Having seen enough local mayoral elections to comment upon them, the trend is like this: the new administration comes in, appointing its own people and making everyone else reapply for their positions, and after some feathers are lightly ruffled, they settle in and do almost nothing different from the previous administration. Snow clearance from sidewalks is still as lousy as ever once you leave downtown and the Business Improvement District, the decades’ old litter in the Bankside Grove area of Pope Park has not been removed, and there are still far too many police in this city; but, I’ve never woken up and wondered if Hartford’s mayor got into a pissing match at 4 AM and now we don’t have trash collection this week. If it weren’t for seeing Arunan’s photo here and there, I would have no idea that Luke was not still running Hartford. A lot remains the same, and what changes are happening look like slow and steady progress.
The steadfastness should be comforting right now, though it still requires we trust that when unethical orders are issued on the federal level, our local representation will have the moral courage to disobey.
During the first T$%@p administration, the constant chaos was blindsiding more often than not. In 2017, the National Park Service posted images on social media comparing the size of Obama’s inauguration crowd to that of 45; responding like a teen to the accusation that someone else’s was bigger, the T$#&p administration temporarily suspended the NPS Twitter account. It was then that the Alt NPS was born, at the time that this new administration was wiping factual information from government websites. Anything related to climate change was buried, watered down, distorted, or removed. It’s not like this happens whenever a new president is elected or they are of a different political party than their predecessor. In a Time piece about how climate information was gutted from websites, Christine Todd Whitman, who was the EPA Administrator under George W. Bush, said that the T$#*p Era changes were “to such an extreme degree that [it] undermines the credibility of the site.”
This is a good time to read (or re-read) 1984 and remind ourselves what disinformation tastes like, because we are living it. As we are being told by the new administration that they are fighting censorship, almost all references to the existence of queer people have been stripped from the WhiteHouse.gov website.
Currently, searching that site for information about the queer community yields only one result, which is T&$*p’s attempt to overturn Biden’s Executive Order from June 2022. It’s the one that says queer folks are people: “It is therefore the policy of my Administration to combat unlawful discrimination and eliminate disparities that harm LGBTQI+ individuals and their families, defend their rights and safety, and pursue a comprehensive approach to delivering the full promise of equality for LGBTQI+ individuals.”
Rather than take a claim at face value, I checked the Whitehouse.gov site for myself, and this is how those search results appear as of 27 January 2025:
Really? Nothing?! How about:
How is this even possible?!
There it is . . . the one admission of the existence of gays, and it’s hidden inside of newspeak.
Apologizing in advance, but out of curiosity, I had to know:
That’s the fragility of this administration.
Those from fervently insular sects may recognize the tactic a mile away: make it as if the people they don’t want to exist, appear to not exist. It allows the tyrants to pretend as if they aren’t hateful, to not know what is being discussed. That becomes easier to do by virtually erasing people – on websites, in books, on passports.
Unlike his previous term, people had an idea of what to expect. What did you do over the weekend? People in the science community were downloading data from the federal websites that they knew to expect would be sabotaged shortly, if not already. Others worked to archive what they could.
And, it should have surprised nobody that in this Information Age, it’s disinformation – not ideas, not aspirations, not dreams, not hopes – that is largely responsible for the tyranny we are experiencing.
Yet, and I don’t know how, the CDC was surprised by the order to stop working with the World Health Organization. In 2020, at a time when T$@*p should have increased U.S. contributions to WHO, he suspended funding and began trying to remove our country from the organization. Who the fuck does that?! President Biden reversed that bullshit in 2021. Now, probably with fewer than 20 golf games into this new administration, as the rest of us have healthy concern over H5N1 bird flu, T$%@p once again wants to divorce Americans from access to information that would save Americans’ lives. We can meditate on why and how anyone voted for him after his first homicidal term, but since we are here now, we get to choose how to respond to these utterly fucked up circumstances.
After reading 1984, reread the Declaration of Independence before the T$#&p administration gets around to excising that from public education.
Those employed with the CDC can choose to disobey those orders. Members of Congress can choose to talk back. Those working for the State Department could refuse to obey the order to eliminate the “X marker.” This is a matter of remembering to whom they are accountable, and in this country, we do not have a king.
Hartford, Middletown, New Haven, New London, and Windham are all sanctuary cities. Manchester, Mansfield, and West Hartford were a few places that had considered doing this and then opted out. The many other municipalities in Connecticut could follow suit at any time. Every choice we make has consequences: the question is if you are willing to stand up to bullies to help secure the safety of your neighbors. As of last month, sanctuary cities were still legal.
The excuse people give for going with the flow, even when it makes them nauseous, is some variety of fear repackaged as the need to care for their families; I’d offer that those who can only think about their own children are being poor role models.
This is Reason #350 to drop the Rugged Individualism and trust that neighbors and friends will come through; but first, that trust needs to be built. You don’t grow that trust by prioritizing the nuclear family above all else.
Those who are not government employees, which is most of us, should be thinking and planning about how to be helpers right about now — at work, at home, at our places of worship, on our commutes.
Quakers just sued the Department of Homeland Security.
Be a doer.
A Bluesky user who does not want their stuff reposted elsewhere essentially said this: find one or two things to focus on and go do.
Don’t get sucked into the infighting by those who will accuse you of doing nothing because you aren’t involved in their pet issue; stick to the top couple of things you either care about or have expertise in. Everyone has something to bring to the table, unless that something is doomerism, in which case nobody needs that on their plate.
In place before this administration, but worth a shout out: during the Yale Peabody Museum renovation, they used the opportunity to refresh their approach to sharing information (more on this coming soon). Modern content has made its way into the galleries, such as seen below:
The section with the green background reads: “Fungi are not plants, nor are they animals, and this binary conception is how many people today are inclined to interface with with the natural world. Fungi are seen as poisonous, agents of disease, degenerate, deadly, freaky, gross, and weird–language historically leveled against both queer and disabled people–and as having no positive interrelationships with their environment(s).” This is adapted from a Catalyst article that you can read here.
It’s harder to censor queer ecology when it’s coming from a private university. Other private cultural institutions would do well to remember this, even when working with a smaller budget than what’s available to anything Yale branded.
Having courage is actually not that hard, if you have a heart, if you have the capacity to think long range, if you love the stranger. Chances are that if you are reading this, you read about Anne Frank growing up. You might’ve wondered why more people did not provide sanctuary to those being oppressed. Now, you are grown. You have many ways to be a kind human. Being kind and moral can be as simple as ignoring unethical orders — just pretend you’re ignoring a dress code or the policy about not shopping or playing Solitaire while on the clock if that makes insubordination easier to swallow. Look at the facts and repeat them, including that many people are helping to resist fascism, many are helping to build resilience, and many are creating a better world. Find those people. Make friends. Surround yourself with those who are willing to be brave.
