Come join War Resisters League and People’s Forum for a teach-in and community discussion on the Trans Ban. We’re hoping that this will be a place to deepen the shallow and often binary conversation around the Trans Ban since 45 took office. QTPOC globally have been calling out the impact that US invasion and bombing in the Global South has on their communities. However, they have been systematically excluded from this conversation about trans inclusion into violent institutions. As anti-militarist organizations and queer and trans organizers, we cannot lose sight of who the military primarily harms.
Additionally, anti-war trans veterans are rarely heard and can speak to the impacts of militarism on queer and trans people on the inside of the military. Trans vets are treated in the media narrative around the Trans Ban as a homogenous group, but are very rarely talked to about their experience in an institution often deeply transphobic and dehumanizing. As organizers in the US, we also need to talk to Trans vets of the US Military who have deep critiques of the military.
How do abolitionists and anti-imperialists approach an issue like the Trans Ban, and keep the focus on the queer and trans folk in the crosshairs of the Pentagon in the Global South? We want to build with queer and trans people and organizations who recognize the threat of institutionalized legal discrimination like the Trans Ban, and also want to build a movement that is capable of addressing the factors driving trans recruitment into the military, such as economic disenfranchisement, the need to have any sort of community around you, and places to perform and have your masculinity recognized and validated. Creating movements capable of stopping a US war machine that kills QTPOC and creates more queer and trans refugees and asylum seekers needs all of us. Join us June 20th from 6:30 - 8:30 at the People’s Forum!
