Truthout, November 12, 2024
When Trump was elected in 2016, the ACLU’s website featured a photo of him and the words “We’ll See You in Court.” They also rolled out an online campaign asking people to take an oath pledging to defend the Constitution (no specifics about how to do that).
It was a pivotal moment — so many people were newly afraid and angry, mobilizable — yet liberal organizations like the ACLU were providing demobilizing messaging, encouraging people to engage in meaningless symbolic action, or to donate and then passively wait for salvation to be delivered by nonprofits and courts. The most visible legal battle from that time, over Trump’s Muslim ban, showed that liberals could not stop Trump in the courts.
Around that same time, Democratic elected officials from across Washington State, where I live, called a press conference and declared Washington a “hate free zone.” These same politicians, who were raiding homeless encampments, arresting protesters, expanding policing and jails, courting the tech industry, caging migrants, pandering to real estate developers, expanding fossil fuel extraction, and all the rest of government business-as-usual, tried to distinguish their own cloaked murderous agendas from Trump’s overt Islamophobia and transphobia. Their meaningless, hypocritical declaration against “hate” was mere dazzle camouflage for their pro-Israel, pro-police enterprises.
