2022 in activism: Escalation and increasing tension
Over the course of 2022, US politics steadily destabilized. The year began pretty much normally but tension was evident and soon began to escalate. Gender issues above all others have predominated as Christian Nationalists and Fascists seek to impose their will.
Video-2022 in review by Iron Snowflake 18 min 48 sec
In April, protesters fed up with Joe Manchin's efforts to force through the Mountain Valley Pipeline, promote other pipelines, and block all climate legislation took the fight to him. Having already protested at his DC moored houseboat without success, activists descended on the Grant Town Power Plant in W Virginia, the sole customer of Joe Manchin's coal company.
At this time, the producer of these videos moved out of what had been permanent housing in the DC area and began travelling, but returned to DC for a SCOTUS deployment in June and for Women's March and IMF protests in October.
Also in April the Atlanta Forest Defense/Stop Cop City campaign began to intensify, with repeated police raids beginning in May ending in repeated failures. At the end of the month, Fascists at the annual pro-Confederate event at Stone Mountain, GA were unable to attack counterprotesters thanks to an armed anti-racist component.
The leak of the draft Dobbs SCOTUS decision to legalize state bans of/prosecutions for abortion set things off in May. The resulting confrontations can generally be divided into three stages: The draft decision leak triggered intense protests focussed on the Supreme Court and on the so-called "Justices." The protests at the homes of antichoice "Justices" (shown on this video) became a national controversy. This all came to a head on June 24 with the release of the final Dobbs decision. Black blocs marched in DC and protests shook the nation. State governments began attacking women and doctors and underground abortion and pill networks moved to counter.
Within weeks, fascists, neo-Nazis and Christian Nationalists exploited the tension from Dobbs to unleash a campaign of violent hate against the LGBTQ community, just as many had warned at the Supreme Court. Fash and theocrat conventions such as Fl-based "Moms4Liberty" and Turning Point USA drew boisterious protests and swastika-waving Nazis showed up at the latter. As the summer went on, Florida and Texas passed legislation criminalizing medical treatment for transgender youth as protesters beseiged the decisionmakers behind this. Fears of genocide and "another Krystalnacht" swept the trans community in particular and much of the LGBTQ community more generally, and an LGBTQ migration out of so-called "red states" began.
Late in the Summer, Proud Boys and Christian nationalists began focussing first on "drag queen story hours" held in libraries for kids, them on any and all drag events. This quickly escalated, with repeated armed standoffs in Texas between armed fascists and John Brown Gun Club members defending drag events and their participants. This spread nationally, though without the guns in places without legal open carry. Some drag shows were cancelled due to the threat posed by Nazi terrorism, while others stood firm and fought back. The outcome of this battle has yet to be decided as of the end of December but the frequency of these attacks is increasing.
The outcome of the election was also inconclusive, with many of the worst MAGA candidates defeated but the GOP still taking the House of Misrepresentatives. The far-right dominated most but not all of the races in Florida and Christian nationalist governor DeSantis emerged stronger than ever, increasingly considered a likely contender for the White House in 2024. This election did little to dampen fears of civil war, given the likely outcome of a Trump or DeSantis election victory or a disputed election and the escalating violence and tension in the streets.
On Dec 3, presumed far-right terrorists shot out electrical substations in many places, in Moore County, NC destroying enough of them to plunge most of the county into a blackout. An anti-drag Twitter poster all but took credit for the Moore County attacks. Elsewhere in the US, pro and anti-trans protesters faced off in Ft Lauderdale FL, hard Nazis marched against a Lakeland drag show but could not shut it down, and a drag show in Ohio had to shut down after a massive formation of Proud Boys and other Nazis some armed with rifles invaded the neighborhood where it was to tale place.
Get ready for another very rough ride in 2023!
