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Nashville and the need for revolutionary change in the United States

By Editor on March 31, 2023

By the LGBTQIA+ Commission of the American Party of Labor.

On the morning of March 27, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee, an armed individual named Aiden Hale forcibly entered The Covenant School and proceeded to murder three children and three staff members before being killed by police. This school shooting is yet another of many acts of violence that represents a growing division and alienation within American society and is a distressingly common occurrence within the United States.

As information about the shooting was being released to the public it became known that the shooter was a transgender man initially misidentified as a transgender woman with the use of his birth name prevailing in the coverage of the shooting by major media and political pundits and officials of the far right. The reactionaries lost no time in using the identity of this violent criminal to spread more anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQIA+ hysteria among the American population and to justify the litany of brutal legislation intended to erase and attack the transgender community.

The LGBTQIA+ Commission, as well as the entirety of the American Party of Labor, fully CONDEMNS this mass shooting as a violent act of malice and aggression that needlessly resulted in the murder of six people. However, the right wing’s use of the shooter’s transgender identity as a way to spread anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric is abhorrent, unconscionable, and disrespectful to the victims of this crime as well as the masses of transgender and queer people who live under systematic threat to their very lives and are NOT a danger to society.

As of the writing of this statement there have been 125 mass shootings within the US this year. The shooting at The Covenant School is the only case out of the 125 in the year to include a transgender individual as the one pulling the trigger. In the last five years there have only been a total of four mass shooters that have identified as transgender. The vast majority of these shootings are rooted in the exploitation and alienation that are inherent to capitalism and the platforming of fascist ideology. Statistically, the transgender community is not the existential menace of American society as portrayed by Republicans and Fox News hosts who cherry-pick which massacres they will cover and condemn. It is imperative that tragedies such as the Nashville shooting must not be used as scapegoats to “eradicate” (as the reaction admitted) the transgender community or any other minority community that reactionaries wish to remove.

In the coming days and weeks the liberal-bourgeoisie will once again begin talking about much needed gun reform within the United States. It is however important to note that no matter which reforms are passed, if any, that these reforms will at best act as band-aids to the root problem: capitalism. Until a revolutionary change is made, these violent acts will continue to reappear in a variety of forms from a variety of people. For these acts of violence to truly come to an end it will take a revolutionary movement that reorganizes society on a systemic level from the ground up and eliminates all contradictions and alienation that capitalism requires for its function and existence, for dividing and ruling the masses.

Youth Lives Matter!

Workers Lives Matter!

Trans Lives Matter!