As LGBTQ Pride Month opened, on June 2 nearly 200 anti-LGBTQ fascists descended on an elementary school in North Hollywood, California. They had banners and t-shirts that said “Leave Our Kids Alone” and they chanted “Stop grooming our kids.” They were met by 100 counter-protesters including LGBTQ rights groups, clergy, revcoms, and people who came on their own because they were concerned and disturbed and wanted to help provide support and safety for people coming under attack.
The fascist assault was in response to a planned “Rainbow Day Assembly” at the school to mark LGBTQ Pride Month, where children were being read a book called The Great Big Book of Families that simply normalizes families that have “two mommies” or “two daddies.” While little children were inside attending school, the fascist mob yelled degrading and dehumanizing insults against LGBTQ people. Some used a cover of peacefully protesting for “parental choice,” but were grotesquely painting any recognition of the humanity of LGBTQ people as “sexual perversion” against children. The more thuggish elements tried to provoke fights with the counter-protesters. One hard-core fascist suggested over a microphone that “deadly force” and “gunshots” may be the only way to stop what he was portraying as a takeover by homeless drug addicts.
Building up to this, these fascists targeted a trans third-grade teacher. The teacher’s pride flag was burned in a weekend break-in at the school. The teacher has been removed from the school and their pictures scrubbed from the school website in an attempt by the school to protect the teacher and the safety of everyone at the school.
People mobilized to oppose all this. While the fascists rallied in the street with American flags, counter-protesters waved rainbow flags and formed a line on the sidewalk to prevent the fascists from coming over. At one point the fascists were allowed by the police to head straight to the school entrance and tried to rush the sidewalk of the entrance but were stopped by counter-protesters, including a line of revcoms who were oriented and organized to defend the rights and lives of people under attack by these thugs. Police then amassed and tried to push the LGBTQ rights protesters into the group of fascists, who snatched a flagpole from one protester to try to rip her rainbow flag off of it. Organizers were able to prevent this from becoming an all-out brawl, and then police formed a line between the two sides.
The main message that came through from the counter-protest was that people were standing up for the humanity of LGBTQ people, and there was a clear feel of not allowing the fascists to intimidate and harm people. Many of the individuals who felt compelled to come said they wanted to help make sure people were safe. One man who said this is his first protest came because he’s “straight against hate” and wanted to help escort people to and from their cars or whatever was needed to make sure people at the school and parents bringing their kids would be able to get in and out safely.
Fascists descending on Pride Day at Saticoy Elementary School in Los Angeles (top left) were met by people standing up in defense of LGBTQ rights, including clergy, revcoms, and others.
Within this, the revcoms were a serious force for revolution, working to defend people from attack and getting out the message of the proclamation “We Are the Revcoms (revolutionary communists).” While there is more that can be done to even more powerfully project all of this, we engaged people on the reality that society is ripping apart and that makes this a time of radical change one way or the other and there is a real force working for revolution, or as it’s said in the proclamation: “Shaping up before us now are two fundamentally opposed futures: Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating. … Which future we get depends to a great extent on what we do.”
We posed to people the possibility of a whole new emancipating way we could be living and becoming part of working for this revolution. This was most concretely expressed in the enlargement we held as we lined up to block the fascists from coming through: Point of Attention #2 from the Points of Attention for the Revolution, which the revcoms live by and fight for. “We fight for a world where ALL the chains are broken. Women, men, and differently gendered people are equals and comrades. We do not tolerate physically or verbally abusing women or treating them as sexual objects, nor do we tolerate insults or ‘jokes’ about people’s gender or sexual orientation.”
Among the decent people, including clergy and even members of the media, seeing the fascist mob in front of a California elementary school was jolting. Some had tears in their eyes thinking about loved ones and the level of dehumanization and threats. When they encountered the revcoms, people were both challenged and drawn by confronting the reality of the ripping up of society. Some didn’t want to face this and didn’t want to consider revolution, but were moved when engaging that instead of this hell we could actually have a real chance at a new and better society and a real future for humanity.
Three lessons:
1) All of this is an illustration of Bob Avakian’s analysis that “‘the normal way’ society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—” and that “this can shake people’s belief that ‘the way things have always been’ is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.” (From Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed.)
These fascists are not intending to confine themselves to passing monstrous anti-LGBTQ laws, but fully intend to attack even what have become accepted norms over the past years—accepted thanks to dogged and courageous struggle by LGBTQ people and those who support LGBTQ rights. And they don’t intend to confine their attacks to the states dominated by Republi-fascists. They intend to violently enforce their ugly shit—to terrorize LGBTQ people and, as one fascist said at the “Conservative” Political Action Committee convention, “eradicate them from public life.” These “Proud Boys” must not be allowed to wreak their ugly shit and the people who stand up against them need to be learning about why this is happening and what can and must be done about it.
2) In this situation, it is extremely important to take to heart and energetically take initiative to implement these two guidelines from Bob Avakian:
Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.
Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.
What the revcoms did, with just five people, shows what people need to be doing everywhere.
3) As the proclamation “WE ARE THE REVCOMS” makes clear, this is part of “apply[ing] the strategic approach of Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution: involving masses of people in rising up to resist the continuing crimes of this system, and defending people from attacks on their rights and their lives by racist, woman-hating and anti-LGBTQ thugs, in and out of government… winning people to the scientific understanding that we do not have to live this way—that this system of capitalism-imperialism is the root cause and fundamental source of all the unnecessary suffering that masses of people are subjected to, here and throughout the world, and poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity through the accelerating destruction of the environment and increasing danger of nuclear war—and that we need to, and can, bring a whole different and much better system and world into being through revolution.”