Reform-run Essex county council has been accused of banning libraries from promoting Pride and Black History events.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8563700

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/51268

Nika Bartoo-Smith
Underscore Native News + ICT

PORTLAND, Ore. – Around 300 high school students dressed in gowns, costumes and elaborate makeup danced until their feet hurt to music from DJ Aspen blaring through the speakers, their smiles and laughter filling the air at this year’s annual Queer Prom.

The Native American Youth and Family Center’s Two-Spirit program has hosted the event for four years since taking a hiatus during the pandemic.

“My ultimate goal with this is creating a space for queer youth, especially Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ+ youth, to be unabashedly themselves, to truly not have to worry about the way that they’re being perceived, but just be able to celebrate themselves, celebrate each other, and to showcase the fact that we’ve always been here — Indigenous, trans, queer, we’ve always been here. We’re not going anywhere,” said Kiara Wehrenberg, Tlingit and the Two-Spirit program coordinator at the center. Wehrenberg coordinates Queer Prom.

As prom season is well underway, Queer Prom is a space built for students from all backgrounds to have a space centering joy, in Portland.

“Queer Prom is so unique and so special,” said this year’s emcee, Dr. Poison Waters, an iconic Portland drag queen. “There are people in this country that wish they could come to a Queer Prom.”

Planning Queer Prom

Wehrenberg worked with youth from the center’s Two-Spirit program to find a theme and organize a prom built for them. The group made pamphlets for a swag table during the May 15 event, that offered a resource guide, information about the term Two Spirit and a list of Two-Spirit powwows across the country

This year’s prom theme was “Superheroes vs. Villains Edition” and students showed out in all kinds of costumes. From Captain America and the Joker to fantasy inspired looks include elf ears and elaborate makeup. The theme extended beyond dress as projected graphics all around the room feature comic book inspired illustrations.

Food, catered by Brittinie Love and her company Cooking with B. Love, took the superheroes versus villains theme to the next level. The menu featured items such as “Gotham Fire Beef Skewers” and “The Green Goblin Spring Rolls” with mocktails like “Radiant Recharge” and “Arctic Blast.”

Planning for Queer Prom began as soon as last year’s ended, according to Wehrenberg. This began with reaching out to vendors and event venues, such as AVENUE Portland, where this year’s prom took place.

“I think Queer Prom is just a beautiful place for connection,” said Marvin Colbow, whose drag name is Marvin Killboy, a senior at Benson Polytechnic High School. “I just went to my own prom, and I did not feel the same amount of connectivity that I feel here with my fellow transgender and queer people.”

Wehrenberg reached out to Queer-Straight Alliances and Indigenous Student Unions across Portland and beyond to open up the event to youth across the city, beyond youth at the center’s Many Nations Academy.

“Queer specific spaces are necessary across the board,” said Ellen Whatmore, a teacher at Franklin High School and the school’s co-advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance. “Having an opportunity to shine and be in the spotlight and be celebrated is unparalleled.”

Whatmore attended Queer Prom dressed in a Medusa-inspired look, as an event volunteer and also helped advertise the event to Franklin students after receiving an email invitation from Wehrenberg.

Guest Appearances

A few hours into the dance, students were interrupted from tearing up the dance floor when Dr. Poison Waters invited two other drag performers from Darcelle’s XV out onto the dance floor.

Dressed in a big, blonde wig with hot pink heeled boots and a matching hot pink ruffled robe, T’Kara Campbell Star made her way onto the dance floor. As “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus filled the speakers, she shed her robe to reveal a bright green body suit and matching sun hat decked out in fake flowers. Her performance was met with cheers as students formed a half circle around her. At the end of three songs, T’Kara Campbell Star invited a student dressed as Maleficent to the center of the floor to dance with her.

Following her performance, Ilani E. Nova made her way onto the dance floor, decked out with a black feather boa, thigh high leather boots and a black and tan body suit. She danced with the students, lip syncing to a compilation of Abba classics.

And of course, Dr. Poison Waters herself also performed, moving from stage to the middle of the dance floor.

As the night wore on, the dance floor remained full as laughter and song sing-alongs drifted through the air, mixed with the beats spun by DJ Aspen.

“I just see so much queer joy in our youth and I’m so happy and honored to be a part of this,” said Mitch Saffle, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a chaperone at Queer Prom and a data and evaluation support specialist at the center. “I’m so grateful to see that a space like this exists for our youth. Not only our queer youth, but our Indigenous queer youth.”

Later on in the evening, Yin Glossier, Dior Glossier and Deity 007 from PDX Ballroom brought vogue to the dance floor as students sat in a circle around the three performers, completely engaged.

Following their own performance, Yin Glossier explained a bit about the ball scene which started in Harlem in the 1920s, expanding in the 1970s and 1980s, when Black and Brown drag queens were not allowed to be at White drag queen pageants.

“So, as Black and Brown people do, we make our own shit,” Yin Glossier said. “In that, we have the birth of ballroom.”

They then explained some of the main categories that “Houses” of the ball scene compete in: fashion, body, sex appeal, face, vogue.

Students were then invited to compete in ballroom style, lining up to compete for “best dressed.” A hard decision on the part of the judges, composed of performers from Darcelle’s XV and PDX Ballroom. Ultimately a student dressed in a Master Shake, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, costume took home the prize: a pair of rainbow beaded earrings donated by the center’s Two-Spirit program.

For Wehrenberg, Saffle, volunteers and students an event like Queer Prom is so crucial for the community.

“Being able to have a space like this is really important because it provides an opportunity for us to come together in community and celebrate queer joy,” Wehrenberg said.

Wehrenberg expressed that so often when Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ stories are told in the media, it is through a lens of oppression and tragedy.

“It is also really important to highlight and tell stories of resilience and love and joy, because we all deserve to be seen as we are here, queer, trans, Indigenous, proud, strong and fully human, because only telling the stories of oppression and tragedy, in a way, strips us of humanity because it doesn’t highlight or show any understanding of the fact that we have whole lives and joy and love surrounding us too,” Wehrenberg said.

This story is co-published by Underscore Native News and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.

The post Queer Prom: A space for queer youth to be ‘unabashedly themselves’ appeared first on ICT.

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Shared from Working Class History

On this day, 23 May 1988, four lesbians, including Booan Temple, burst into a BBC news studio during a live broadcast and called out: "Stop Section 28!" The protest was against the new anti-gay law, Section 28, that was about to go into effect at midnight and had received little if any critical news coverage.
Pushed by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, Section 28 sought to prohibit the "promotion" or "acceptability" of homosexuality in local authorities and schools. While the four women were arrested, they were never charged, likely due to the BBC not wanting to give the protest any further attention.
The homophobic mass media unsurprisingly ignored their message and spun the protest in such a way so as to justify the discrimination of LGBTQ people.
Even still, the protest inspired many LGBTQ people, especially younger folk, to keep up the fight. The law would be in place until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8537717

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50351

John M. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Colorado–

Lurking in the deepest bowels of Colorado, a coalition calling itself Protect Kids Colorado has mobilized to push three ballot initiatives onto the Nov. 2026 ballot, each draped in the rhetoric of child protection but rooted in the reactionary impulses of the ruling class. This campaign exemplifies a deeper contradiction within capitalist society: the selective outrage of Christian nationalist factions who proclaim to safeguard “girls in sports” from transgender participation, framing it as a defense of biological purity and fairness. Yet, this same moral fervor evaporates when confronting the systemic exploitation embedded in the capitalist order.

Led by anti-LGBTQ+ “activist” Erin Lee, the group submitted over 165,000 signatures for Initiative 110, which seeks to ban surgeries on minors aimed at altering biological sex characteristics, and to prohibit public funding for gender-affirming care. More than 170,000 signatures backed Initiative 109, mandating that schools and athletic associations define sports teams by physical anatomy at birth, effectively barring transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports. A similar number supported Initiative 108, which would ramp up penalties for human trafficking of minors.

These measures, if passed, would not only restrict transgender youth from essential healthcare and fair participation but would also enforce rigid, state-sanctioned definitions of gender that serve to police bodies in service to outdated hierarchies.

Similar initiatives are proliferating across the U.S., with over 700 anti-trans bills tracked in 41 states for 2026, including bans on sports participation, healthcare, and bathroom access, highlighting a coordinated assault by bourgeois interests to divide the working class. In Missouri, ballot measures seek to enshrine bans on gender-affirming care for minors alongside abortion restrictions, using trans youth as pawns to simultaneously undermine reproductive freedoms.

Efforts in Washington, Maine, and Nevada also aim to put trans sports bans directly to voters, reflecting the ruling class’ strategy to legitimize discrimination through electoral theater, to the symphony of inflammatory, unscientific, and sensationalist disinformation campaigns via the media.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a leading Christian Nationalist, stands with her fans from Moms for Liberty-Wisconsin in front of the Capitol. (Moms For Liberty-Wisconsin)

These groups, often aligned with MAGA ideology, rally against transgender girls as existential threats while turning a blind eye—or worse, offering defenses—for capitalist pedophiles whose crimes are shielded by wealth and power. Consider the parade of high-profile figures in bourgeois circles, from financiers like Jeffrey Epstein to political elites entangled in abuse scandals, where accusations of child exploitation are dismissed as “fake news” or reframed as consensual indiscretions. The ruling class’ apparatus, including media conglomerates and legal systems, routinely minimizes these atrocities, allowing predators to evade accountability through settlements, NDAs, and influence peddling.

Capitalism thrives on the commodification of bodies, particularly those of the vulnerable, turning human trafficking and exploitation into profitable industries that bolster the accumulation of capital for the few. The hypocrisy is stark: Republicans accused of shielding pedophiles in the Epstein case, with Democrats charging that GOP refusal to release files protects the elite, while MAGA figures like Trump have been linked to Epstein yet face no reckoning from their base. Right-wing conspiracies like QAnon obsess over fictional pedophile rings among liberals, diverting attention from real abuses by their own, such as Capitol rioters convicted of child abuse who heckled police for “protecting pedophiles.”

Christian nationalists, who denounce transgender rights as anti-biblical, conveniently ignore their own defenses of abusers, exposing the selective application of “morality” to maintain patriarchal control. The hypocrisy intensifies when examining the so-called “pro-life” stance of these reactionaries.

While they decry abortion as murder and push for draconian bans that strip women and girls of bodily autonomy, their policies accelerate the immiseration of the working class. MAGA forces, under the banner of family values, have systematically dismantled reproductive rights, gutted social safety nets, and opposed measures like paid family leave or affordable childcare, ensuring that forced births trap women in cycles of poverty and dependence.

This isn’t about life, it’s about control. In a system where labor power is extracted for profit, women’s rights are subordinated to the needs of capital reproduction. The bourgeois state enforces this through legislation that prioritizes fetal personhood over living workers, all while corporate overlords reap the benefits of a desperate, underpaid workforce. The proclaimed sanctity of life clashes with the reality of capitalist death—through wars, environmental devastation, and healthcare denial—that claims millions annually.

The post-Roe era has deepened inequities, with abortion bans costing the U.S. economy $173 billion annually, lowering women’s earnings, education, and health outcomes, particularly for Black women and the poor, while increasing poverty and single parenthood. Overruling Roe has not been “pro-life” but a continuation of government control over women’s bodies, eroding their autonomy and futures. Pro-life rhetoric, including claims of “feminism,” masks this assault, portraying restrictions as protective while dishonoring women’s dignity and rights.

Compounding this is the complicity of the Democratic Party, which postures as a progressive counterweight but capitulates at every turn. Facing an electorate manipulated by misinformation and economic anxiety, Democrats have increasingly thrown the transgender community under the bus, offering tepid defenses or outright concessions to gain votes from a misinformed public. Rather than mounting a robust pushback against these anti-trans measures, they prioritize electoral pragmatism, echoing centrist appeals that dilute class struggle into identity politics.

This betrayal stems from their role as the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, managing capitalism’s crises without challenging its foundations. By allowing reactionary narratives to dominate, framing transgender rights as a wedge issue, they divert attention from the real antagonists: the exploiters who profit from division. The working masses, fragmented along lines of gender, race, and sexuality, are pitted against one another, obscuring the class antagonism that unites them against the owners of production.

Post-2024 election losses, Democrats have openly blamed their support for trans rights, with figures like Reps. Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi arguing the party went “too far left,” splintering over issues like sports bans and DEI, and retreating from defending trans people in order to avoid offending moderates. This “reshuffling” cedes ground to the far right, prioritizing the hunt for votes over solidarity, and failing to achieve either. Kamala Harris, the candidate who, as an Attorney General in California, pursued transphobic interpretations of criminal justice, and who downplayed the importance of protecting transgender rights in the 2024 election cycle, did not go “too far left” but abandoned the laboring and popular masses of America who have long struggled for change and progress.

At its core, these phenomena reflect the material base of capitalism shaping its ideological superstructure. Christian nationalism, with its patriarchal and nationalist trappings, functions as a tool to maintain social cohesion amid economic decay. By scapegoating transgender individuals, it channels working-class frustrations—born of wage stagnation, housing crises, and job insecurity—away from the capitalist culprits and toward marginalized groups. Initiative 108’s focus on human trafficking penalties, for instance, appears noble but serves as a smokescreen, ignoring how capitalism’s global supply chains and austerity policies fuel trafficking networks. True protection for children and women demands dismantling the profit motive that breeds exploitation, not performative bans that reinforce bourgeois morality.

The path forward lies in recognizing these contradictions and building solidarity among the oppressed. Workers, regardless of gender, sex, or sexual orientation, must unite to expose how such campaigns perpetuate ruling-class dominance, divide us via chauvinistic and sensationalist spectacles, and inspire nothing but dismay and demoralization amongst the organized working class. Only through collective action—striking at the heart of private property and imperial control—can we forge a society where rights are not commodities but universal realities. In Colorado and beyond, the fight against these initiatives is about much more than transgender inclusion: it’s a front in the broader war against capitalist hypocrisy.

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نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8520826

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8520825

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8520824

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8520822

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8520811

Please, I need your help with $100 to buy diapers and milk for my baby daughter.

https://gofund.me/00439328

Oh shut the fuck up

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8431129

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/47631

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

On May 1, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression published a letter alleging severe restrictions on the freedom of speech of students at Pensacola State College in Pensacola, Florida. The letter alleges that three student-written articles about LGBTQ+ people—a profile of a local drag queen, a piece on a queer bookstore, and a story about a community poetry club—were barred from publication in a student journalism magazine sponsored by the college. According to FIRE, Brenda Kelly, the college's Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, met with journalism professor Marisa Mills on April 29 and told her the articles could not be published because their LGBTQ+ content could violate Florida's Stop WOKE Act. The fight is now blowing up as the latest example of college students being restricted from even mentioning LGBTQ+ people in academic and journalism contexts—following Texas Tech's ban on student theses about LGBTQ+ topics and the DOJ's investigation of 36 Illinois schools for acknowledging that LGBTQ+ people exist.

"On April 29, 2026, Brenda Kelly, General Studies Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, held a meeting with Professor Marisa Mills and told her that students could not publish the stories that contained LGBT+ content," reads the letter from FIRE. "Kelly explained that publishing this content could violate the Stop WOKE Act, specifically its prohibitions on funding advocacy 'for diversity, equity, and inclusion' and 'instruction' in a public university or college that 'espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels' a student 'to believe' any viewpoint contained on an enumerated blacklist. At the meeting, she shared Florida College System guidance on implementing these two provisions of the Stop WOKE Act."

The college has denied the allegations. In a response to FIRE's letter, Kelly said that "Dr. Mills' students completed the collaborative project without any intervention from me or any other PSC administrator" and that she only met with Mills on April 29 "to discuss the optional, not required, printing of the magazine."

But students tell a different story. Casey Hignite, a student in Mills' class who also writes and draws political cartoons for the college's student newspaper, told the Pensacola News Journal that the magazine's content was censored. Only one of the three LGBTQ+ articles would have been allowed to remain only after heavy editing to strip out its central themes—the author chose to pull the piece entirely rather than gut it. Hignite said they also chose not to submit their own story about a local goth shop because the shop's owner "wouldn't want to take part in censorship." The magazine has not been published. "This is just the latest in what PSC has done to censor and intimidate its faculty and students," Hignite said. "There are issues that are not even being reported on because people are afraid to lose their livelihood." Mills, the journalism professor at the center of the dispute, declined to comment after her union representative advised her not to speak publicly.

The move to censor students from writing about LGBTQ+ people breaks with both recent and longstanding precedent, and the cited justification doesn’t even hold up. Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022, prohibits public colleges from funding “advocacy” for diversity, equity, and inclusion and establishes a sort of Don’t Say Gay protocol that applies to colleges. But a federal judge blocked the law’s provisions, calling them “positively dystopian” and finding that the act “officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.” The 11th Circuit affirmed that injunction in 2024, describing the law as “the latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct” and calling viewpoint-based restrictions “the greatest First Amendment sin.” The law remains enjoined to this day; PSC is censoring students to comply with a law it is not even legally required to follow.

More broadly, student press freedom at public colleges is well established. In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri (1973), the Supreme Court held that a public university could not punish a student for distributing a newspaper containing content administrators found offensive, ruling that “the mere dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to good taste—on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’” In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), the Court held that a public university cannot withhold funding from a student publication based on its viewpoint. Notably, that is the precise mechanism PSC is using here. Repeatedly, the Supreme Court has acted to protect student publicaitons.

This is not the only case of severe restrictions on speech involving LGBTQ+ people in recent months. Just last month, Texas Tech issued a memorandum that barred graduate students from writing theses or dissertations centered on LGBTQ+ topics, required professors to skip over LGBTQ+ content in textbooks, and used an AI algorithm to scan the entire system's course catalog for references to sexual orientation or gender identity—flagging over 1,400 courses for review. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has launched investigations into 36 Illinois school districts for the apparent offense of teaching students that LGBTQ+ people exist—threatening federal funding losses if schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms or include LGBTQ+ content in their curriculum.

FIRE demanded that PSC reverse course by May 4, warning that administrators who violate "clearly established law" can be stripped of qualified immunity and held personally liable for monetary damages. Meanwhile, the students are taking matters into their own hands. "We're working right now on removing the magazine from under PSC," Hignite told the Pensacola News Journal. The magazine has not been published.

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

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I hope this fits the community, I noticed that compared to the lemmy.world community this one doesn't mention memes in it's name