Robert Franklin Williams, born on this day in 1925, was an American civil rights leader and author known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and being a proponent of armed self-defense within the black community. He succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe, and helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons for two young African-American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the "Kissing Case of 1958."
At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States. Williams obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club to defend black people in Monroe from Ku Klux Klan, once driving them out of his neighborhood with gunfire.
After allowing a white couple to take refuge in their home during race riots, the local police indicted Williams for kidnapping the couple, forcing him to flee the country and take up residence in Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro. While there, he ran a radio program called "Radio Free Dixie" with Castro support. In 1966 Williams moved to China where he became a friend and advisor to Mao Zedong.
In 1969, he returned to the United States and adopted more moderate political views. In 1996, Williams died of Hodgkin's Lymphona in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:
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CW: Talk of suicidal thoughts and gender confusion
It's always when I feel shittiest that I'm most confident that I'm trans. This makes me worried that the idea of being trans is like a weird cryptic form of suicidal ideation for me. Right now it feels a lot like my life is going downhill. I'm slowly but steadily losing the few friends that I had in the first place, the fact that I have no direction in life is starting to cause serious problems, I have no idea how to form connections with people, I'm finding it more and more difficult to care about my coursework, etc. The thought that I might turn from this shy, unmotivated boy into a confident, happy woman is quite comforting. Like I can maybe get a chance to just throw my whole life in the trash and start over, but with less mental health issues this time. It's a very nice thought, but the niceness of the thought makes it difficult to tell whether I am actually honest-to-god uncis, or if I am just kind of appropriating the concept of transness to provide myself some sort of mental escape. I wonder similar things about my politics. Especially since I have not studied all that much political theory. It's nice to be able to just blame my lack of motivation on living in a capitalist hellscape. It's easy and makes sense. And the idea of this disappointing arc of my life being cut short by some sort of glorious revolution or political upheaval that fixes everything is a very comforting thought, but I don't really have the historical or ideological perspective to back up that thought with anything meaningful. Sure, I can just read theory and fix that, and I will once things are maybe a bit less of a mess for me, but I will still maybe be reading theory because I'm unsatisfied with my life, as opposed to reading theory because of some sort of moral passion or intellectual curiosity. And thinking about that too much does weird things to my mental state. I know that there are people out there who appropriate a socialist aesthetic because they think it'll make them look cooler, and I really don't want to be one of those people. I guess I really should just like fucking read books already.
On the one hand, I'm terrified that I'm already the age that I am. On the other hand (which I think is the hand that is more rooted in reality), I most likely have SO MUCH life left to live, and I have absolutely no idea what anything past maybe the next few years is gonna look like. Not even remotely. Even though I'm in no mortal danger, it's difficult for me to envision myself living much longer. Not that I'm suicidal! I'm really not having any blatantly suicidal thoughts, which is actually a significant improvement over a couple years ago! But the idea of ending whatever this story is and starting a completely new one appeals to me a bit too much. And that line of thinking obfuscates many things, such as my perception of my gender, and even my perception of my perception of my gender. Tonight I feel shitty for reasons that are unrelated to my gender, and I also feel especially like a woman. And I don't know what to make of that. Honestly I probably should have just gone to bed instead of writing this post. I am well into overthinking territory at this point.
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I genuinely appreciate it a lot, but I also didn't intend to scare anyone. I'm obviously not in the best place right now, but I want to make it clear that I'm not in any danger. I had a bad day yesterday, but even then, I wrote the above post more out of introspection than frustration or hopelessness. Retrospectively I maybe should have made that more clear; that's my bad and I'm sorry if I frightened anyone. I'll be more careful about this sort of subject matter in the future. If my emotional state was bad to an actually dangerous degree, I would seek professional help rather than vent anonymously on an internet forum. Again, the fact that you reached out means a lot, but I don't want to misrepresent my situation as more dire than it really is.
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You're all good! And I appreciate the offer. Idk I just felt like it would be best to make sure that we were on the same page. Reading back what I wrote I can see how one might interpret it as more than what I intended it to be and I really just didn't want to take that chance. In any case, I think I kind of just need to think things through on my own and chill out a bit. I might even try to avoid the internet for a few days. I'm in a weird headspace right now and I think I just gotta take it easy and keep things in perspective. I'll say it one more time though: I appreciate you reaching out. If nothing else, it's nice to know that someone went out of their way to try to help me out :)
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