Join the March 31st national walkout to defeat homophobic and anti-trans bills nationwide

Detroit: Rally + March Friday, Mar. 31, 5:00pm (Gather at the Woodward-Warren Park, Detroit, MI)

Los Angeles: Walkout, Rally + March Thursday, Mar. 30, 4:15pm (Gather at the corner of Sunset and Vine, Hollywood, CA)

*Wear a mask in public at all times to protect yourself and others from COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic is not over.*

• Defeat homophobic and anti-trans laws in Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, and everywhere!
• Defend gender-affirming healthcare for youth across the nation!
• Defend Drag Queen Story Hour and shows from alt-right and neofascist attacks!
• Build the national LGBT+ movement – the real power is in the streets!
• Defeat the right-wing Trump movement attacks on LGBT+ people, women, civil, and immigrant rights!
• Don’t walk on by: take action to stop gay- and trans-bashings and defend LGBT+ youth and communities
• Jail Donald Trump and all his January 6 authoritarian coup co-conspirators!

Download Flyer as PDF

I pledge to be a great leader by always being proud of who I am and by just being myself. I am a role model for others when I am not ashamed to be myself. I cannot stand on the truth if I am trying to act like the people in power who oppress us and assign us to second-class status.

–Point #4 of the BAMN Pledge (Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights & Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary)

Trans and LGBT+ youth and other supporters will have an opportunity to walkout, protest, and take a stand loud and proud to proclaim our humanity and existence by any means necessary as part of a national struggle for the equal rights and treatment of LGBT+ people. On this day, we will celebrate ourselves and each other’s hard-fought struggle to be who we want to be and our right to make decisions about our own bodies. Despite the torrent of legislation being put forward by Trump-supporting Republican politicians against trans and LGBT+ people across the country, we feel even more emboldened to fight for our dignity and equality. So long as we are fighting, proud to be who we are, we can stop these laws from being passed or stop their implementation in practice.

Beginning last March 2022, students fought back in an inspirational struggle against anti-LGBT+ laws being put forward in their states in national walkout/protest action. In places like Florida students gathered to take group pictures, made speeches in their schools, or in the streets. Some
marched to the state capitol. Some of our schools held rallies in our city centers, gave interviews to the media, and spoke publicly for the first time in our lives. For some of us, this was our “coming out” day, and it felt amazing to feel our power and finally be free to be ourselves! This year, starting in Iowa on March 1, 2023, walkouts began again. Forty-seven schools participated.

They were protesting anti-LGBT+ bills being put forward there, including a
proposal to ban same sex marriage in the state. Our time is now to put our school on the map as standing for the rights of LGBT+ people.

I pledge to accept the challenge of becoming my generation’s voice of freedom. I know this requires always speaking for and to the oppressed, telling the truth about racism and inequality and expressing both the anger and the aspirations of our communities. I reject the popular, wrong, and dominant ideology of most of those who claim to support progressive reforms, that the only people who have the power to make and change history are the rich and powerful…Changing the actions/attitudes of the rich and powerful and their political representatives requires asserting through mass action the superior power and will of the masses. This is the only road to victory.

–Point #2 of the BAMN Pledge

“Don’t Say Gay”, anti-trans bills across the country, and the threat of Trump’s far right movement

Across the country the Trump movements’ legislators are putting forward anti-LGBT+ bills as part of an effort to begin campaigning for Trump’s election in 2024, and as fuel to feed his bigoted mob by fostering increased hostility and attacks on LGBT+ people, in particular young people. Some of these bills include Tennessee’s anti-trans bills which bar trans youth from
obtaining gender affirming healthcare and bans drag shows. They include Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bills which attempts to force LGBT+ students into the closet and increase attacks on our communities by banning discussion of LGBT+ people in our schools or mandating teachers and school staff to out LGBT+ students to hostile parents, depriving young people of the support they need in their schools. Attempts to ban trans student athletes from
sports, competing as their chosen gender, health care for transitioning trans people, gender neutral bathrooms are among other attacks. In addition, attacks on Drag Queen Storytime events in public libraries and other facilities for children have been on the rise nationally. These are part of a full program of attacks also on immigrants, minority communities, and women by a Trump-led Republican Party and their hard-line neo-fascist supporters that has made clear it supports the violent overturn of all democracy to achieve its aims, like Trump’s authoritarian coup attempt on January 6, 2021 to the Supreme Court’s attack on women and the right to abortion
last summer.

According to the Trevor project, “suicide is the second leading cause of death
among young people, with LGBT youth being four times more likely to seriously consider suicide, to make a plan for suicide, and to attempt suicide versus their peers.” In addition to the increased hostility and violence against LGBT+ people, these bills will lead to and encourage an increase in LGBT+ suicides.

As students we look to schools to be a place to build social relations that help develop our own sense of identity as an independent person, including sexual orientation and gender identity. It is essential to learning and development for young people to have a safe school environment that validates and acknowledges our existence, whether the students are openly gay, trans, or not. We live in a society that is incredibly unequal and repressive, and where too many young people experience parental abuse at home that stifles our personal development and harms our well-being. This kind of legislation guarantees the negative reinforcement of every anti-gay, transphobic, backward, and bigoted impulse in our society. It would extend and codify abuse at home to our schools.

The bigoted leaders of the Trump movement dream of living in a rigid, unchanging world that is white and straight-male centered, based on the subordination of minorities to white people, of women to men, and of children to adult authorities. LGBT+ rights and relationships are a direct threat to this reactionary fantasy, because these relationships assert the truth that we live in a society where young people should and can have other options for relationships that respect and recognize their identity and independence, free from abuse.

Silence = death. We are winning the fight for LGBT+ rights.

We must recognize that we are, in fact, defeating these anti-LGBT+ laws by not being ashamed of who we are and taking the bold actions we have taken with our high-school walkouts. As long as we continue our mass actions, standing up for ourselves and each other, refusing to go back into the closet, and refusing to be silenced, we can render these bigoted laws unenforceable. As long as we refuse to accept the homophobic and anti-trans harassment
and violence that these laws will encourage, there will always be a place for gay and transgender youth in our schools, our communities, and our world–because we are already here! And that we can fight together to rid this world of all the rotten homophobia, transphobia, and backwardness that holds us back, to make this a truly free world.

For the right-wing bigots and their supporters, the sight of our walkouts spells their defeat. The anti-gay and anti-trans laws that they hope will force LGBT+ youth to repress themselves, to go back into the closet, to accept the bullying and harassment faced in schools and this society in general, are becoming dead laws with each rainbow flag proudly flown in the school walkouts. The walkouts proclaim loud and clear that there is no going back to the closet, there will be no acceptance of anti-LGBT+ violence in our schools, our communities, and in this country. These attacks have emboldened young people to be more openly gay, trans, and proud than
ever before.

The walkouts have been an unapologetic rejection of the normalized anti-gay and anti-trans attacks in everyday life; the harassment, the jokes, the demonization, the religious fanaticism, the verbal and physical violence, the institutionalized and other socially accepted forms of attacks against the LGBT+ community.

Young LGBT+ students are not responsible for the tender sensitivities of homophobic and transphobic bigots at school and their parents at home. If anti-LGBT+ bigots are offended by our very existence, too bad for them. No amount of laws or Bibles will succeed in reversing the progress we have made so far, as long as we keep fighting, proud to be who we are, and
continue to be ourselves.

I pledge to be a youth leader of mass actions led by the youth themselves. I do not fear the anger, boldness, or power of youth in struggle. To those who criticize the legitimacy of our walkouts or other youth-led mass actions by saying “most of the students/youth cannot even say what they are fighting for”, I say rest assured we are always fighting for our dignity, equality, respect, and justice. We understand that actions speak louder than words. We judge leaders by what they do and not their ability to make great speeches which they never deliver on. Some of our greatest leaders are those who lead in action and fight to win.

–Point #3 of the BAMN Pledge

BAMN’s method of struggle: lessons we apply to build an independent, youth-led, anti-racist, LGBT+ rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, and civil rights movement.

BAMN applies the lessons of our 30 years of organizing and leading mass actions: walkouts, strikes, building occupations, protests, and marches to develop leaders who can build an ongoing movement, and we apply our lessons from decades of struggles for social equality and justice.

The Trump movement has set its sights on LGBT+ youth because of its homophobic and transphobic bigotry, but also because the Trump supporters are threatened by the leadership that gay and transgender young people and women have shown in the movement against Trump and his bigoted and fascist supporters. Leading walkouts against Trump’s election and inauguration, heading up the Women’s Marches and shutting down airports against the Muslim Ban, marching for immigrant rights and to end the child concentration camps, standing up for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor against racist killer cops, LGBT+ youth and women have been at the front lines of those struggles. For Trump, De Santis, and the closeminded bigots of the right wing, they see this attack as necessary to try to carry out their attack on American democracy.

These anti-LGBT+ laws have emboldened young gay and transgender youth to build the new gay and transgender rights movement in the same way that the homophobic New York police repression on the LGBT+ community led to the Stonewall Rebellion. In 1969, black and Puerto Rican drag queens who stood up to the NYC cop crackdown had also been active leaders on the ground of the civil rights movement, standing up against racism and segregation. They applied the lessons they learned as frontline leaders in the civil rights movement to the uprising that sparked the movement for gay rights.

While different in some obvious ways, LGBT+ people’s struggles to come out of the closet have important similarities with the struggles of undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and claim their right to recognition, rights, and freedom. One of the most important lessons for the new gay and trans rights movement are lessons that BAMN learned in 2006, when millions of immigrants-with and without papers-filled the streets of every major city and small town across the country to defeat draconian, racist, anti-immigrant legislation. Tens of thousands of high school students walked out and were the cutting edge of the movement. This immigrant-rights movement held the largest demonstrations ever in the history of this nation. Even after defeating the legislation, high school and middle school students continued walking out. Victorious against the legislation, the youth-led movement had so much power, fighting for freedom and dignity for themselves, their families, and their communities.

The movement was strong enough to go on the offensive to win so much more: the DREAM Act, ending the deportations, and full citizenship rights for all immigrants. BAMN continued to lead walkouts and marches for immigrant rights in every place that we had chapters. But students found themselves up against politicians, principals, parents, and priests who had supported the earlier student walkouts. Those authority figures derailed the movement and redirected its power away from the streets and from fighting for the gains that could have been won, and instead diverted the movement into mere Democratic Party electoralism, pushing the slogan, “today we march, tomorrow we vote” (!)- despite the fact that many thousands of the people in the marches were undocumented people who did not have the right to vote. No. Giving up the walkouts and mass actions ultimately meant that the immigrant rights movement won far less than the power that we had.

Both the immigrant rights and LGBT+ movements must break free of the dead-end policy of subordinating our movements to the electoral schemes of the Democratic Party leadership. While the Trumpite Republican Party is carrying out the attacks on trans and LGBT+ rights nationwide, the Democratic Party has given up on a real defense of basic civil rights in this country. Either completely silent or simply giving lip service to our communities, Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party have been complicit in the erosion of abortion, LGBT+, and immigrant rights and the increase racism in America. Only an independent movement acting in the streets in the spirit of the George Floyd Movement can guarantee a defense of our rights and prevent the rise of a Trump-led fascist dictatorship.

BAMN continues to lead struggles for immigrant rights, and we have won important victories to shut down immigrant detention centers and concentration camps, defending immigrant communities from ICE raids and deportations, and to fight for the passage of the DREAM Act. And unlike the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, we recognize that in order for our movement to win, we need one united and integrated movement for civil rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, youth rights, and all struggles of oppressed and working people.

BAMN unequivocally stands for the principle our real power is in the streets! We cannot allow our movement to be coopted by authority figures who want us to give up our power or politicians who want to direct our movement into their electoral campaigns with promises that they never deliver on. Today we march, tomorrow we march, and we keep marching until we win!

The initiative shown by student leaders who initiated the walkouts is the right attitude to have in taking collective action to fight for ourselves and our peers. The immigrant-rights movement has learned that if we act collectively, we can prevent racist unfair deportations of our families, friends and neighbors, regardless of what the law says. BAMN has organized in communities, K-12 schools and college campuses to create community defense guards to stop I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and deportations. The point is to encourage people in our communities to not “walk on by” if they see I.C.E. deportation raids taking place, but instead to intervene and gather other people to intervene and prevent the deportations, by blocking gates, apartment doors, and surrounding I.C.E. police vehicles if they have already arrested immigrants.

Your blood is my blood. Your enemy is my enemy. Your struggle for freedom is my struggle for freedom.

Moving forward, as we fight these homophobic and anti-trans laws that encourage attacks on the LGBT community in multiple states – and in some we will lose on paper once these laws are signed – we can still defeat them in practice and make unjust laws unenforceable. Whether it is creating phone trees, signing people up for alerts to respond in action, encouraging GSA’s to form school defense guards to protect ourselves from homophobic harassment and/or attacks. Our strength is in our capacity to act collectively to protect each other while we fight for each other. Bad laws will be proposed and good laws will be attacked until we have built a nationwide, independent, dynamic and militant movement that can defend all the gains that we have made. We invite you all to join BAMN and build the national LGBT rights and civil rights movement.

As a youth-led civil rights organization proudly made up of many LGBT members, BAMN stands in solidarity with the high school students in Florida and around the country, fighting for their rights and their peers’ rights against the right-wing, homophobic “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, antitrans bills in Texas, Utah, Indiana, and similar efforts in other states. We join and endorse efforts to expand the walkouts far and wide as part of the movement to defend LGBT rights and fight for the equality of oppressed peoples in America and around the world.

… And so, to all those who are oppressed, I say as a proud young leader of the growing new, integrated, independent, youth-led civil rights/immigrant rights movement: Your blood is my blood. Your enemy is my enemy. Your struggle for freedom is my struggle for freedom. Your dreams and hopes echo in my heart and mind. The borders that separate us will not divide us. We will win as one.We have the power to make this world into the world we want to live in. We can, if we act, create a new society in which the needs of humanity come before the enrichment of a few and for the first time in human history, human beings can finally think, love, and socialize as equals while protecting and realizing the great potential of both human beings and all that inhabit this earth.

–Point #6 of the BAMN pledge