It just keeps getting more venal - The conservative campaign to #rewrite #childlabor #laws
The Foundation for Government Accountability, a #Floridabased #thinktank and #lobbyinggroup, #drafted #statelegislation to strip #childworkplace #protections, emails show link to full text free https://wapo.st/43UN57H #HumanTrafficking #ChildLabor #FGA #OpportunitySolutionsProject #LeoLeonard Making it easier to #hire #14-yearolds

#Midwest #KansasCity #Kansas #Missouri #TransRights #ActuallyAutistic #Suburbs #USpol

I'm sure you're all aware of the recent onslaught of #genocidal #fascist #StateLegislation being put forward in the Missouri legislature: defunding libraries, criminalizing trans children, rewriting history in schools, etc. It's a lot happening all at once, and it's important to resist every step of the way. Even if Missouri isn't close to your heart, this is a test run for what's coming to a state or country near you. And that means we need to be critical of the conditions that led to this onslaught, wherever they occur, as uncomfortable as that critical view may be to hold.

Missouri is close to my heart, and I have some personal "insider" understanding of the conditions that created what's happening now. I lived on the Kansas side of Kansas City for a decade, in a well-off, white, mostly centrist #liberal suburb called Overland Park. For context, people from either side of the state line (it's literally a road) in KC go back and forth every day without thinking about it. You can't cleanly separate Kansas stuff and Missouri stuff.

We're hearing a lot about how the fascists themselves built up to this (if you really have no idea, I'd suggest the series "The Alt Right Playbook" on YouTube, by Innuendo Studios). The liberals are not collectively faultless. Overland Park liberals largely define their local identity in opposition to the "inner city" on the Missouri side, which they view as too poor, too dangerous, and too Black. (There's also an exaggerated idea of how many rural and Western Kansans are Christian fundamentalist gun nuts, but not to the same extent.) They really don't want to think about their privilege.

In contrast to the supposed "chaos" and "lawlessness" of the "inner city", the suburb maintains strict appearances of perfection and order. The endangered tallgrass prairie is confined to a single, small and curated space, while every other parcel of land is flattened and covered with either lawn grass or pavement. Toxic positivity is a way of covering up and ignoring the issues like racism and classism, environmental degradation, and gentrification. It also creates an unattainable pressure among younger people to be "perfect" and eternally pleasant. I witnessed and experienced this deeply as a neurodivergent teen, but recently I'm hearing lots of heart-wrenching stories from my trans friends back in KC who are getting kicked out of their "normal and happy" families. Everyone is surprised except the people who aren't.

When our mental health cracks under the pressure and/or we just play can't along and hide ourselves any longer, these liberals violently sweep us under the rug. For me, this meant getting brushed off to a mental hospital for them to deal with, rather than confronting the invisibilized systemic realities that created the situation. It means the local schools and parents glorifying their well-funded special education programs, while there's no radical neurodivergent movement or even neurodivergent-led organizations and you're considered a raving fanatic (at best) if you advocate for one. Schools are a big part of this in general: they use their budgets to bring in cops and punishing kids for advocating their needs in "not nice" ways, rather than addressing those needs (ownership and freedom in their education, not being inundated with monotonous work, not being bullied, etc.).

Another example is the local megachurch: it's the liberal megachurch, so it must be the "nice" megachurch. And it is, in comparison. But of course it offers no substantial ethical solutions to how its thousands of members should act upon their world other than "love each other more" and "let's pretend that the Bible actually says what centrist liberals want it to say, instead of what dead scribes wrote".

It's also deeply relevant that there's almost no historical memory on the local scale. There are no old buildings, not even government buildings. There are very few old businesses; new businesses replace the old constantly as trends change, and the wrecking balls are an ever-present memory hole for capitalism. If we remembered the past, we'd remember the genocides of the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, which made the region so sparsely populated. We'd remember how Overland Park, along with many of the Kansas City suburbs, were created largely by redlining and white flight as an "escape" from living near Black people.

Much of this is typical of suburbs across the US, and the Midwest in general, not limited to that one place. I also don't want to paint a picture of Overland Park as nothing but terrible: I mostly loved it and I have many great memories of it as well. Kansas City suburban liberals are also not the only liberals in Missouri. They don't support these bills, but will have to live with them if they pass. I still doubt many would defy them.