax breaks afforded to heterosexual couples, to queer people. The 2010s saw a wave of queer activism and a new society that was beginning to slowly come to terms with equality and inclusion of the LGBTQ community.

Republican politicians used this to assert that because they could no longer discriminate against gay people based upon their religious beliefs, their right to worship was under attack.

They also used the emergence of queer couples to push a narrative that white, Christian, heterosexual families were under attack. The decline of the “nuclear family” had been used for years as a symptom of a failed society. Now they were able to use this talking point to paint a picture of a nation that was purposefully replacing their model, with brown and queer families. This backlash against the progress of the last decade, and anger of Christian fascists, was used by Republican politicians to win votes; evident by the rise of the alt-right, and the results of the 2016 election.

Trump entered the political theater in a time of tension. Many were disenchanted by the lack of progress in the Obama years, despite his promise of fundamental change in 2008, like codifying Roe. Hillary Clinton, the Democrat’s candidate, presented the age-old career politicians that had led to the same austerity politics that maintained the status quo. The new candidate and businessman was a political outsider, who promised to go after the “deep state” and career politicians. This was one part of his victory.

The right-wing had seen a resurgence under Obama, due to racial and queer hatred. They spread lies like that he was born in Kenya or Arab, as opposed to Hawai’i where he spent his early years. They also knew the pivotal point that they were at, which they had been working on for years, since 1973. With Obama’s SCOTUS appointee held up in the Republican Senate; they knew that should Trump win, he would lead the push towards Christofascism.

Trump’s administration began their work immediately. Promising to build a wall on the southern border, and to ban immigrants and travel from Muslim majority countries, the administration rode a wave of fear of immigrants. He expanded the police state, both domestically and at the borders. In the wake of the George Floyd Uprisings, he condemned all protests and worked with police to crack down on the right to protest.

In the first year of his presidency, the Unite the Right rally took place in Charlottesville, fueled by the racist rhetoric about Mexicans and Muslims, and ended with the murder of Heather Heyer. Trump would take weeks to disavow this collection of the Alt-Right, Nazis, KKK members, Proud Boys, and various fascist groups. His first response was to claim that “there were very fine people on both sides”. In a debate, months before the 2020 election against Joe Biden, he also refused to condemn the Proud Boys and stated, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, someone has to do something about the Radical Left”.

His policies were met with wide-scale protests, a movement that came to a head in 2020. His hatred of the protests, especially Portland where he sent Feds to wage war on the populace and protect federal property, was not hidden. Biden became the nominee at a time when the nation was gripped by an existential crisis. With millions unemployed and the lockdowns keeping people at home the Dems pushed Biden -the career politician whose austerity politics led to the Uprisings- as the only candidate to beat Trump.

As we witnessed during his term in office, Biden carried forward the cruel immigration policies that the Trump administration had installed. They continued to expand the police state, as the murder of unarmed civilians increased. And in the wake of the downfall of Roe, the infrastructure, and a number of bills targeting queer and trans youth, they did nothing.

After the 2020 election, and in the years to follow, this hatred would take a darker form. Trump, along with Republican pundits like Tucker Carlson, began to spread the “Great Replacement” theory, using the term outright. This conspiracy came from the Nazis, and alleged an international conspiracy by Jews and the elite to create a mass migration into the country, to “replace” white voters.

We witnessed this in the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. States across the country passed a series of bills to stifle dissent and shut down the right to protest, because of the amount of property destruction and distrust of police that stemmed from the long hot summer of 2020.

The Black Lives Matter movement had caused a massive shift in the ways that we discussed racial issues in this country. It also marked a wave of leftist politics that were starting to become commonplace. The GOP saw that the new organizing threatened their power and worked to rile up fears of the communists and Marxists that sought to teach the youth about a new economic system and the failures of capitalism.

The GOP also embraced a trend of labeling anyone that accepted queer people in society, and allowed kids to come out and be themselves, as “groomers”- ignoring the fact that the majority of sex offenders were Republican politicians and clergymen. They spread a conspiracy for over a decade of a dark shadowy society that engaged in pedophilia. Part of that was their belief in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, and their fear of boogeymen that they created that sought to teach their kids to “hate America”.

The spreading of racist and bigoted conspiracy theories resulted in the dangerous Q-Anon movement, which painted Trump as a savior taking down the “cabal” of Hollywood, Jewish, and “deep state” elites that consumed children. Anti-semitism was the source of this conspiracy, one that was repeated in the 20s and the 50s in the States, which had been used to justify pogroms against the Jewish people and the Holocaust in Europe.

Q-Anon would be one of the major sources of organizing to attempt to force a Trump dictatorship. After the failed attempt to subvert the election, with Biden taking office a few weeks after the Capitol attack, the creator of Q-Anon disappeared. However, its followers continued to believe fully in its teachings, and turned their vitriol towards, “Critical Race Theory”, trans people and drag queens that they felt they had to “save the children” from.

In the wake of Q-Anon being cast out of public discourse, another online source filled the void. This was the dangerous Libs of TikTok account, which will be discussed in details. Libs of TikTok capitalized off of the fascist movement by parents to control every aspect of their child’s education, and to bury any ideas or history that they did not agree with.

And so, right-wing parents began to organize against school boards en masse, which will be discussed in greater detail throughout. Their first complaints revolved around questions of CRT and open discussions about the denial of rights for generations to minorities. To them, teaching children about the true legacy of racial inequality, presented a danger to the status quo.

The right-wing created a new boogeyman, under the title “Critical Race Theory”. CRT was a college-level analysis of how systemic injustice continued to affect every level of American life, from the economy, to the environment, to educational opportunities denied to poor communities of color due to red-lining and the like that survived until the 90s.

CRT became a battle in the culture war that the GOP waged. Florida was the worst example of this, which began to pass sweeping educational reforms to go after this nebulous critical thinking that was supposedly taking over curricula in every facet of education. It was a manufactured enemy, and solely based on a desire to cover-up the crimes of the past, and the systemic inequality that had resulted in an uneven power distribution and the lack of generational wealth for minority families.

Governor Ron DeSantis, a Christofascist, would point to books that openly discussed the unequal plight of black and brown Americans, as evidence of this CRT seeping into their schools. Republican politicians pointed to any instance in which a teacher showed support (even outside of school hours) for left-wing views as signs that their children’s education was being warped by CRT. The legislation that Florida passed sought to white-wash history, to protect kids from knowing the truth about the American experience.

In all of these cases, parents began to demand the outright ban of books that contradicted their conservative view of history. They would disrupt school board meetings and call for their school board members to forbid the circulation of any book on their list that propagated the mythical CRT.

Once this issue became worn out, and teachers and students rightfully countered the idea that CRT was being taught in schools, the focus of the culture war changed. This new brand of right-wing organizing against school boards and districts soon shifted their focus to issues of LGBTQ education in schools.

This became a reality in Florida in 2021, as Governor DeSantis passed the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. What was concerning was how DeSantis mentioned the increasingly bloodthirsty and deranged claims shared by Libs of TikTok, as fuel for this new legislation, which forbade any discussion of LGBTQ issues, with a very broad application. It sought to punish any teachers that mentioned LGTBQ issues, even in passing. The law was extremely vague, claiming to only forbid education for elementary students, despite the wording of the bill, which banned discussion “where deemed inappropriate”. This created a fear among educators, and some began to receive backlash for mentioning that they had a gay partner. It, like the laws we will discuss in depth, was meant to push queer people back into the closet, and cause fear among LGBTQ students and families.

Following the Trump administration, Republican politicians began to stoke these fears that had become normalized in American society. Manufactured anger that the Nazis had ridden to power in the 1920s, which was all the rage among American elites at the time. Now they could repeat the talking points of Fascist Germany and Italy, as they had been working towards for years.

In Nashville, Tennessee, during the summer of 2023, a religious fanatic and pastor named Greg Locke led a massive book burning. The pictures were parallel to the old black and white photos of Nazis burning books in the Weimar Republic. The pastor, who led a dangerous Q-Anon style church, encouraged parents to bring books containing “illicit subjects”, such as mentioning the existence of queer people, or discussing the inequality prevalent and pervasive in American society.

What should be remembered is the site of the first Nazi book burning. During the days of the Weimar Republic, following Germany’s defeat in World War I, a new clinic opened in Berlin. The first of its kind, it studied gender and sexuality, and provided gender-affirming care. It was targeted by the reactionary Nazi movement, and upon their rise to power, its officers were ransacked and the literature burned in the streets.

History taught us that in the countries that installed fascism prior to the second world war, the fascist wave never gained majority support. However, like in the States, the ultra-nationalists knew how to manipulate the systems of governance to enforce a dictatorship. This became evident in states like Florida and Texas, where the majority of people shared liberal views. Yet due to a long trend of voter suppression and gerrymandering against minority communities, like shutting down polling places and purging voter rolls, the Republicans held a death grip on power. And in these states, book bans and burnings began.

The Christofascist movement that Trump had ridden to power would not go away. The groups that had organized to overturn the election and attempted a coup d'état at the US Capitol on January 6th 2021, continued to threaten against their new ideological enemies.

With the reversal of Roe, Republican states began passing bans on abortion access, enforcing cruel legislation like a bounty law in Texas. The bounty law allowed anyone to report others for “aiding and abetting” a woman seeking abortion access, and sue them in court. The legislation was broad enough to target people giving a ride to an abortion clinic, and the doctors providing the procedure. States like Florida and Texas set the trend to begin enforcing their Christofascist views as the law of the land.

Then, as the Dobbs decision moved the right of medical privacy to the states, they shifted their focus to their next target on the list. They began passing a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, targeting anything from the bathrooms that trans people used, to their participation in sports, to allowing kids to gender affirming care for youth.

While 2023 has seen a number of abortion and gender-affirming care bans blocked in various federal and state courts, their passage is a sign of the fascist wave across the country. The issue of abortion has provided Dems with the votes to swing seats and elections. However, their refusal to codify Roe, and their silencing of dissent on these grounds, along with the failures of the Biden administration, threatens to see this country decline into fascism.

Despite the progress of the last decade, homophobia and transphobia became popular once again. This would be the major focal point of the culture war after the Stop the Steal movement failed. Instead of targeting ANTIFA and silencing dissent, they focused their hostility on trans people and drag queens, alleging that they were part of that shadowy cabal.

These words were not used lightly. They were meant to instill hatred against queer people in society. This type of rhetoric, concerning “groomers” and calling their opponents pedophiles, was intentionally meant to lead to violence. Their contempt for queer people inspired a number of mass shootings and death and bomb threats that will be discussed in detail.

In many ways, the culture war had shifted from an ideological war of cultural diversity and acceptance, to a war at home.