September 28
GUEST: Chelsea Villalba, community organizer, interpreter, and licensed social worker, talks about her life's mission to serve the needs of marginalized and systematically oppressed communities, including LGBTQ citizens.
Lavender Graduation Ceremony at SUNY StonybrookChelsea Villalba believes in many of the ideals that liberals talk about. Only she has built her identity and her career on the fight for human rights. So this interview is really about more than LGBTQ identity. It is a discussion of how various campaigns support each other against a right wing fascist movement that threatens us all.
Becoming aware of why so many feel free to express hate in our society requires an awareness of socioeconomic factors. The very rich live like kings on their royal yachts. They plan flights to the moon. Working people just get by, and have been suffering a particularly debilitating wage theft since the 1970s. And a theft that has worsened under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The vast majority of the US population have been screwed by the elite, ruling class, and by now there is enough anger to fuel an armed uprising.
Fascism is the annihilation of person freedoms. The rights of everyone who is not white, male, and cisgendered is under attack, and would disappear if a demagogue like Trump can actually win the presidency. So the recent attack on the rights of women, minorities, immigrants and LGBTQ members is only a test run. Whatever the fascists can get away with pushes them closer to actually running our country. And if the fascists can cement their alliance to the ruling class, we are back to Germany in 1932.
