According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 87 PERCENT of youth eligible to vote in the 2022 mid-term elections DIDN’T.
to fire all federal employees and fill their empty positions with MAGA supporters trained by the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Adminis- tration Academy. He will do an end- run around Senate confirmations for his political appointees by appointing acting heads of federal agencies like the Department of Justice, who will remain in office long enough for him to execute Project 2025. In my upcoming book, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine , I talk about white cultural hegemony, the process by which rulers take control of culture, producing institutions like schools, media, and churches in order to control the ideologies of popula- tions. As a result of this hegemony, I grew up believing lies like “healthy families must be nuclear, heteronor- mative families.” Today, after decades dismantling white supremacist ideol- ogies, we know that healthy families exist in multiple configurations; that budding wisdom in our country rep- resents a rupture of white cultural hegemony, as do DEI efforts. The goal of Project 2025 is to “repair” those growing ruptures, and the one- party white nationalist state it will create will suffocate artistic practice. Project 2025 takes control of school’s accreditation processes to control what artists can learn and debate. It puts federal grant-mak- ing directly in Trump’s hands and weaponizes the government’s power to give or revoke non-profit sta- tus to control artists’ fund- ing streams. It regulates media to control what artists can publish and frames social justice issues as a national security threat that the Department of Justice can criminal- ize. Project 2025 closes the door for artists to make a living if they create any content that doesn’t perpetuate white cultural hegemony. And it can get much worse. Trump will also immunize law enforcement from prosecution and expand the Secret Service’s law enforcement powers from the White House to
all of Washington, D.C. Imagine the Republican House introduces legisla- tion that criminalizes activism, orga- nizations, and any community that doesn’t align with Trump’s vision for white America. On the morning of voting day, Trump sends the Secret Service to arrest half of the dissent- ing House representatives. When a person, even a congressperson, is arrested, there’s nothing they can do about it in the moment. They can be held without being charged with a crime for days, long enough for a Republican House to establish a quo- rum and vote through the legislation. The Supreme Court granted presi- dents immunity from prosecution, so Trump could rinse and repeat the same process when it comes time for the Senate to vote. This machine, these processes, will transform the U.S. into a super- charged white nationalist state with exponentially more power to destroy opposition to white hegemony. These are the stakes of the 2024 Presidential Election. I don’t support the Dem- ocratic Party, and I despise Kamala Harris’ centrist politics. But I am vot- ing for Harris, not because the Demo- cratic Party is going to hand us justice but because I’m an artist. I under- stand that we need more time to per- fect the processes that will produce our end goal of justice for people of color, for LGBTQ+ people, for Pales- tinian people, for us all. EMILE SUOTONYE DEWEAVER is a formerly incarcerated activist, widely published essayist, owner of Re: Frame LLC, and a 2022 Soros Jus- tice Fellow. California’s Governor Brown com- muted his life sentence after twenty-one years for his community work. He has written for publications including the San Francisco Chron- icle, San Jose Mercury News, Colorlines, The Appeal, The Rumpus, and Seventh Wave . He lives in Oakland, California. DeWeaver’s debut book, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolition- ist Future , is forthcoming with New Press in May 2025 and is available for pre-order at bookshop.org. You can find his monthly essays on Substack’s re:frame reads and his upcom- ing content on the elections on TikTok at @ emiledeweaver
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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