Crystal Frasier: So yeah: painfully boring story. But it made an impact on our local community! Go be boring.

If you think this isn't exactly where US conservatives want to take their anti-trans moral panic, you're kidding yourself

The first openly transgender politician in Russia has described how the Russian authorities threatened to commit her to a psychiatric hospital unless she detransitioned. #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA novayagazeta.eu/arti...#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA novayagazeta.eu/arti...

Russia’s first transgender politician reveals she was forced to announce her detransition — Novaya Gazeta Europenovayagazeta.eu The first openly transgender politician in Russia has described how the Russian authorities threatened to commit her to a psychiatric hospital unless she detransitioned, Novaya Gazeta Baltic reported on Tuesday.

I really should have followed this up with: Our fate isn’t sealed yet! There is still time to pull this back! Get involved in politics on a local level and vote in state and national elections! The Republicans have so much power because they’ve spent 50 years building a grassroots cult…

And despite a half-century of work they still can’t consistently win the popular vote. Volunteer for your local school board or arts commission or library board and you can block these book bans and radical agendas! Vote for empathic city councils and mayors and you can protect your community!

Local politics aren’t glamorous but they’re how the GOP got here and it’s how we can start to take things back! Get involved with county and state redistricting efforts to break gerrymanding! Campaign for ballot initiatives to fix our archaic political system!

And as much as I know the Democrats fuck up right now, vote Democrat. Especially right now when every wealthy media mogul is telling you it’s hopeless and they’re all corrupt. Because right now we’re in democracy triage...

That means we have to stop the active bleeding before we think about cutting out the tumors. Hold your nose and vote and in the meantime get involved in your local Democratic conventions to have more of a voice!

Republicans got where they are now by doing all this boring shit and voting for politicians they hated. If we want to stop them, we have to roll up our sleeves, grit our teeth, and do some boring ass civics homework! I believe in you!

Let me tell you a real boring story! Last year, a queer artist in my community put up a cool Pride installation. Then some bigots used it to hang bigot flags and threatened to sue the city if they took down the bigot signs without also taking down the (admittedly unauthorized) art piece…

I was fucking angry! How dare the city cave in to these bigots? But in the end their arms were bound; there are Supreme Court precedents that say you have to treat public displays equally, so they opted to take everything down rather than expose locals to that hatred…

And the only body that could have approved an art installation—the arts council—hadn’t met in years because there were no volunteers. So some friends and I volunteered for the arts council. We give up two nights a month to sit through incredibly dull meetings and fill out forms…

But we got that fucking pride installation back up in less than a year by accepting it as a donation with artistic merit, relevant to the local community. And we can get more art up to reflect the diversity of our great little town while blocking hate.

And incidentally, I learned how to file a Freedom of Information request and learn a whole lot about the people who made threatening calls and emails to the city—names, addresses, past actions—which will be useful if they try to get involved in local politics again.

So yeah: painfully boring story. But it made an impact on our local community! Go be boring.

boring but in a way that gets a fire set under me

I love this story :)

Boring in the most badass way possible.

This is amazing you’re so wonderful for doing all that!

May we all strive to be as “painfully boring” for the sake our all our little communities 🌈

#praxis this is public service.

Best boring story ever!

I continue to admire you so damn much.

Hey is this in the UK? Can you explain who you got in touch with to set up the local arts Council, er, branch, and so forth?

The US. It’ll very by state and county, but we talked to the city clerk and city administrator

Ack. UK has far, far less local community involvement, which has itsxplusses and minuses dependent on the institution!

Hardly boring from our side. Great work!

You may think it's boring, but I am on a minor city commission and I think your story rules.

That's not a boring story! Thank you for sharing, and for enduring those (incredibly boring) meetings so you can be of service to your community.

bsky.app/profile/ryan...

After the last decade, I’m willing to risk some boredom

that's not boring at all! love it

boring in the best possible way!

This is a great story.

Well done!!

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