On wings of fire and broken glass we shall rise: #DisruptJ20

(This article is dedicated to all those who participated in protests today especially those who suffered doing so. May your fight just be the first blow.)

Today started with a pall over my heart and mind.

Today is the day of Trump’s inauguration, when everyone who told us to wait and see will finally be silent as the world goes down.

The hits have continuously come, from the ACA (the thing that kept the guy I love along with many disabled people alive) to the ramifications of Betsy DeVos running the department of education (big issue for me, as thanks to those laws my parents were able to get the public school district to pay for Anova, the school for autistics that I went to…they weren’t able to provide me the education that I had the right to under the IDEA [the law that both the attorney general pick and her are against…in interest of showing just how dire the attorney general is beyond just the IDEA I’m sharing Samantha Bee’s video on him] so they had to pay for the other school, which taught me how to deal with the neurotypical world and quite literally saved my life. With the law gone or altered, that path would no longer exist) to learning that Trump plans to cut 25 violence against women programs…a darkness of hopelessness and defeat cast a shadow over me.

But then I saw…the picture. I saw signs from protesters of defiance and rebellion, saw pictures from my friends on the East Coast of the people rising up at the inauguration, articles about anti-fascist protesters at the DeploraBALL, riots and broken windows (just like MLK would have wanted), and now I have a fire in my heart burning away the darkness.

The symbol that I created (well, I had the idea for, my friend actually brought it to life) for The Outcast Army, the rage and action group for the marginalized people affected by Trump (and this blog, which I’m hoping will become a platform for other Outcast voices as well…no allies, but anyone who is under threat please feel free to join, solidarity is strength) is an angry fist rising from a broken heart and today exemplified this spirit.Yes, we are hurting, but we aren’t giving up. We’re rising up, and today was just the beginning.

Trump and your minions, you may take the rights of the Outcast with your regime, may take our very lives, but you will not take our spirits.

On wings of fire and broken glass we shall rise from the ashes of our despair. You can arrest us, beat us, even kill us, but you won’t make us admit defeat and surrender. You may have expected us to just take whatever you throw at us, but if that’s the case you thought wrong. If the hateful will tell us that we shouldn’t exist we shall take pride in what they despise, become living symbols of defiance. We will make our voices heard, make it so people know what you’re doing to us, we will agitate to make it so people never accept your reign and hate. If you kill one of us we will mourn and then fight even harder in their name. We will not suffer quietly, we shall make you pay for every inch you take. We will not go gently into the night, but we will light the night on fire. The cries of Trump, his supporters, and the enablers of their hatred for peaceful protest (which is a myth) will not silence us, as we didn’t create the environment that makes it so the news will only pay attention to protests involving property damage because our society values property over people.

We will not stand by as you push the boundaries of immorality, as your decisions and your appointees erode what rights we have. We shall disrupt, not just today but for the next 4 years.

Today was the first protest of the new regime, but it will not be the last. Our flame will burn ever stronger in defiance of the darkness. We won’t go without a fight.

-Laoch Onórach