The Western Massachusetts club of the Communist Party USA strongly condemns the Boston Globe for its September 22nd publication of an article targeting Last Ditch, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, and calls for solidarity with the queer and transgender people of our region facing heightened national scrutiny.

The fascist Trump administration and Republican state governments have instigated a genocide of LGBTQIA+ people. Under far-right rule, transgender people have been denied healthcare, subjected to terrorism, wrongful imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, voiding of legal documents and countless other crimes against humanity.

These abuses build on decades of far-right attacks on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, intensified by the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision which overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

In this context, Western Massachusetts has become a refuge for internally displaced people. Cities like Greenfield, Northampton and Amherst have welcomed families fleeing the extreme right, with political protections for gender and ethnic minorities, municipal sanctuary policies against ICE and specialized healthcare institutions.

Though Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has refused to enforce the state’s legal mandate of healthcare for transgender youth, allowing healthcare conglomerates to break state law, mass progressive organizing in Massachusetts has defended and expanded protections for transgender people.

Progressive forces in the Connecticut River Valley have fought back against far-right and transphobic incursions in local bourgeois media, with hundreds supporting a petition for the Daily Hampshire Gazette to adopt policies against hate speech. Incumbent Sen. Ed Markey secured a decisive primary victory on September 1st in part by campaigning on his commitments to transgender rights.

The Boston Globe, an ally of corporate lobbies across the state, stands on the other side. After endorsing notoriously transphobic Rep. Seth Moulton’s failed Senate campaign, the Globe has pivoted to courting the outrage of the national extreme right and directing it at our region.

The September 22nd article is not newsworthy, except in the context of the upcoming midterm elections in which transgender rights are a central political issue, as well as a far-right national consumer base which makes the scrutiny of transgender lives profitable.

The Western Massachusetts CPUSA rejects the use of conflicts among LGBTQIA+ people and organizations as a tool of division by the extreme right. We reaffirm our solidarity with all those struggling against the genocide of transgender people.

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Image: Protect Trans Youth. Protect the Right to Healthcare petition. Protect Trans Future coalition.