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Painkillers in the Front, and a Knife in the Back: A Tale of Two Housing Programs

A STATEMENT FROM RATPAC-ATX

The Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism - Austin (RATPAC-ATX) condemns the emergency trans housing app being developed as a tech startup company in our city by “revolutionary”-turned-entrepreneur McKinley Forbes. There is no doubt that emergency housing is a dire need facing trans people, something we recognize in our own work. However, our understanding of addressing the immediate material needs of trans people should never be separated from the long-term struggle for trans liberation.  If we truly desire to combat the scarcity facing trans people, we must recognize the class struggle in which it is taking place. Capitalism creates, upholds, and regenerates patriarchal brutality and scarcity facing trans people, and will continue to do so until it is smashed. It is a system for those who own everything, and built off the backs of those who own nothing. It is a system that can never be for the broad majority of the world’s trans people.

The interests of everyday trans people are completely incompatible with that of the capitalists and their state. The conflict between the makers of society vs. the owners of society is present in every fiber of life under capitalism, and is the foundation of why there is an interest in keeping trans people invisible, down, and dead. This means that even various approaches to addressing the needs of trans people will have a political character. It will side with one camp of the conflict, or the other. It will either advance revolution, or it will serve those who profit from trans oppression. When we see something that claims (or even outwardly appears) to help trans people, but ultimately sides with the enemy camp in the struggle, this is a “sugar-coated bullet.” It is with this understanding that we denounce McKinley Forbes and her startup business. While her business fronts the feel-good image of “helping trans people,” it is actually a product of traitorous actions meant to build her own career. The fact that she continues to call herself a “revolutionary” makes it all the more two-faced on her part.

RATPAC EMERGENCY HOUSING PROGRAM

At the end of March this year, RATPAC announced its emergency trans housing program. It was the first of such programs in our city. It was established on revolutionary principles: it exists not only to meet the immediate material needs of trans people, but to politically equip us with the ability to defend each other, to build community power independent of the capitalist state and corporations, to be by-and-for the community alone, and to be part of laying the foundations of the liberated society that trans people need. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), and corporate charities build careers off the needs of the people in our city, but they ultimately do nothing to address a system that ensures these needs remain infinitely unmet. There are no careers to be found in siding against the enemy. So, rather than building careers, we address immediate material needs through a program that is part of the political struggle to put a final end to the infinite continuation of scarcity and brutality. We are fighting to provide vetted and sober safe housing, work closely with our housing guests in addressing all aspects of their circumstances, enhance political agency and participation in the militant trans liberation struggle, and offer integration into a comradely network of mutual support and community defense. Because “rights” and the scraps handed out by rainbow capitalist businesses can all be taken away by the capitalists, we fight for power in our communities instead.

MEETING MCKINLEY

McKinley Forbes first reached out to RATPAC in mid March, before the official announcement of our housing program. She told us she had been homeless, accepted a job offer in Austin, and had been directed to us for assistance with temporary housing and relocation. In that first contact, she presented herself as a revolutionary looking to become involved in local struggles and to assist with building up RATPAC. We lined up temporary housing with some local comrades, and one of our members picked her up from the bus station.  Quickly after her arrival, she became a seemingly enthusiastic and dedicated member of our organization, espousing revolutionary principles and dedication to building up our work with Austin’s trans folks including our housing program. Other members invested themselves into supporting her struggles with relocation, and her energy excited members and supporters alike. She participated in flyering teams and was actively engaged during RATPAC’s Month of Stonewall in June.

However, in late June, her trajectory quickly nosedived after having won the first place prize of the Startup Weekend HackOut Event, the prize for which included SXSW (the scourge of Austin) tickets, office space from Capital Factory (hosted in the Omni “luxury hotel” in Austin’s “Innovation Zone” where speculative entrepreneurs are connected with investors), and having her business infrastructure handed to her. She had won the Startup Weekend by, unbeknownst to RATPAC, pitching a prospective business plan for an emergency trans housing app that mirrored similar infrastructure to our housing program but utterly hollowed of its community roots and political content. She informed one member of having won a prize so contradictory to the revolutionary principles that uphold our own work in Austin, to which that member expressed considerable concern and attempted to establish a meeting for her to talk about what was going on. At first, McKinley was open towards that idea, but in the weeks following she mysteriously became less and less available for such a meeting, and was entirely absent from the revolutionary project that she had shown so much enthusiasm for weeks earlier. Without further communication, McKinley began spreading  tech industry publications’ gushing coverage of her new business. The member she had spoken to previously again expressed their concerns and criticisms with how a supposed "revolutionary" who had claimed dedication to the struggles of our city was handling this, to which McKinley never responded. Another member attempted to reach out to her, to which their messages were uncharacteristically ignored. After that, she rather bluntly informed a member of her exit from RATPAC, primarily because of her newfound business. While she assured that member that her beliefs "remained the same as before", the action which gave those beliefs life were now gone. She also expressed that her project was somehow unique in that it was starting in Austin but intended to go country-wide. One has to wonder what she thought the point of her work with us in Austin was.

MORE SHADY CHARACTERS IN A DARK WORLD

The most important aspect of these developments were the opportunistic, career-oriented, and traitorous choices made by McKinley Forbes--but first we should note the grimy entities that have oversaw the establishment process of this tech startup. While the housing program she had formerly claimed dedication to had its roots in everyday Austin trans people, her starting point is immensely different. It was these shady characters that she needed to appeal to, since they made up a large part of the judge's table. The Startup Weekend HackOut was hosted in the affluent Domain area in northwest Austin, in the offices of HomeAway (the main competitor to airbnb in the homestay industry). The weekend is a joint project of LGBTQ capitalist groups and heads of the tech startup industry, bringing in many prospective entrepreneurs from outside of Austin (like McKinley herself only three months before). Of course, prospective startup techies descending upon our city is nothing new. Between 2000-2010, the tech industry market expanded by over 40% in Austin, bringing with it a substantial gentrifying population. However, as Austin’s population grew by ~20% in that time, Austin’s predominantly working class black population was reduced by at least 5% as gentrification pushed folks out of their historic neighborhoods.

HomeAway was not only the host, but the primary sponsor of the event.  As we face rapid urban displacement, Austin’s east side has come to know what the spread of the homestay industry means means: more and more homes stripped of their working class families and turned into “host houses” for short-term rentals oriented towards tourists and business travelers, greasing the cogs in driving property values up. Among HackOut’s other sponsors was Keller-Williams real estate, one of the many entities that are overseeing the gentrification process in the brown working class areas of the eastside, cashing in on the rising property values and despair of local residents. A former everyday brown family home on E. Cesar Chavez is up for sale by them for a cool million bucks! These are also the same folks who are actively attempting to rebrand South Harlem into “SoHa.”  Finally, the “Startup Weekend” is masterminded by Techstars. This was just the local example of their event which takes place all over the globe. Techstars prides itself in being a "diverse company" that seeks to “accelerate” tech industry startups (and gentrification across the U.S. along with it). Aside from their partnerships with cybersecurity providers for the brutal Israel Defense Forces in occupied Palestine, their other projects include traveling Latin America to speak with politicians and tech industry heads about "modern and harmonized legislation between different countries [to] promote the availability of capital” and create new marketplaces for their leaches to stick their fangs.  Among the recommendations was support for collusion between local governance and big money to do such. Given that we’ve seen the effects of such “innovative approaches�� by the tech industry in our own city, we can only imagine what this would mean for the working classes of those new target areas to the south of us. This month, their partnership with some folks in the defense industry that are making bank off dropping bombs on people began (including with Boeing)—starting with their “acceleration” of a drones technology startup.

LIES AND BETRAYAL: THE MAKING OF A CAREER, NOT REVOLUTION

However, no matter how skeevy the players are in overseeing the opportunity for her newfound career, the real knife in the back of Austin's trans people is in her own lies and self-serving choices (and which class they serve).  In her recent newfound spotlight in the news rags of the ATX startup industry, she has taken to underhandedly referencing RATPAC’s own housing program, not to offer welcomed criticism of our housing program as it struggles to build, but only to boost her own parasitic career. In one article she claims that RATPAC failed to account for her being “highly allergic to peanuts and cats”. Strangely, the presence of both peanuts and cats in her hosts’ home was discussed with her directly to which she gave assurance of it not being worth seeking alternatives. She claimed there were no other possibilities provided in the housing program, and yet this is not based on any honest investigation on her part. Afterall, she was never involved with our vetting process, nor in working with our hosts past and present (beyond those who she stayed with for a short time). Even more suspicious is the fact that despite being active in RATPAC for months in a time when she no longer had material reliance on the organization (having already established her own apartment and flashy tech industry job in Lakeway), these criticisms were never brought up. This was despite our organization's foundations upon a constant process of internal criticism and self-criticism to hold everyone politically accountable and keep our organization moving forward. Not only is our organization open to criticism, it asks for it directly in our internal operation! It appears that these "criticisms" have magically materialized only alongside her new entrepreneurial career path, and primarily serve to boost her own brand and media spectacle. Sadly, this represents more and more of her general activity as she sells out Austin’s trans masses in the name of careerism (selling-out revolutionary and community-based projects to build a career that fighting capitalism will never offer) and opportunism (swaying to whatever is going to offer the best immediate personal gain rather than having any semblance of principles) to serve herself.

There is something particularly backhanded about someone espousing revolutionary principles while siding against them, especially in the context of our city where there is no shortage of sell-outs and career-builders who see personal opportunities in building top-down hollow "$olution$" to constant devastation while doing nothing to kill it.  Her exodus from RATPAC for her career isn't just us losing a member, but a former member joining the enemy's side of the class struggle on this front. Revolutionary community programs, such as our housing network, stand opposed to the usual model of "assistance" by non-governmental organization (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), and corporate charities. Our program differs in that it does its best to put the political interests of everyday trans people at the forefront, including above flaunting surface-level numbers “served” like those churned out by careerists looking for corporate and government funding. We recognize that assisting the most trans people possible actually means much more than an outlook that only values serving the most short-sighted needs of the most people with the path of least resistance under capitalism… without any attention or investment into building people power to stop the inevitable unendingness of trans oppression under this system. While these surface-level numbers can give the appearance of benefitting the trans people of our class, this is also content with allowing infinite unmet needs to continue: it creates a cycle by which careers are built up for a few crisis industry aristocrats who make comfortable livelihoods off of the cyclical devastation of trans people under capitalism. Getting a tech start up business handed to McKinley by some of the shadiest motherfuckers in Austin may assist her in having immediate resources for a rainbow capitalist program to spread quickly (and getting to be her own boss, the American Pipedream for most of us!), but only as a hollow careerist shell of the program she feigned dedication to in our city. It takes painstaking work to build up a deep difference in the lives of trans people and RATPAC struggles to get this right ourselves, but people who consider themselves revolutionary have a responsibility to engage in that work regardless of the tides of personal opportunity. This shit won't stop until we stop it, and there is no career to be made in sailing against the winds of a society that produces trans oppression. Something that is empty is going to move fastest, and startups like these get the applause of the entire society they work for, and not against.  At some point our community has to have a basis of coming together to do the necessary work. We are quickly approaching a point, as fascism lurks closer in this country, that siphoning work and energy away from community power is going to mean blood on your hands. McKinley Forbes came to a city where there was a revolutionary community program independent of the capitalists when it came to meeting the material housing needs of trans people while defending each other and getting folks together to fight… and she is now attempting to hand it right back to the ruling parasites in the form of her own career. She looked at all available opportunities for investment, and she chose the one with a paycheck.

WE MUST STAND AGAINST TRANS FLAGS IN THE ENEMY CAMP

Depending on the situation, our relationship to certain resource providers can vary. However, in a situation where it becomes a matter of a fake revolutionary redirecting efforts and potential resources away from a community program independent of capitalism (and aligned with local anti-gentrification groups, revolutionary students, and from-the-people-to-the-people organizations actively in struggle in Austin's hoods) for the sake of building one’s own career, this conflict ultimately embodies escalated class struggle—with one program upholding the interests of everyday people, and the other serving up sugar-coated bullets for the ruling class. NGOs, NPOs, and corporate charities are no strangers to historical campaigns at co-opting revolutionary community programs and political struggles to bring folks back into a non-threatening formation, and the system invests in this process where they are able to. In a time and place where conflict is sharpening, the truth that all of our actions and investments will at the end of the day either serve trans people or strengthen the people who profit off their oppression is more obvious than ever. No matter what McKinley thinks she believes, it is the real-world result of her actions that determine what camp she stands in. McKinley has claimed that RATPAC did not desire to be associated with the app, though McKinley never offered that ability towards our work—and absolutely, we wouldn’t desire to liquify a single inch of our work into her career, especially as her startup is publicly entertaining the notion of partnering up with HomeAway and airbnb to operate her platform "for trans people". There’s nothing quite like feeding Austin’s hoods painkillers in the front while stabbing them in the back.

RATPAC writes this statement not only to explain what went down, but to draw a clear line of division between our housing program and any hollow tech startup lookalikes. We call on all politically conscious people to keep this in mind as we move forward in providing for each other and engaging in struggle together. The sinister outlook this society spreads against the people it oppresses will be quick to try and frame RATPAC as self-serving in this statement, even in the minds of some self-fancied "revolutionaries". It bows down at the feet of non-profits and corporate charities as a counterbalance to capitalist oppression rather than part-and-parcel to its function. It is quick to fawn over and support disarmed projects by charlatans as "revolutionary!" and "what we really need right now!", and it hopes that you will too. We have absolutely no profit to gain from going against these smokescreens. Gaining the trust of the people we want to fight alongside us means telling the truth no matter how unpopular it is in the short-term, or how pretty the veneer of the enemy looks. RATPAC believes in holding true to the principles of serving the exploited majority of Austin's trans people. McKinley Forbes' half-truths and cardboard commitments are the bricks that careerism is paved with. We welcome investigation into these events, but her narratives and motives should be deeply questioned. After all, she has a brand to defend now. Maybe with her new tech startup, she'll be able to afford a gravesite for her revolutionary principles.

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NO MORE FAKE COMMEMORATIONS

On June 28th, 2017, RATPAC called for the Stonewall Day of Revolution rally to be held directly outside of Austin Pride’s fake commemoration event. That Wednesday marked the 48th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, a violent riot against the police spearheaded by black and brown working class trans women, street queens, and “transvestites.”  They were fed up with the NYPD’s routine practices of harassing, beating, strip-searching, murdering, and incarcerating lgbt people because of their clothes, their genitals, their expression, and their audacity to gather in public. In the early hours of July 28th, 1969, Stonewall Inn patrons and hundreds more from the street fought back using fists, sticks, bricks, fire, and even parking meters (as battering rams). It was a spontaneous outburst where a large number of everyday lgbt folks accepted that the conflict with the police could only be resolved through violence. It wasn’t just a riot, but a serious and successful resistance that forced the police to barricade themselves in the bar and cower in fear. The cops, whose primary job is to serve those who own everything and brutalize those who own nothing, were made to retreat.  Of course, this kind of inspirational-but-spontaneous rebellion can only momentarily weaken the capitalist forces, temporarily fending off the worst perpetrators of everyday racist and patriarchal violence. Nonetheless, the outcome of the Stonewall Rebellion sent shockwaves throughout the country, leading many lgbt workers to take a serious look at striking back at the capitalist state… not merely as an option, but as a necessity. The embryo of revolutionary struggle by lgbt folks was forming. It was being fed by a growing understanding that being docile and timid hadn't lessened the poverty and brutality facing us, and spontaneous violence wasn't going to win us power either. Instead, perhaps we needed to become armed, organized, disciplined, and able to start taking care of each other and our communities independent of the capitalist state. In response to this, the ruling class was quick to send down its corporate vultures, NGOs, and establishment politicians to strangle the movement in its infancy.  Pride marches--once bold political protests honoring Stonewall--devolved into parade-parties, buddying-up to big business and the government. Wealthy gays were brought to the forefront to lead lgbt people towards legislative and electoral “solutions” and to steer us away from radical organizing in our communities. The demand for “Gay Liberation” faded away, and begging for “Gay Rights” took its place.  And while this built many politicians’ careers and boosted the status of many wealthy and white lgbt people, for many of us (especially those most like the women who led the Stonewall Rebellion) not a lot has changed. We’re still getting beaten, incarcerated, murdered, deported, and sexually assaulted. Not only that, these things are on the rise here in Austin within recent years.  We were told to beg for individual rights instead of coming together to struggle for collective power, and today most of us are dangerously isolated and closer to fascism in this country than freedom. Because of this, RATPAC called for the Stonewall Day of Revolution rally to be held directly outside of Austin Pride’s fake “commemoration”. No matter the lip-service they may pay to those who participated in the Stonewall Rebellion, Austin Pride stands against the broad majority of the world's lgbt people. Rather than any rebellion, they share a legacy with the forces who worked to destroy a rising militant liberation movement and sell out common lgbt folks for the interests of a wealthy few. They use a hollowed-out image of Stonewall, a moment of radical hope for the most exploited lgbt people, to push for hopeless electoral and legislative "change." Rather than a rainbow, Austin Pride's true colors can be found in its sponsorship by large corporations, liquor companies, and Bank of America. Rather than waving the flag of liberation, they use rainbow cop cars to trample on it.  Austin Pride has more in common with those who were having bricks thrown at them, rather than those who were throwing the bricks, during the Stonewall Rebellion. Any claim by Austin Pride to "commemorate" Stonewall is a sham. In contrast, the Stonewall Day of Revolution rally sought to uphold the true legacy of Stonewall as a violent rebellion against the police. Literature was distributed to passerbys: a statement declaring that "Stonewall was no pig-escorted party!", a pamphlet explaining our emergency trans housing program and organization generally, and a flyer soliciting donations for Christi Foxx Paris (an Austin trans woman and drag queen who had been beaten with a hammer and raped in May).  RATPAC members also talked to as many people as possible within the Austin Pride crowd, understanding that many folks show up to Austin Pride's events because of no visible revolutionary alternative. This is something we seek to change. The rally not only desired to uphold the true legacy of what Stonewall was, but also the reality of what Stonewall must become: honoring Stonewall today means making revolution. It means coming together to defend and provide for each other independent of the capitalists, gay or otherwise. It means no more petitioning the state for rights that can be taken away from us, but taking the problems facing us into our own hands and finding real solutions.  It means building up the community-based programs that provide the beginning blueprint of a society without lgbt poverty and brutalization. It means building up the people power capable of not only momentarily fending off the state, but permanently destroying the entire capitalist system that profits from and perpetuates exploitation and bloodshed against the broad majority of lgbt people of the globe.

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Stonewall Day of Revolution

Wednesday, June 28th @ 6pm, South Gates of the Texas State Capitol (11th St.)

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MONTH OF STONEWALL

ANNOUNCING RATPAC'S MONTH OF STONEWALL Honoring Stonewall today demands making revolution and nothing less.

FULL RESOLUTION FLYER HERE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B77jfIHiDcAGSmpTVkk1Y1ZxOEU/view In the early morning hours of June 28th of 1969, the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn bar and began assaulting and arresting working class patrons whose presentation didn’t “match” their IDs and genitals. This was a routine activity for the NYPD. However, what followed was not routine nor anything the pigs had planned for. The patrons were fed up and they reacted with righteous violence. In quick succession, a purse was swung, spare coins were thrown, bottles were broken, tables were toppled, and cop car tires were slashed. The footsoldiers of the capitalist class soon found themselves surrounded by pissed off trans women, street queens, butch lesbians, and an assortment of lgbt folks from the bar and joining in from the street. For the next few hours, the cops had no choice but to cower in fear as the rebellion ensued: bricks brought from a nearby construction site were now airborne, pay meters were uprooted from concrete and used as battering rams, punches were thrown, and fires were set. For every person the pigs tried to kidnap, five would take their place. It was a historic moment when black, brown, and working class lgbt folks displayed their correct understanding that the conflict with the police could only be resolved through violence, and that it is RIGHT TO REBEL. Since the Stonewall Riots took place, there has been a steady procession of events, organizations, and even a national monument claiming to commemorate this historic rebellion. However, any honest glance shows that most of these (such as Austin PRIDE) are exercises in denial being headed up by a burgeoning Gay Inc. section of the ruling class. While draped in rainbow flags, they spit on the true legacy of Stonewall. Their reformist political outlook, their cop-escorted (complete with rainbow cop cars!) and corporate funded parades, military showboating, “slice of the capitalist pie” pipe dream they attempt to sell to lgbt workers, their wholesale abandonment of trans folks on the streets… all of these stand against what Stonewall was about. Their claims to commemorate Stonewall are nothing more than attempts to disarm its memory in the mind and political consciousness of the masses. These charlatans share more of a legacy with those having bricks thrown at them during Stonewall than those who were doing the throwing. It is in the spirit of upholding the true legacy of Stonewall that the Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism announces our Month of Stonewall. We say it without shame: Stonewall was a violent rebellion against the cops! There is no “pride” in lying about that. Furthermore, we say honoring Stonewall today means not only recognizing it for what it was (a righteous but disorganized and undisciplined rebellion), but carrying it forward to its final conclusions: to make revolution against capitalism-imperialism and secure power for working class lgbt people. Without power, we have nothing! It is with that in mind that we move forward into the Month of Stonewall in Austin, Texas. We will start on June 11th with a collective art-making gathering for proletarian trans folks to put their ignored anger and struggles on paper (drawings, poems, stories, collages, you name it) while discussing real and necessary solution. If enough art is collected, it will be turned into a compilation to display the creativity and the limitless potential for power that is to be found within trans workers. This compilation would be distributed and also used to raise funds for the existing RATPAC Emergency Trans Housing Program. On the 18th, there will be a screening of collected footage from the roots of working class and black & brown lgbt political activity, along with a critical discussion of their achievements, as well as their shortcomings, and the concrete tasks of the struggle for trans liberation today. And on the 28th, the day of Stonewall, RATPAC will have a Stonewall Day of Revolution rally that aims to celebrate and uphold Stonewall’s true legacy, the same legacy the likes of Austin PRIDE attempts to disarm every year with their own fake “commemoration”. Please join us in upholding the Stonewall Rebellion, and honoring it today the only way possible: by making revolution!

SUNDAY JUNE 11th @ 6pm - Art from the Struggle (trans art-making gathering at Pan Am Park, 2100 E. 3rd)

SUNDAY JUNE 18th @ 7pm - Lesson's from Stonewall: Yesterday's Rebellion Today's Revolution (screening at Lott Park, 1174 Curve St.)

WEDNESDAY JUNE 28th @ 6pm - Stonewall Day of Revolution (rally, meeting at northwest corner of Colorado and 6th)

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HONORING STONEWALL DEMANDS REVOLUTION

This year for Queerbomb, RATPAC called for a Stonewall Contingent to kick off our Month of Stonewall series of events. Our unifying message for everything we do this June is that Stonewall was a violent rebellion against the police. It was not just a riot. It was not just an expression of anger or queerness or transness. It was serious and successful resistance against the state: a win for LGBT people and a loss for our oppressors, and it emboldened others across the country to use the same tactics. We say that’s what was good about Stonewall—that is the most important part of its legacy. The violence of police arresting queer and trans people for expressing themselves was only stopped through the violence of resisting arrest and hitting back. Nothing less would have stopped the pigs. Any less and the same anti-cross-dressing laws from back then might still be around today. Spontaneous violence like the Stonewall Rebellion can temporarily weaken the forces of oppression, but organized, persistent violence—revolution—is the only thing that can stand up to the organized and armed forces of the patriarchal and racist capitalist system and destroy it, and therefore the only thing that can bring a full end to LGBT oppression. At the time of Stonewall and for decades after, many revolutionary organizers turned a blind eye to the LGBT community. People were left to decide for themselves how to move forward. Many of those people did choose to be confrontational and militant to different degrees in the vein of Stonewall, but no group has been willing and able to lead the people to a long-term strategy and a revolutionary outlook for LGBT liberation. The Democratic Party and their cronies have worked for decades to quell the fires of gay and trans outrage, and groups born out of a rebellious spirit have either disappeared or turned into instruments of piecemeal reformism and election campaigns. Pride marches started as political protests celebrating the Stonewall Rebellion, but they have devolved into gratuitous collaborations with corporations and the state that beats, jails, and murders LGBT people daily, complete with rainbow police cruisers and Budweiser sponsorships.

Queerbomb started eight years ago with the idea to stand against modern-day Pride, because Pride today is more concerned with a sterilized image of LGBT people and corporate sponsorships than a true expression of the masses of queer folks. Pride only helps the few rich gay and trans folks that have a hand in controlling and profiting from the oppressive capitalist system. It’s very important to stand against it, but we believe Queerbomb’s strategy and tactics fall short. It’s good that it isn’t festering with corporate sponsorships, that it allows for the full rainbow of expressions of LGBT people in Austin, and that it is run by very dedicated community members, but it still lacks militancy. It lacks the rebellious politics, actions, and long-term vision that can truly free LGBT people. It lacks revolution. Queerbomb pays the cops and runs like a party with left-leaning politics, and we believe that is in no way a full departure from Pride. It only turns the clock back to a time before Pride was so fully absorbed into the capitalist system, before it was so committed to the interests of wealthy gay and trans people who profit heavily from patriarchy even as it harms them.

As outlined in its manifesto, Queerbomb believes in creating a better world for LGBT people. Through its procession, it offers a place for people to transgress the boundaries of what society and Austin Pride view as acceptable for queer expression, but it doesn’t provide a long-term solution to the problems that created modern-day Pride in the first place. It’s a day where Austin queerness is visible and loud, but not a day that grows our people’s political power. This year, that was perfectly shown by the procession. Some rain and lightning led to the cops to delay the procession for over a half hour and cut its timeframe and distance to less than half of what was planned. We should make the decisions of how and when to march and express ourselves completely independently of what the pigs have to say. We shouldn’t let them control us and cut our march short for their sake.

We have to build ways of organizing ourselves that have never been tried by LGBT people in the US before. We’ve tried the nonviolent route, the visibility route, the expression route for decades, and we’re closer to fascism than freedom for LGBT people. Fascists are enabled by the capitalist system. We need the city and the rest of the government to be afraid of us because that’s the only way we have a fighting chance to gain true freedom. The rebels at the Stonewall Inn understood that. The only thing that can change the world is power, and we will only get it by harming profits and waging war against our oppressors. In June 2018, instead of taking the streets within the confines of what the city and their pigs will tolerate, let’s ditch the cops and show the city a taste of our power.

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EMERGENCY TRANS HOUSING PROGRAM ATX

We have been working on our emergency housing program for some time now and we are very excited that, after months of hard work, we are finally ready to announce its official beginning today, March 27, 2017. Our goal is to spread revolutionary politics and build the revolutionary transgender proletariat here in Austin by bringing up and uniting some of the most marginalized folks in our city while providing housing, resources, and other types of assistance to any trans, gender questioning, or colonized gender person in need. For more information or if you are interested in being a part of the program please contact us. FIGHT TO SURVIVE, SURVIVE TO FIGHT! THE REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCE OF TRANS PEOPLE AGAINST CAPITALISM-ATX, 2017 PHONE: 512-887-1966 EMAIL: ratpacaustin@gmail.com WEBSITE: atx.ratpac.red

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Regarding the Disruption of Robert Jensen

On Sunday, March 5th at 12 PM, three members of RATPAC-ATX disrupted known trans-exclusionary radical feminist Robert Jensen’s talk at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. Earlier in the week, ATX Resist had found out about Jensen’s talk and told the church to cancel it. The church declined, saying that they want to give a platform to everyone’s ideas, and to back up that claim they offered ATXR a chance to speak in May. 

Because of our past positive history with this church during ICE Fuera de Austin’s Let Sulma Stay campaign, we decided to disrupt this event after hearing the news to make clear where we stand:  that although the organization showed solidarity with the LGBT proletariat in the past by providing Sulma Franco sanctuary, staying amicable with anyone who gives room for the state to attack and dehumanize trans people is a clear breach of that solidarity. If the First UU Church of Austin truly wants to stand with the oppressed and toiling LGBT people of Austin, they have to understand the difference between freedom of thought, which we must encourage if we’re to find correct revolutionary ideas, and freedom for hate speech, which Jensen blatantly represents when it comes to trans people. Otherwise, the rainbow flag they fly is a farce. If there’s room for unity between this church and RATPAC in the future, it will only come through struggle and accountability. We are still completely willing to work with the First UU Church of Austin on possible fronts, but they must have full solidarity with the transgender and LGBT proletariat, and they must struggle toward unity with proletarian organizations when they are criticized.

Quickly after Jensen’s talk began, three RATPAC members in the audience stood up in red masks, chanting “When trans people are under attack, what do we do? Fists up, fight back!” As soon as they seized the stage, they were swarmed with angry middle aged men who told them to leave, likening them to the KKK (the irony of which, given the circumstances, is not lost on us), and threatening to call the cops, all while physically assaulting three trans people. The member who was prepared to give the speech against Jensen and the church’s decision to host him quickly began reciting it, moving about the stage avoiding the reactionaries’ attempts. Eventually, two women who thankfully had more authority and sense in them than the men assaulting our members ceded five minutes, even though a few of the men were still adamant that these trans people had to leave and Robert Jensen had to stay. While we wish we could have gone further, we didn’t want to take our chances without the numbers to back us up (and especially given how many arrests our members have faced so recently), so once our speech was finished, our members led a final chant and exited as the threats to call the police continued. Rest assured: next time, we’ll bring more.

Below is a transcript of the speech read by one of the attending members. They were regrettably not able to record our own video of the event because of the short notice on which the action was carried out: “A year and a half ago, the Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism stood in solidarity with this church as they allowed Sulma Franco sanctuary while the genocidal US imperialist police state wanted her deported back to Guatemala, where she would be killed for her LGBT activism. We still applaud the decision this church made to stand with Sulma and the immigrant and LGBT people of Austin, and RATPAC is glad that the church accepted our organization’s support. However, solidarity with LGBT people can’t be one sided. By hosting Robert Jensen, who promotes a so-called critical view of trans people, this church is allowing a full platform to someone who aligns with the patriarchal capitalist system and the trump administration when it comes to trans people. You’re giving a voice to someone who actively harms trans people and by extension all oppressed women of the world, including Sulma! This is all while we are in a growing time of crisis for oppressed people, where trans people are a specific target of the growing fascist movement in the US.

Jensen claims to harbor no ill will toward trans people, but in practice, he gives validation and legitimacy to people who want us dead. It doesn’t matter what he claims; what matters is what he does. He sees no humanity in trans people; he sees us as a topic for his thinkpieces. He takes our daily experience of severe oppression and violence at the hands of the capitalist and patriarchal state, and turns it into a debate about whether trans women deserve the same right to access women’s shelters or women’s bathrooms as cis women. Trans people face more patriarchal violence than cis people, but somehow to Jensen, it is patriarchal to allow abused trans women and cis women to share the same spaces and get the same protections. He always tries to mystify his position on trans people, but there’s nothing cryptic about supporting Dan Patrick’s Texas bathroom bill (SB6) that is going through the legislature now, which would see people jailed for entering a bathroom that doesn’t match the sex on their birth certificate.

As a radical feminist, and a trans exclusionary one at that, Jensen will always miss the point. The working class women of the world, both cisgender and transgender, don’t and can’t hold themselves to his intellectual and disconnected standards of what it means to reinforce the patriarchy. He says that reinforcing the patriarchy means performing the gender roles capitalism forces everyone into, but we say that reinforcing the patriarchy means delegitimizing and harming the existence and struggles of cis women and trans people around the world. His stance on trans people and his support for SB6 is incredibly patriarchal. He wants individuals to somehow ‘dismantle’ their own oppression, but RATPAC understands that no form of oppression will be destroyed without a violent and organized fight against the people who profit from capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. We are confident that the most oppressed people in this country and in the world stand with us and against Jensen in that fight. We don’t need radical feminism; we need revolutionary feminism! If you support trans people, don’t listen to Jensen and don’t give him a platform.”

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RATPAC-ATX Statement on SB6: The Texas Bathroom Bill

In Texas, SB6 is legislation seeking to rigidly regulate the use of restrooms in publicly funded institutions--such as schools, universities, state buildings and libraries--criminalizing (with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison) the use of any restroom which deviates from the at-birth gender assignment of a person as denoted on their birth certificate, modeling itself after similar legislation passed in North Carolina last year. In RATPAC, we do not see legislation as the primary battleground of working class and oppressed peoples: the capitalist system and its culture is vile to the core, and any concessions from the ruling class should be the result and not the goal of a militant revolutionary movement aimed at destroying it. However, we have to put this bill in our current political context: one of rising fascism and reaction that this type of state-sanctioning seeks to further galvanize.

"You can mark today as the day Texas is drawing a line in the sand and saying no.”

-the pig called Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

We say, same to you, scumbag. May every ounce of piss of trans workers and students not able to be disposed of safely end up on your newest tailored suit.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and all other politician scum supporting this bill are concern-trolling pigs who only speak to "moral obligation" on matters such as sexual assault when it is opportunistic for them to act as thinly veiled agents of patriarchy. We know that when it comes to public sexual assault, trans women face a heightened rate of this violence--something which this bill seeks to further facilitate.  Usually, these suits keep busy with attempting to defund resources that provide important health care services to oppressed gender people, something which the pig called Dan Patrick has helped spearhead when he's not buddying up to actual rapists like Trump. Despite them pushing the (widely debunked) mythology of the trans "bathroom predator", the irony is that it is these suited charlatans who behave like all actually-existing sexual abusers: in their eyes, survivors are only worth what they can be exploited for.

We know that, in reality, the already existing levels of bathroom policing around the metaphysical "male" and "female" biosex categories has led to state-sanctioned violence not only against trans people, but anyone who cannot live up to the hegemonic image of what these categories mean to a white supremacist and capitalist society: Black, disabled, and lesbian women generally who often fall outside of these confines. This bill is part and parcel to further emboldening cops and their wannabes to take action with a false air of nobility, while the rates of domestic violence and sexual assault within this grouping remain starkly higher than the general population.   We know that, given the nature of this bill, this will most affect trans working class youth in public schools.  Despite what we know about cops being disproportionately (and far more than trans people) enactors of the worst instances of patriarchal violence, the state is now inviting them into the bathroom with our youth to regulate their genitals.  The way in which this particularly targets youth is no mistake, either.  In this time of rising fascism in the United States, more and more do we see sections of the ruling class scrambling to reassert traditional gender roles, to reach for neo-völkisch aspirations of cisgender white nuclear families, to beat out of the youth any form of fighting spirit, and to continue to uphold the gendered requirements for capitalism's division of productive and reproductive labor. To reproduce its ideology, this system and its beneficiaries understand that keeping a deathgrip on the youth is key. And many of the youth already intuitively understand that this is a reality. In regards to combatting this, working class trans youth in public schools will find themselves at the forefront.  The world is ultimately theirs, and we see it only fit that we arm them with an ideology and the organizational means capable of turning this society and its rotting gendered culture upside down by any means necessary. As such, in response to this bill and moving forward regardless of whether or not it passes, we will begin further propagating and organizing resistance within Austin's public schools. As we move forward in our emergency housing program, we will also move forward in equipping the youth with the material and ideological tools necessary to begin disrupting, organizing, and fighting back as necessary.  The masses are unlimited in their creativity in struggle, and the youth particularly so. In the face of such a bill, and in a time of rising fascism in the United States, they deserve to be and must be unleashed. More on this to come.  RATPAC-ATX

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The Mandate of RATPAC

A summary of our purpose and guiding principles as of December 3, 2016 The Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism (RATPAC) is a militant, anti-capitalist transgender organization. We align our struggles as transgender workers and students with those of the broader working class. We are anti-reformist and pro-revolution by any means necessary. We serve transgender people in their fight for emancipation from the capitalist system, and we support the peoples’ struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism in the US and internationally. We organize proletarian trans people in the interest of the revolutionary working class movement.

Our organization is guided by the mass line. This is a process of constantly gathering the diverse ideas and demands from the people; analyzing those ideas with our understanding of revolutionary theory, history, and experience to sharpen those ideas into programs and propaganda; then spreading those programs and ideas deeply among the people. We keep and improve what has been proven correct by what the people take up as their own, and at the same time we gather people’s new ideas and demands to repeat the process in an infinite spiral of knowledge and practice until victory. Our organization upholds proletarian feminism. This means that our feminism is for the workers and poor people; not for the bosses or the politicians. We recognize that regardless of gender, straight or queer, cisgender or transgender, the capitalist ruling class has a long-term interest in maintaining the patriarchy, because it helps them keep their power and get more money. This is a philosophy that is still in development: only through revolutionary mass organizations like ours, made of people oppressed by the double chain of capitalism and patriarchy, can we further develop proletarian feminist philosophy and its relationship to trans people. We will end all forms of exploitation and oppression by building revolution and fighting for transgender liberation, and by supporting struggles against all other forms of institutional and individual oppression. We strive to be resolutely anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-ableist, and proletarian feminist in word and action, and we support all others who do the same.

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The Fascist’s Best Friend: The True Story of Liberalism

Originally published 12/12/2016 We are in a period of rising fascism in the United States. The capitalist ruling class is facing crisis: their occupation of other countries has been justly combatted wherever it has stuck its blood-funnel, America’s monopoly deathgrip on the globe is rotting, disillusionment with neoliberalism is on the rise, and the parties of the rich hold little fanfare among the masses. Unfortunately, this also comes with the United States bearing a rising-but-still-weak communist movement, which makes such a situation ripe for fascism to ride in on the wings of right-wing populism. In this time, the capitalists are scrambling to divert all attention from the crimes of their class and its unforgivable rule, with some vying to more nakedly foster violent misdirected blame upon marginalized people: immigrants, trans people, folks of oppressed nations, religious minorities, et al. However, by themselves, fascists aren’t so powerful. In reality, they are like trained dogs, unleashed to wreak havoc during such crises to re-establish bourgeois governability; to make shit easy again for the big bosses to make profit off the backs of laboring and exploited people. Like all dogs, they must be groomed, fed, rewarded, and given the space to run around. These particular dogs are kennel-trained and rabid, released by their masters to instill fear and confusion to ward off revolt, only to then be returned to their cages once the deed is done. So, while we are right to defend ourselves militantly against such dogs, to do so effectively we must also ask ourselves: Who has unleashed them? Who guards them as they run about sinking their teeth into the flesh of the struggling masses? Who is the overseer in building a sanctuary for these fascist dogs, and who seeks to lock us inside with them? The answer is as clear as ever in these days: liberals. Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. In whatever form it takes, liberalism is any political standing that sees capitalism as fundamentally good and only ever in need of reform, scoffing at the necessity of revolution while reforms do very little to alleviate the daily drudgery of the worker. No matter what variant degree of liberalism is being upheld, one thing remains fundamentally true: in a time of crisis and upheaval, fascism becomes the rising representative of capitalist interests, and all liberal and reformist (and thus capitalist) ideologies inevitably take their natural place as the enablers and shepherds of fascism, even if they rhetorically posit themselves against it. Make no mistake: defending ourselves against and utterly destroying fascism is not a matter of rhetoric. And calls for pacifism, free-speech, and anything which hinders the wholesale beatdown of nazis are dangerous and unforgivable. History confirms this. Those who uphold these values in the face of rising fascism; those who would restrict the fury of oppressed people to vague emotionalism (“Love trumps hate!”) or victim-blaming equivocations (“Denying fascists a right to speak makes you just as bad!”); those who would dare attempt to try and take lead of the masses under such useless moralism (which neither understands nor truly wishes to defeat fascism) and disarm the anger of workers... they should be called what they are: judas goats that would lead us to the slaughter to preserve their own position on the farm. While we are all born into capitalist ideology (the ruling ideas of society are that of its ruling class), through revolutionary struggle and only through revolutionary struggle are we able exit liberalism and find hope. In fact, it is liberal illusion which breeds hopelessness among working people, because it lies to them about the system and how it can be changed. It denies workers the reality of their power. In the mind of the masses, liberal ideology is a parasite alien to their class that makes them act against their own interests. More and more oppressed people are waking up to that, which is part of the crisis facing the capitalists today. But for hardened liberal organizers, politicians, careerists, and liberalism’s petty-bourgeois peddlers, ultimately, they fear losing their liberal lifestyle more than they fear fascism. Because of this, in a time of sharpening contradiction, liberalism takes its natural place on the wrong side of history: beside the fascists, not against. This is not merely theoretical conjecture, but demonstrably true. Here in Austin, we have seen it firsthand as the first wave of protests against the election of Donald Trump unfolded. Now, Trump himself is not a fascist, but a right-wing populist who the fascists see as an ally and whose election has emboldened their efforts. Given this, these protests have taken on a dual nature, with a fundamental split between those who have correctly identified and seek to combat the rise of fascism vs. those who are merely upset that the presidency of the United States wasn’t handed over the seasoned warmonger imperialist Hillary Clinton instead. She at least would’ve kept such violence in the third world, the barrio, the hood, and the ghetto where it belongs, says the liberal. In these demonstrations, we have watched as liberals couched their actions with “tolerance-based” language as they have protected KKK members, assisted in the arrests of comrades, and shook hands with cops (the foot soldiers of a capitalist system descending into fascism). Indeed, we witnessed as liberals led condescending chants of “Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest!” as others attempted to assist a brown child who was thrown to the ground viciously by Texas State Trooper pigs. We were there when they physically stood in the way of efforts the de-arrest the child, imploring the masses to let the cops just “do their job” as the child's face was pressed against the pavement. We were there when liberals pointed out people inside our crowds for the cops to target. We were there when the pigs attempted to murder our comrade Puka Unancha, as liberals assisted in the arrest of five other comrades who came to his rescue. Puka had his neck broken in two places that night and was left in a cell for more than a day with no medical attention, on the brink of paralysis. If it wasn’t for those brave comrades, he’d be dead. If the “peaceful protest!” cop-loving liberals had it their way, he’d be dead. This is a microcosm of the reality of liberalism in a time of rising fascism. When eastside community members stood up to the gentrifying Blue Cat Cafe, who crossed a community boycott following the violent demolition of Jumpolin to set up their trendy shop, liberals were quick to run to support owner Rebecca Gray. They applauded her “cat cafe” and saw it as enough reason to completely disregard Rebecca Gray’s actions against the community. In essence, Rebecca Gray has consistently used the cats as empty emotional props to continue her profiteering. For hardened liberals, who are quick to cast aside the interests of community solidarity and any concern with the displacement of working class Latinx communities on the eastside, it was an easy sell on her part. Because in the face of increasingly necessary militancy and opposition to urban displacement, liberals were yet again more fearful of calls to fight gentrification with revolution than they were for the livelihoods of working class people. The liberals were quick to combat revolutionaries and try to hinder their efforts (led by Defend Our Hoodz - Defiende El Barrio). After graffiti reading “FUCK YOU GENTRIFIER SCUM, GET OUT” appeared on the walls of the Blue Cat Cafe after months of Gray’s doubling-down and drunken harassment of community members, she was quick to reach out to the liberals for sympathy yet again. Now, a new savior for her cause stepped in: an influx of hardline nazis and white supremacists by the dozens upon dozens poured out donations and vows to defend her against what they and Gray see as evil brown workers. They expressed their heartfelt solidarity with Blue Cat Cafe, whilst calling for mass deportation, genocide, building a wall on the southern U.S. border, killing Latinxs, and white power. These came after she gained the attention of the crypto-fascist publication InfoWars. Not only did she not speak out against the reality that most donations to her business came from literal nazis…she approached InfoWars for an interview to bolster their efforts! Of course, all the while, Rebecca has stuck to her meaningless liberal notions of “love,” “peace,” and “dialogue,” as she has consistently criminalized organizers and welcomed the support of nazis with open arms. Rebecca Gray is the ATX postergirl of liberalism’s love affair with nazis, and she deserves to be treated just like her cohorts. We say: act like scum, buddy-up to scum, get treated like scum. 

The actions of liberals over the past month has led to the arrest of at least five trans comrades. For that, we draw our lines clearly. Liberals, we must treat you as the enemy if you choose to act as the enemy. Without you, the fascists are weak. With you, they breathe fresh life at every call to love, peace, and free-speech that you make, which they gladly use to continue to rally violence against trans people. You are their best friends in this time. And a friend to fascists can be no friend to the masses, and no friend to transgender workers in struggle for liberation which can never come under your liberal fantasies. Fascism must be smashed, not coddled and have its wounds tended to. Liberal calls to preserving the peace in a time of struggle is written in the blood of trans workers. While the liberals are content with paying lip-service to the idea that a minority of transfolk should get a piece of the capitalist pie and take position within bourgeois governance, it is only in exchange that we drop our militancy and all calls to any action that would actually materially benefit transgender people of the broad masses. And of course, liberals say us trans folks shouldn’t take any action to actually destroy fascism’s rise. Rather, we must prepare to die for liberalism’s meaningless principles of respectability, and we must accept nazi speech that calls for the death of trans people and sees us as threats to their neo-völkisch dreams of traditional gender roles and a nation of cisgender white families. We must accept this up until the point that the nazi scum are already in a place of power to act upon it, according to the liberal. And it matters not to the petit-bourgeois liberal, even the rare moneyed trans person, what happens at that point. As they’ve said again and again through the election--at the point their principles of “peace” and pacifism are no longer workable, they’ll just leave the country with their money and their cowardice. They’ll just leave us to die. Because again, the liberal’s greatest fear is losing their liberal lifestyle, to which they see a revolution by the underclass as an equal threat as fascism. For this, we must draw a line in the sand. We must displace liberals from any possible leadership within the anti-Trump and anti-fascist movements. In the streets, liberals who preach “love” and “peace” while protecting nazis and cops must be dealt with accordingly. We must go into our communities under the thumb of liberalism and expose for all still trapped within its confines the true nature of this vile ideology founded upon the perpetual oppression of the working class. All liberal organizations which claim to represent the interests of trans people while preaching respectability and shaking hands with the pigs must be exposed for the careerist stooges that they are. We must build, for all to see, a revolutionary movement which represents true love for working class and marginalized peoples which can only be found in the struggle for power, not concessions from the politicians and bosses. We must come to treat liberalism as fascism’s best friend, whose principles of “peace and pacifism” bring death and despair upon the masses and guides them into non-solutions like bourgeois elections, or using “love” to “trump hate” as the fascists prepare for our demise. We say enough is enough! We must cast aside illusions and prepare for arduous struggle. And we seek to organize the trans proletariat to do just that: to smash fascism and its liberal enablers, and prepare to create a world of revolutionary justice for trans people; to secure a world in which the masses of ordinary everyday people under the thumb of capitalism-imperialism are now on top, collectively deciding how to run society for the mutual benefit of all. Fight or die. These are our options. 

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The Two Roads from Orlando

Originally published on July 26, 2016.  How do we move forward from the harrowing shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando? We are left with two roads, with only one of them leading forward. The reactionary road seeks to have us join hands with empire and its pigs, or wander ensnared in liberal mystifications. The revolutionary road--the necessary path towards any semblance of liberation--offers not one inch to the forces of reaction. Rather, it seeks to serve and mobilize the exploited masses against capitalism, imperialism, and the footsoldiers of the ruling class that maintain a system founded upon perpetual violence against LGBT+ people and oppressed nations. Choosing the correct road is as pertinent now as ever, along with drawing a clear demarcation between us and our enemies. THE REACTIONARY ROAD The reactionary road denies what the Pulse mass shooting was: an extension of the ongoing political and social campaign of violence, terrorism, and repression facing LGB+ and especially trans Black and Brown peoples. It attempts to scapegoat Islam for the violence upon which American capitalism-imperialism relies. It asks us to forsake queer Muslims suffering under the thumb of American empire domestically and abroad, without whom there is no possibility of liberation. The reactionary road also seeks to further mystify the massacre by proposing liberal distractions like gun control without ever speaking of disarming the pigs or the American imperialist machine--the brutalizers of oppressed peoples. It asks us to trust the regulation and monitoring by the capitalist state to decide to whom the power of the gun is to be doled, in the name of the very people their guns have been pointed at since Stonewall and long before. It attempts to decontextualize the gun, rather than address the political forces which are wielding it. The reactionary road seeks to usurp this attack to drum up support for pinkwashed and whitewashed notions of so-called protection: police surveillance, mass incarceration, imperialist aggression, and a traitorous unity with corporate interests. In doing so, it asks us to betray the memories of those who died and to hoist a rainbow flag above our greatest enemies. THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD The revolutionary road to liberation, however, stands in opposition to the forces of reaction and seeks to mobilize the masses in upheaving capitalism-imperialism. The revolutionary road places its hope in the masses, not in the powers which thrive upon their exploitation. It refuses to squander the hopes and fighting spirit of oppressed peoples on liberal non-solutions. It finds no solace in the crocodile tears of the capitalists and their stooges seeking to alchemize the bloodshed in Orlando into more power over the oppressed and exploited peoples of the globe. The revolutionary road rejects all forms of repressive scrutiny of Muslims, immigrants, and our hoods. It is paved upon an understanding of the Pulse shooting as, rather than an attack on the American way of life, a prime example of it. It sides against the cops--the footsoldiers of capitalism and some of the greatest perpetrators of violence against us--for whom Omar Mateen uncoincidentally held great admiration. The revolutionary road doesn’t want liberal gun control. It wants revolutionary politics and oppressed peoples to control the gun, and to disarm the cops and the U.S. military! The revolutionary road doesn’t want more imperialist warfare. It wants to link arms with oppressed nations to smash imperialism to pieces! The revolutionary road doesn’t see violence against Muslims as a people’s response to the Pulse massacre. It instead calls for organized violence by oppressed peoples against this system of exploitation and genocide and all of its lackeys! The revolutionary road doesn’t lead us into cahoots with the pigs. It leads us to drive the pigs out of our communities! We do not trust the greatest perpetrators of racist and anti-LGBT+ violence to proceed from Orlando in our interests. We seek to cultivate a revolutionary unity capable of paving inroads against them with the understanding that this blood, too, is on their hands! SMASH THE REACTIONARY ROAD IN AUSTIN In the aftermath of the harrowing Pulse shooting, the reactionary road was already well under construction in Austin, Texas. While the mouthpieces and talking heads of capitalism called for us to set aside political differences and to come together in unity, this only obscured the political reality of the abominable unity that they were calling for. Austin Pride and the Austin Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce led the “Vigil for Orlando” which incorporated a procession of pigs and a speech from king pig Mayor Adler himself. Austin Pride assured all in attendance that the police were welcomed to “keep everyone safe,” a gross charade to any LGBT+ person who has felt stark fear in the presence of a cop, if not violence at their hands. After all, these were the very people the shooter in Orlando heroized. The vigil ended with the call to support corporate entities, ineffectual and traitorous NGO groups, and capitalist politicians to “combat terrorism and hate”. Adler took up the form of liberal mystification now being championed by the Democratic party establishment: dog-whistle racist gun control based on further scrutiny, regulation, and monitoring of Muslims and Arabs--scapegoating oppressed peoples for the violence the representatives of the ruling class are complicit in and perpetuate. Together, these things tell us the full picture: Even on the local level, our government wants to maintain forced national unity between workers and their exploiters in the US, and international division and hatred between the oppressed workers of the imperialist centers and those of the world. Furthermore, here in Austin where the ongoing battle against gentrification and displacement represents the frontlines of the struggle of Austin’s oppressed peoples, the presence of Adler--the one trumpeting calls for “urban renewal” and police repression--is a disgusting insult. How dare they feign concern for the LGBT+ Latinxs who died in Orlando while they pour all of their resources into targeting them here in Austin? Even the alternative event held earlier by Queerbomb (which formed in opposition to the corporate-ran and military-worshipping Austin Pride) showed fear of establishing a political demarcation between them and the feel-good pigfest which promised greater violence against working class LGBT+ people, Muslims, and oppressed nations as a response to the Pulse shooting. While holding a separate event was a correct response, it ultimately showed forfeiture as it attempted to not overly politicize in a time of mourning. But in this time, a fighting politic is more necessary than ever. Ignoring that is not justice, but injustice. “Rest in power” is meaningless if it doesn’t prioritize the revolutionary road to bring the memories of those murdered into power, or if it fails to equip and harness the fighting energy of the living. This forfeiture was only made more concrete with the march ending, at the end of the day, with joining forces with the Adler/pigfest Pride event--a startling microcosm for the limitations of where Queerbomb sits today, as it rightly condemns those at the forefront of paving the reactionary road, but is still unequipped with a liberatory politic and revolutionary formation capable of following any other path. To find hope, this must be consolidated and put in command. RATPAC-ATX continues to join forces with all those following the revolutionary road forward from Orlando. We know that only a world in which the masses have full and collective control over the social, economic, and political fruits of their labor, can we even fathom a future of liberation and communism--one being impossible without the other. Let us serve the masses, learn from the masses, and mobilize the masses. RATPAC-ATX also continues to stand in solidarity with the LGBT+ Latinx and Muslim communities facing tremendous loss, terror, and backlash in the wake of the Pulse Orlando mass shooting. We condemn any and all deceitful ploys to turn this assault on oppressed peoples in its aftermath. Whether to rile up support for imperialist aggression abroad or for state repression and surveillance here in the belly of the beast. ★ R.A.T.P.A.C. - ATX

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RATPAC-ATX disaffiliates from “RATPAC-Puget Sound” (Updated)

NOTE: Since the time this was written, “RATPAC-Puget Sound” changed their name to “Trans Anti-Capitalist Organization (TACO)” and soon-after disbanded entirely. We wish them the best in their efforts moving forward, but absolutely feel that this dissolution is due to essential errors in their organizational strategy which we failed to rectify in our meetings with them leading up to our disaffiliation.   Today, RATPAC-ATX and RATPAC-Puget Sound formally disaffiliated over insurmountable differences in methodology and organizing principles. It was the product of a couple arduous meetings whose conclusions clearly presented this as a necessity. For us in RATPAC-ATX, affiliation requires: - the ability to engage in open debate and line struggle between RATPACs on political and organizational issues and methods, i.e., holding each other accountable even while autonomous, allowing for individual initiative but ensuring our unity is principled and based on mutual growth and development - ongoing and perpetual criticism/self-criticism between RATPACs Once it became clear that those terms could not be met, we had to seek disaffiliation. This is for a very simple reason: we can not hold an affiliation in which we aren’t able to have accountability, along  with direct criticism/self-criticism or any possible protracted struggle for unity. Without these, there is no affiliation we can honestly speak to, build, or have accountability within.  We see a lack of these, in practice, as a lack of affiliation entirely, or one in which we are asked to keep our hands tied. We don’t believe it will work to the benefit of our organization, theirs, or the movement to serve and galvanize the transgender proletariat and the broad struggle against capitalism-imperialism. An affiliation within which we cannot have accountability through mutual and constant struggle becomes a break from our accountability to the trans proletariat and the broad oppressed masses. However, no doubt, we do wish them the absolute best in their organizing efforts and we actively welcome further communication between our orgs, and are not opposed to opportunities to cooperate on individual campaigns and actions. Ultimately, we recognize that rupture is the precedent of greater unity, and we are not disheartened. Here in Austin, our work is stronger than ever as we have moved forward in our application of the mass line as our methodology of work: weekly public study groups, biweekly general meetings, monthly community events, on the cusp of our emergency housing network and politicization program, growing ranks and increased internal organization, and participation within a broad number of campaigns. We are also in active discussion with several other forming RATPACs who are seeking to forge affiliation based on these principles of internal struggle and principled unity. We will announce more on this as soon as possible. As always, we remain committed to the task of politically developing and serving the trans proletariat and the masses broadly, and mobilizing these and their potential political allies in the struggle against capitalism-imperialism towards trans liberation and communism. Build up the RATPACs! Forward into struggle! RATPAC-ATX