Authoritarianism at Home

People rally in support of trans youth and against anti-LGBTQ legislation on April 1, 2023, in Iowa City.

Iowa Republicans just selected a presidential candidate who is bent on being a dictator. Our governor is very cozy with Ron DeSantis, someone who adopted the Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban’s anti-trans and anti-education authoritarian playbook—mirrored in laws passed here in Iowa last spring.

Local leaders have an ethical responsibility to defend democracy, and to speak up when we see things sliding towards authoritarianism.

Johnson County Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz and I recorded a candid conversation about their experiences with hate-based legislation and how it connects to Iowa City’s protests and anti-protest laws. (Transcript follows the recording.) We also published this guest opinion.

Laura: My name is Laura Bergus and I'm an Iowa City city council member. And today I'm here with V Fixmer-Oraiz, who is a member of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. We're going to have just a casual conversation about authoritarianism in our community.

So, I want to just start with, what are some of the experiences you've had that have made you come to be willing to use that word and talk about what's happening here?

V: So yes, I am sort of a new member to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. I was elected last year, and I ran on affordable housing and inclusive economic development. I’ve been working in this community for over a decade and — my first year, so far, the experience that I had during the state legislative session really sort of changed the course of what I felt like were my political aspirations or ideas of what I thought I was going to be working on.

As the first trans, queer, biracial supervisor in the state, I didn't necessarily run on identity politics to get elected. However, this past state legislature, as we saw across the nation, actually, and in Iowa was particularly harmful.

Because what we saw coming out of the state legislature was not only trying to attack my marriage, for instance, or which bathroom you could use—or anybody really could use—based on their gender identity and who they are.

But also, more poignantly, the attack on LGBTQ youth—transgender youth in particular—who were seeking medical care, and that would be medical care that they would, you know, be working with their parents and their medical providers. The University of Iowa has a very robust, and in some ways leading the nation in LGBTQ care. I actually personally have been going to that clinic for over 10 years; and the state legislature decided to—in my eyes—attack youth and parents. And what was ironic about it was it was happening at the same time as organizations across the nation, and here in Iowa, we're waving a banner of parental rights as a way to ban certain books in our libraries, determine, you know, medical care for children, all these kinds of things.

And here was an attack on clearly just one community, and that was my community. And so I found myself in April and May of this last year, actually alongside Laura many times, but marching in the streets with middle schoolers and high schoolers, who were understandably hurt and furious that all of a sudden they were having their rights taken away from them. And they didn't understand why, why it was happening.

And also they just felt completely powerless Of course, I mean, they already are our vulnerable population, and made further vulnerable by the state legislative session. And so my experience at that time was, you know, now all of a sudden, that sort of galvanized into the into the front of this, by being a trans person and being queer and speaking out at every rally, making sure that our young people knew that there were adults in the room trying to fight alongside them and for them.

As a local government elected official, I don't have a lot of power, because I'm not a state legislator, but I do, you know–I was talking to the state legislators I knew, and was going to the capitol, those kinds of things. And what I ended up really honing in on was a message that was like, look, “when they go low, we go deep.”

Because there are times in our community—whether that was, you know, bans on our marriage, previously. Or, in the military, like “don't ask, don't tell.” All these kinds of waves of getting our rights taken away from us, politically. We've been here before, and we've always dug deep into our community to care for one another, to build momentum, to agitate, to, you know, get the laws on our books. To change the course of history. As has every, you know, marginalized or underestimated community or population. And so that was my message at the time.

And at that time, my family—I have young children and I’m married—they would come to these rallies sometimes. And there was one rally where I was speaking on the steps of a building and, later that night, my wife and I were having a conversation and she just turned to me and she was like, “You know, I just had this moment where I thought, what if there was an active shooter, and you were, you were shot? Who do I attend to? You, or do I attend to our children?”

And I bring that up as an example because when you're in this boiling pot it’s hard to know: “Are my rights being taken away? Is this really happening?” Because there was nobody else around that was really taking action in terms of the state legislative body, but also Iowans. There wasn't a really big rallying cry to help trans youth and their parents.

And so when she asked me that, it really, really shook me. Of course, as it would anybody. Because it made me realize that like the fear is real, like the agitation from the, you know, far right or from whoever is taking away your rights, is very real.

And I was—whether that was getting death threats or emails, asking, you know, where do I live like, all this kinds of stuff. It is hard to understand the stripping away of rights until it comes to a point where it feels life or death.

And I think that for me, it was really knowledge of, “this is what authoritarianism feels like.” It feels like things are being taken away, little by little, until you reach a point where you realize, wait a second, it's—my life is now all of a sudden on the line.

And I think that when you look at a class, you know, when you look across the board, if I'm the only one or if my community is the only ones that feel that way, then there's no activation that's going to happen. There's no agitation or there's no change that's going to happen unless other people recognize that our liberation is tied together.

And so it was, for me, a moment of, obviously, deep despair and fear for my life and also that of my family members. But it also was a very real understanding of what authoritarianism is, and what that can actually feel like.

So yeah, that's kind of a puts a pin in it.

Laura: Because you and I have talked about how this ties into other social movements that we've seen or ways of resisting the eroding of rights in our community and across the country.

And we've talked about some experiences from the summer of 2020, which was a moment when a lot of people stood up–maybe just momentarily–but said, “Hey, the fact that Black and brown people are so disproportionately harmed by the government—and in that case by police and law enforcement—if we look nationwide, like, what those statistics are telling us, something really does need to change systemically. Something is very, very wrong, because we are perpetuating this oppression.” And that I think this last fall, we've kind of seen these two issues come together.

And maybe can you just, like—what have you seen as far as that?

V: Yeah, well, you're referring to the Chloe Cole protesters on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City, and that was a prototype.

So, Chloe Cole is somebody who, you know, sort of quote-unquote “de-transitioned.” And as a young person felt like she was being forced into transitioning medically and so has now done speaking tours and things and gets called on to talk about this experience. She actually met with state legislators in Iowa during the session to, you know, basically talk about how harmful this can be.

It's very, very questionable as to her, you know, her motivations, I guess, for doing paid speaking tours like that. But, she was brought on to campus by a Young Americans for Freedom or something like—it's a campus student group.

And there was an organized protest. I think 100 to 150 people showed up. And they started blocking off traffic, at a T-intersection right in front of the Iowa Memorial Union.

And so UIPD came and tried to disperse everybody. There was a handful of folks who didn't disperse readily. And apparently there were some interactions there with police and protesters. There were no arrests made at that time, and I followed up with UIPD leadership and they said, you know, that their practice is to not arrest people at protests because it only escalates situations. Which, you know, that's probably very true. But they used body cams to identify people. And, since then, about a month or six weeks later, about six or seven folx were charged and brought in.

And all of them are non-binary or trans people. And some of the process for which at least one of them was served a warrant was incredibly harmful. Not only because they were detained unnecessarily during the time in which they were trying to, you know, get their paperwork—or get their warrant or show up. But they were also deadnamed, and harmed in other ways.

So, I was not actually made aware of the harm that had happened until I started getting emails from one of the protesters who was unfortunately detained while trying to get their paperwork for their warrant. And so that, to me, here we are, again, with the trans community.

Obviously, there was a protest, but when we think of protesting and walking in the streets, we always think like, yeah, there's a certain level of risk, right? Like maybe, yeah, I might get taken in, I'll have to have a fine or something. There's some level of risk there or maybe get harmed by a vehicle or, you know, other people. We assume these risks because as people who have protested that is what is standard.

And in 2021, that changed. And, I don't know, you have a little bit more understanding in terms of the law that was passed and how that's kind of altered and plays into this.

Laura: Yeah, I mean, with this these particular charges, as I understand, are brought under what was the enactment of what we call the “Back the Blue” law. And in—there were a number of laws—in 2021, which I think were kind of a backlash to what looked like the progressive movement in 2020.

And part of that was to enact a penalty for people who blocked traffic with a serious misdemeanor. Which, you know—and I've been told by our County Attorney that they believe that that law is just. That that law is to protect the public as well as the protesters. But it also was enacted at the same time as a law that provided cover, essentially, or a way for motorists to not get in trouble or not get punished if they harmed protesters who were blocking traffic. And it also came along with enhanced immunity for law enforcement when they are doing their job, which includes interacting with protesters who are maybe breaking a law that didn't exist before.

And so as all these things come together, it's the context of that that I think really matters. Because it's very easy, for those of us who work in these institutions and uphold these institutions—and I'm an attorney so I've, you know, taken an oath to uphold the law, as have you and I both, as public officials—and just knowing that contextually these laws can be used, through the exercise of individual discretion, to promote what we saw very clearly as this white Christian Nationalist agenda to harm certain groups of people.

And I think it was both those who were protesting police violence in the summer of 2020 and those who are protesting the erasure and taking away rights from LGBTQ individuals this last spring.

So, where do we go from here?

V: Yeah, well, you know, I think that, first of all, first and foremost, you and I both uphold public safety. That's like a huge tenant of why we're in public office and what drives and motivates us. We care about our community greatly and public safety is at the top of our mind. Which is, I think, why we have launched into this a bit.

And so part of that, of course, is—in the roles of elected officials—what we have is daylighting. What is actually the harm that is going on in the ways in which these levers are pulled. So, when you were just talking about personal discretion, you know, noting that there was personal discretion at the time that these officers had their body cams and then, you know, decided to give the search warrants out. And even if I say—to pursue the charges, that is. And then there's also additional discretion at the county attorney's office to actually take the cases—

Laura: —and generally there's discretion with the court as well. You know, you have people all through, front to back, within the system typically have choices and options for what they can do. And it's when you see this pattern that accumulates where no individual actor is sitting there with oppressive intent. We know that, but as put it all together, we can see how harmful it really is.

V: Yeah, so when we look at daylighting this it is—part of it is—educational, so that people understand where these points of discretion happen. And that when you look at an entire system that way, as you were just saying, you know, you have all these points, these these people that are involved. I am particularly interested in: “How do we address the system, knowing that this system is enacted by people?”

Laura: Yep, right systems are people!

V: Right? Yet, when we look at the laws as it stands, essentially, that law is turning our local people into, like, tools of an oppressive law. We're basically carrying out harm to our community under the guise of protecting it. And that's literally what I am told by all of our local actors, and I know that it's sincere. I really feel as though every person I've talked to genuinely wants people to be safe, and cares about our community, and yet feel as though, you know, by enacting by doing their job, quote, unquote, that is also in line with it.

Laura: Yes.

V: And that is—that is, I think the—one of the core issues is how do we address this educational component of it, making sure more people are aware that this is what's happening. Because, you know, when I talked about authoritarianism and how it felt in this last summer, I think the hardest place was feeling alone.

Like, the deepest pits of despair are when you feel like nobody cares, nobody knows. And it's not just my community, it's our community. And so, part of the education is also creating those relationships and building you know, building coalitions. Yeah, building the coalitions, the collaborations; the momentum that comes from that. And I think it can't really be overstated how important those relationships are. Because you never know who's going to be connected to what, or people's experiences and how that can really change the course of how we move forward.

Because who knows what people are bringing to the table. But the thing is, is that people just haven't been brought to the table. And granted we can flip that table.

Laura: But the status quo really, really limits who can be at the table. And I think that's why, you know, you and I both feel as elected officials, part of our job is to normalize questioning. To normalize pushing back. To remind those who have discretion that they have discretion and can make choices—

V: —and will be supported in those choices.

Laura: Yes. And that the community knows that they can come out and support those choices too.

V: Yeah, and that, in the end: we really just love each other.

Laura: So true.

V: And that everybody is worthy of love.

I think when we look at anybody—on different sides of issues, or aisles; life experiences: we have to see the humanity in each of us. And I think that's really where the care comes from.

So yeah, authoritarianism.

Laura: Well. We're gonna keep talking about it. This is just our first conversation. But thank you for being vulnerable, and being here, and talking about it today.

V: Yeah. You, too.