The following is a March 25 solidarity statement from the 2016 presidential campaign of Workers World Party to the people fighting House Bill 2 in North Carolina.

Power to the five queer and trans* youth arrested on March 24 amidst a powerful demonstration of many hundreds — largely Black and Brown, LGBTQ youth — outside the North Carolina governor’s mansion after the Legislature there rushed through House Bill 2, one of the most severe anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker laws in the country.

The Moorehead-Lilly presidential/vice presidential campaign condemns in the strongest terms this heinous attack on LGBTQ people and stands in full solidarity with the powerful resistance led by Black and Brown, queer and trans* young people, many from the Black Lives Matter movement.

Right-wing bigots who control the North Carolina Legislature introduced the bill, using the pretext of overturning a local ordinance. The city council in Charlotte had passed a measure that would have allowed trans* people to access the bathroom that best matches with their gender identity. But the statewide bill was a much broader assault on the LGBTQ community and workers.

The new law criminalizes trans* and gender nonconforming people, and puts the safety and the lives of LGBTQ people in danger. It rolls back anti-discrimination policies on the books. It gives bosses much greater power to discriminate against or fire workers based on their race, gender, gender identity and expression, religion, or sexual orientation by depriving workers of the ability to bring suit on these grounds in state courts.

The Legislature convened a special session of the General Assembly on March 23 and rammed the bill through both houses. The governor then signed this atrocious bill into law within 24 hours.

In 2015, at least 20 transgender people in the U.S. were recorded as murdered, the vast majority being transwomen of color. The real number is likely much higher. LGBTQ people — particularly people of color and women — experience higher rates of poverty, homelessness, and lack of access to quality and sensitive health care, and face the risk of violence and incarceration.

Workers World Party stands unequivocally on the side of LGBTQ people in the fight for self-determination, trans* and gender liberation!

HB2 comes just months after the North Carolina Legislature passed HB318, an anti-immigrant bill that was a full-scale attack on immigrant workers. HB318 gave more power to cops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and prohibited municipalities from adopting “sanctuary” policies protecting immigrants, among other things.

HB2 also comes during the rise of the presidential campaign of ultraright, racist billionaire Donald Trump. Trump’s campaign is using a vicious platform of racism and bigotry to mobilize and embolden the most reactionary forces in society, forces who would like nothing more than to turn the clock back on the advances made by the civil rights, Black liberation, working class, union, women’s and LGBTQ movements.

The ruling class relies on sowing divisions to keep workers and the oppressed divided — HB2 is an attempt to scapegoat transgender people to do just that. The rulers tremble at the thought of the multinational, multigendered working class uniting — especially in this period of a deep, irresolvable crisis of the capitalist system because they know what will happen to them and the tools they use to divide us: They will be smashed into the ground and swept into the dustbin of history.

We stand on the side of workers and the oppressed, and fight for a revolutionary socialist future that can abolish once and for all the rule of the capitalist class and that rids society of all forms of oppression.

LGBTQ liberation now!

Smash racism, sexism, LGBTQ bigotry and all forms of oppression!

Fight for a revolutionary socialist future!

*(Trans* is currently used with an asterisk to indicate the spectrum of all the different sexes and genders of people who do not conform to the either/or of male/female or masculine/feminine.)