#dawnennis

William Tong has already made history. But if Connecticut voters choose him on August 14th, he’ll be on his way to making history again.

Tong, a native of my current hometown, West Hartford, Conn. and a state representative from Stamford, is running to be Connecticut’s next Attorney General. He has already won the endorsement of the state Democratic party and of fellow Democrats here in his original hometown of West Hartford, including our prior guest and his former competitor, assistant attorney general Clare Kindall. Other famous names on Tong’s bandwagon include Sen. Ted Kennedy, Jr., the United Auto Workers and the Working Families party.

Those endorsements are significant because Tong is the first Asian-American in state history to win that level of crucial political support. He was already the first Asian-American elected to the state House of Representatives, and if he wins the upcoming primary and the general election in November, will be the first constitutional officer in the history of Connecticut of Asian heritage. 

Who is Tong? His biography reveals he studied under Barack Obama before he became president, and he is the son of immigrant parents:

“The Tong’s owned a Chinese restaurant where William worked alongside his parents before going to Brown University and then the University of Chicago Law School where he was taught by then-Professor Barack Obama. He is currently a lawyer at Finn, Dixon & Herling LLP, one of Connecticut’s leading law firms where he practiced law for 14 years… William lives with his wife, Elizabeth, their three children and many pets in Stamford. Elizabeth is Vice President of Tax for North America for the Diageo Corporation.” 

Tong and I sat down this week for a wide-ranging interview on RiseUp With Dawn Ennis, the talk show I’ve been hosting on WHC-TV and YouTube for about a year and a half. We discussed immigration, politics, President Trump, civil rights, the second amendment and 3D printed guns as well as Republican candidates’ calls to abolish the state income tax.

Watch the show here:

If you’re interested in learning more about William Tong, click here for his campaign website and click here for his state representative page which is of special interest to those living and working in Stamford and Darien.

Who else is running to succeed Democrat George Jepsen? It’s a crowded field. His Democratic primary opponents are:

Paul Doyle

Chris Mattei

And on the Republican side:

Susan Hatfield

John Shaban

Hatfield, like Mattei, has experience as a prosecutor, a job Tong claims is not relevant to the post they are all seeking, since the A.G. doesn’t deal with criminal law so much as civil law. Hatfield won the Republican party’s endorsement.

Learn more about all the candidates by clicking here, RiseUP has extended an invitation to all the candidates running, but so far, only Tong has accepted.

The primary is August 14th, the general election is November 6th, and the online deadline to register to vote in Connecticut is August 9th, but you can register in person right up until and including August 14th. Details on how to do that are right here.

If you’re interested in learning more about 3D printed guns, the Washington Post and USA Today each have a good overview here. After we recorded this episode, a federal judge on Tuesday, July 31st blocked a Texas man from uploading blueprints for such weapons to the internet.

The issue of transgender rights remains contentious across America. The ACLU outlines how that battle was won in Connecticut, but for those who live elsewhere, being trans can be a fireable offense, a reason to be evicted, and too often makes people a target for violence. See how your state stacks up by clicking here for a look at the Equality Maps from the Movement Advancement Project. 

And if you’re interested in learning more about this month’s special correspondent, Mya Byrne, check out her website here and connect with her on Facebook and click here for to follow her on Instagram. And you can subscribe to her YouTube channel here.

If you’d like to be our next special correspondent, you’ll find some simple guidelines on our Facebook page. Please like, share and subscribe and follow us on Twitter and now also on Instagram!

Later this fall, I’ll share more details about the reality show taped in West Hartford last month, that connected my family with the Connecticut Humane Society. With the help of producers from The CW we adopted a 7-month-old Labrador/Retriever possibly German Shepherd mix who we have named Dahlia. 

Finally: August is typically a “hiatus” month for West Hartford Community Television, so I am very grateful to WHC-TV Executive Director Jennifer Evans for making an exception for this election-focused timely episode! See y’all in September with a new episode of RiseUP With Dawn Ennis. 

The Angernet — Don’t Get Sucked In

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the places you’ll go… mad… on the internet.” If you’re like me, you know Social Media can be not so social, whether it’s because of the knock-down, drag-out debates over politics, religion, civil rights, race, heritage, privilege or identity, or all of these divisive issues. It’s a no-win scenario, where everyone believes the other guy is the troll.

So aside from…

“There’s something different about her”

  As big, burly, ex-marine Max took me in his tattooed arms and pulled me close, nearly off my barstool and toward his liquored lips, I felt… something.

Not his hand, moving slowly, up my skirt, although that did distract me for a moment.

It was time. It didn’t slow down, as time does in the movies and the romance novels. Instead, it rewound, pulling my concentration away from my corner barstool…

I once proclaimed, “You will stand with me at all of my intersections or none at all.”

Recently, Jennicet Gutierrez stood before the President of the United States and boldly demanded he answer for his administration's treatment of immigrants within detention centers (in particular those of trans immigrants). We know the stories, we know of the rape, the abuse, the violence that our kin have to suffer. We know, too, that this administration, while doing some good, is also held hostage by white supremacy. As a Black, Trans, African, Cuban, Indigenous woman, as a daughter of an immigrant, as a woman who has found herself in the white house bearing witness to their lack of accountability, I celebrate my sister Jennicet. What she did, no mainstream LGB Org would dare to do for they are typically more concerned with kissing the feet of oppressive systems rather then challenging them and  often their need for validation and privilege trumps anyone's suffering. What she did, abuser dynamics says should never be done, but she did it anyway, knowing she had the gaze of the world, the responsibility of her people, and the chance of becoming hated by the U.S.

While I can love and adore Jennicet, I can also celebrate the president and admire his continued determination to change as much as he can, while critiquing  his administration and familiar misogynist tactics when he silenced Jenicent. As a black woman, I can see our president, within his intersection as black man, desiring liberation, while recognizing, because of his title as POTUS, he is an overseer of structural oppression. I also notice that now everyone is talking about an issue the White House has had brought to them, time and time again, within the parameters of respectability politics and, until now, has yet to care about. But this blog is not a critique of the White House or even of the mainstream LGB movement that has completely abandoned trans women, LGBTQ homeless youth and elders, and LGBTQ people of color in their quest for marriage equality. This is an observation of a standing trend, of a certain type of white woman who feels it is their duty to critique women of color with little intersectional thought or understanding around the way white women have been wielded by white supremacy and many a white man to silence us, commit acts of violence against us and erase us.

Dawn Ennis's condemnation of Jennicet's tactics are not a shock to me, neither is her whiteplaining blog which utilizes “sorry” as a weapon of silencing not accountability, neither is the fact she is a white woman believing her opinion is worthy of consideration in a fight built off the backs of trans women of color, which, by the way, now allow for her to be a trans woman in a position of privilege. Dawn Ennis is the white woman we have seen before. Stands proudly, totting her marginalized intersection as if it will absolve of her of whiteness. Awarded a position while those doing the actual fighting for rights, she now enjoys, continue to be slaughtered by the same system of white supremacy she honors with her respectability politics. Standing, happily, defending the president as if every piece of pro-LGBTQ legislation passed was not purchased by the blood of her TWOC sisters.

Let me be clear, the United States for many of us is a maze full of death traps. For many of us trans women of color, not only do we have to carry the LGBTQ community on our backs, but we must pour countless libations of our tears for the communities housed in our other intersections. We have been told at every turn that if we want change we must be docile and complacent and wait for a white shinning knight to swoop in and speak for us. We have been erased by history books and told our oral histories aren't valid. We have been accused of being jaded and violent while screaming against a system that is literally tying a noose around our necks. We are told to be grateful to a system that stole our rites/rights from our indigenous ancestors and after we have suffered much, said system throws one or two back at us like scraps. We are told to worship men who mistreat us and abandon our own self worth as to appear more pleasing in their sight. We are told that our deaths don't matter, time and time again, while mainstream America demands access to our blood, sweat, labor, tears, loyalty, art, anaylsis and sensuality. We are attacked by TERF feminist who themselves desire freedom from misogyny and yet embody those same ideologies misogyny has placed on people of color around “what makes a woman.” We are attacked and asked to be resilient and understanding and find another way to fight all the while our sisters continue to be killed with no national outcry, with no national initiatives, with no national accountability for it's stake in a system that promotes this violence against us. We are told to allow non trans people to speak for us although we are all capable of speaking for ourselves. We are told to love Ellen DeGeneres and Meryl Streep while being scolded for remembering Weewah, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P Johnson. We are told to forget the words of Sojourner Truth who proclaimed “Well, ain't I a woman” and Beah Richards whose piece “ A Black Woman Speaks” denounced the white racist feminist of her time.

No, Dawn Ennis's article is not a shock to me, neither is her assumption that she should be able to say anything, out of her mouth, to condemn a woman of color with no retribution. Her “sorry” was a pale imitation of an apology and a way of silencing the oppressed while upholding oppressive systems (She would be able to recognize this if she had even the smallest dose of intersectional thought). “Sorry” is something the United States has wielded time and time again as a tool to absolve themselves of any accountability around historical violence against people of color and this country's buy in to systems that promote the same violent tactics and anti-blackness here and globally.  “Sorry” is something we are told as black people, latinas, indigenous people, women that we should hear and immediately become complacent around the impact of violence used against us. It is yet another scrap thrown before us to make us go away, and wait for the next axe to fall.

These white women steeped in their privilege and bathed in our blood can not keep demanding our solidarity while buying into systems that continue to kill us, throw us under the bus and  attempt to silence our voices. For too long, many of them have been the whip of oppression telling us we are angry while attempting to police our responses with respectability politics critique. But then again, maybe, I am asking too much from some of these new wave of privileged white trans women riding the coat tails of  their trans ancestors and sisters. So, I will just repeat again, “You will stand with me at all of my intersections or none at all.” Now, run tell that.

Structural oppression: i'm taking everything.

Person: Can you leave me something?

Structural oppression: No

Person: please?

Structural oppression: no

Person: what do I need to do to get it back

(1 hour later nearly after structural oppression has listed all of its demands)

Structural oppression: ...and in closing, I need you to silence anyone like you who opposes me.

Person:... Ok... Ok....

(Structural oppression then throws one piece of the persons property back to them)

Person: but this is only one thing... You took everything...

Structural oppression: you should be grateful I gave you that besides right now is not the time to talk about it.

Person: when is the right time?

Structural oppression: when I'm done.

Person: when are you done?

Structural oppression: never.