05/07/2025
Last night, we voted to fly the Progress Pride and Juneteenth flags from our town's flagpoles in June. All of the Democrats on the council voted for it; only one Republican joined us.
I want to share my remarks from last night's meeting, because while people certainly have a good sense of how vicious the Trump administration's attacks on Black Americans and the LGBTQ+ community have been, they might not know the full extent. I've added citations to the specific Executive Orders mentioned below, in case someone wants to read for themselves what Trump & Co. are doing to Americans. -JL
[Remarks from the 5/6/25 Manchester Board of Directors Meeting]
The issue before us is flying two flags—one to celebrate Emancipation and the end of the greatest sin of American history; the other to celebrate the refusal of a community to be relegated to the shadows any longer. In most years we would be able to view these as recognitions of past achievements and present strength.
But we’re in no ordinary time. Since January 20, both the LGBTQ+ community and Black Americans have been under a constant assault on the federal level by the Trump administration.
One of my duties at work is to read Executive Orders as they’re published in the Federal Register. That means I have had to read every Executive Order this administration has put forth over the past four and a half months. I want to just highlight a few of the choicer policies that President Trump is now trying to impose.
For Black Americans, this Administration has been the most openly hostile in at least half a century:
-Federal programs to help minority communities access federal resources, including health care and job training, have been canceled. [EO 14148]
- Outreach efforts to encourage voter registration in Black communities have been terminated. [EO 14148]
- All efforts to diversify the federal workforce have been ended. [EO 14148]
- The Department of Education has been ordered to cancel its programs to encourage integration in public schools and close the achievement gap. [EO 14148]
- The Department of Justice program to investigate civil rights abuses by police departments has been cut. [EO 14148]
- The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database—which kept abusive cops from shuffling between departments to avoid accountability—has been closed down. [EO 14148]
- Anti-bias training programs for federal law enforcement officers have been shuttered. [EO 14148]
- Diversity officers at federal agencies have been fired. [EO 14151]
- Programs protecting minority neighborhoods from environmental pollution have been canceled, and federal lawsuits against polluters dropped. [EO 14151]
- Federal contractors are no longer bound by anti-discrimination rules in place since the 1960s. [EO 14173]
- Federal grants are ordered denied to any organization with diversity policies. [EO 14173]
- Every military office related to diversity has been ordered closed and all policies deemed to promote diversity have been ordered rescinded. (The DOD website pulled down a page dedicated to Jackie Robinson under this policy, and the Naval Academy library pulled “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” from its shelves, though it kept “Mein Kampf” available for midshipmen to read. Maya Angelou was more objectionable to this administration than Adolf Hi**er.) [EO 14185]
- President Trump has ordered that the Smithsonian museums promote the idea that race is a “biological reality” and not a social construct, and he has instructed federal facilities to restore monuments to Confederate traitors that may have been removed in recent years. [EO 14253]
- And as if to drive the point home as clearly as possible, he ordered the Department of Justice to stop enforcing the Civil Rights Act against racist employers who use facially neutral policies to enact racially harmful goals. [EO 14281]
For LGBTQ+ Americans, and especially the transgender community, the situation is just as dire, with a degree of official persecution not seen since the Lavender Scare of the McCarthy years. In just the past hundred days:
- Federal agencies have been ordered to cease all protections for transgender Americans in schools, housing, and prisons. [EO 14168]
- Federal funding for research into gender-affirming care for trans youth has been revoked, and the children of service members have been prevented from receiving gender-affirming care, including reversible pharmaceutical interventions like puberty blockers. [EO 14187]
- Trump ordered funding cut for local schools if they acknowledge or affirm trans students’ gender identities (or if they teach American history in a way that, in his opinion, is insufficiently patriotic). [EO 14190]
- He’s also blocked funding from any public schools that allow trans women and girls to compete in sporting events at any level, including intramural programs. [EO 14201]
- He directed that the US lobby international bodies, including the United Nations, to discriminate against trans athletes. [EO 14201]
- And, in what might be his most disgusting order to date, he declared that trans service members cannot ever be considered “honorable, truthful, and disciplined,” and ordered their discharge from the US Military regardless of their service histories, because he believes that trans soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardians, and guardsmen lack the “humility and selflessness required of a service member.” [EO 14183]
Of all people, who the hell is Donald Trump to lecture anyone on humility and selflessness, much less those who volunteer to serve in our military? Just a few hours ago, the Supreme Court declined to block this nakedly bigoted order from taking effect while service members continue their lawsuits to block these unconstitutional actions.
Our policy is that the flags we fly represent how we wish to speak as a community. So this is where we come in, as those chosen to speak for Manchester’s people. Tonight, we have the chance to say that we side with the Beloved Community over a hateful ideology, and with history over fiction. Rather than timidly accept the Administration’s opposition to civil rights, we choose to embrace our fellow Americans and defend their rights and liberties against this onslaught. So I urge everyone here to vote their conscience; I think it will be instructive for the voters.
As ashamed as we should all feel by what the Administration is doing in Washington to kick entire groups of Americans in the teeth, we here should all feel honored to have been given the chance to stand on the record against these vile actions.
Donald Trump wants to battle over the character of the nation; so be it. No person here should be afraid to measure their character or patriotism against Donald Trump’s. And if there must be a battle, then let it happen in our time, so that our children will know peace.
Let’s keep faith with our friends and neighbors whose histories are being rewritten, whose rights are being denied, and whose futures are in active peril. Let’s show our faith by our works. And let’s fly these flags high and proud.
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