Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has earned praise for her response to a question on trans rights during a town hall hosted by the progressive campus group More Perfect University.
At the organization’s Students vs. Billionaires town hall in Maine on Thursday, a trans student from the University of Southern Maine asked for Ocasio-Cortez’s response to the fact that “a lot of trans people in America feel that we have been abandoned by the Democratic Party, that we are a losing issue, that it’s not worth defending us.”
The woman was referring to the fact that many trans advocates feel some Democrats have missed the mark on trans issues, or in some cases have actively made decisions that hurt the trans community in an attempt to defend themselves against Republican attacks. Since the 2024 election, Democrats have disagreed on the effect of the GOP’s anti-trans ads, with some suggesting the need to throw trans people under the bus in order to win future elections.
Without hesitation, Ocasio-Cortez responded, “They’re wrong.”
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Who else are they going to support though? Two parties have a stranglehold. Your options are between not good enough, horrible, and not participating at all. Not preventing Republicans also disempowers your voice in regard to all other issues and means revoking support for everyone elses issues. So why would those people keep supporting yours as much?
So where does it end? If you compromise on somebody’s rights with the justification that you need to protect everybody else, where’s the line you don’t cross? There’s no principle built in to that approach. Theoretically, you can justify throwing all people of color under the bus in order to protect white women, with that logic.
If Democrats abandon trans people now, the fascists won’t be satisfied. Who’s next?
Voting is mere harm reduction. Voting for a candidate doesn’t mean I agree with them or that I’m compromising on anyone’s rights – I’m just ticking the box that will cause the least near-term harm.
The real decision whether to compromise or not happens in real life. In the streets, at your work or school, in your home.
Well said.
Yes, there is no good option. Everything is a risk. But everything is also at risk. We can’t trust people will help after? Can one endure a disproportionate amount of sacrifice to fight for the entire progressive movement? This entire situation is not about any specific issue, its about the entire framework of law and governance. All rights. All of it.
If someone can’t see anything beyond their own grievances, were they ever a progressive? Or were progressives the only option for trans? Are trans rights somehow more important than brown rights? Or immigrant rights? Women’s? Everybody’s rights?
This is not business as usual. This is potentially the end of democracy in America and if someone won’t help because they’re not getting enough attention, they an asshole. That is a level of selfishness that is cruelty, to anyone that was once called an ally. The safest spaces in American for trans are still the progressive side. So not supporting the best available option is wise?
There are no good options, so refuse to pick the best one? Insane to me. Massive strategic error. It ends wherever the left is capable of ending it and right now, nobody knows where that is but it isn’t where it is now. You don’t think the left is trying just because they haven’t succeeded? Maybe more participation is what halts the Nazis marching as soon a possible. But disengage instead…that will help you…
Not sure how to parse this comment. The point here is that, as a practical matter, no one’s rights are safe unless everybody’s rights are safe, and AOC is correct that Democrats are wrong to disengage on trans rights, because it’s ultimately abandoning everybody’s rights, which is the end of democracy.
I disagree with that stance. Some rights are more safe than others and some are more costly to maintain. The only thing one can say is a ruler who doesn’t respect some rights, may not respect others. Tons of rights have been abandoned, those of the poor vs the rich for instance, and it didn’t erase all rights.
Not all at once, of course. But, reading the news, it sure looks to me like the erasure is proceeding apace.
But at a pace, over time, in steps. Failing to stop the first step doesn’t mean failing to stop all of them. This is a battle, not a polite discourse. They are rounding up immigrants and putting them in camps, revoking their rights. The first step wasn’t even trans and all rights are not gone because of it.
As you point out, the fascists are rounding up immigrants into concentration camps. We keep losing rights by the week. And it didn’t start with trans people? Then why did it get as far as them? So far, we have failed to stop any step in the process. It’s understandable, because when anybody’s rights are contingent rather than inalienable, we can always rationalize why it’s okay to abandon the next group.
Why did it get this far? Because adequate opposition to the fascist takeover does not exist yet, if it ever forms. Fascism will keep moving through undesired and opposition groups until someone forms effective opposition. It isn’t a lack of will or concern, it’s a lack of power.
Progressives have no power in government right now, the courts are complicit with the takeover, the executive, legislative and judicial are all complicit, numerous billionaires are in on it, even foreign geopolitical heavyweights like Vladimir Putin has his hands in how the US government runs and what it does.
What’s happening now may require people to upend their lives and discard their life plans to stop it. They are not ready to do that, or they would have. They may not be capable of doing what is necessary, they may never be. American is in a horrific state across the board.