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davidforbes.bsky.social
David Forbes
@davidforbes.bsky.social
7.2K followers 720 following 7.8K posts
Anarchic history, queer defiance, cooking and — of course — fighting city hall.

@avlblade.bsky.social, @transnews.network Writer/journalist/editor. Eldritch trans dyke. She/They🏴🚩

Writing at:
patreon.com/DavidForbes
ashevilleblade.com
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davidforbes.bsky.social
Yes indeed.
A screenshot of the pdf link to the transphobic "Deciding to win" Dem strategy document, noting the primary author is Simon Bazelon.
November 11, 2025 at 1:27 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Relevant, as always.
The classic "For every fighter there is 10+ supports" poster, listing roles including "logistics, propagandist, supplier, medic" and more. Our revolution requires: hope, joy, stories, art, care, mourning, love, food
October 18, 2025 at 9:03 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
The grey in my hair is really coming out.
David, a trans woman with pale skin and a dark brown sideshave with the grey really showing in her hair. David, a trans woman with pale skin and a dark brown sideshave with the grey really showing in her hair.
October 17, 2025 at 3:39 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Yes, I'm a dyke. Enjoy lesbian day, y'all.
David, a white trans woman with a sideshave and brown hair. She's smiling, just a bit.
October 8, 2025 at 3:56 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
For poetry day, here's a personal favorite by Rita Mae Brown. Words to outlast every empire.

An army of lovers shall not fail. 🏴
Sappho's Reply My voice rings down through thousands of years To coil around your body and give you strength, You who have wept in direct sunlight, Who have hungered in invisible chains, Tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.
October 2, 2025 at 2:23 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Sideshave, y'all.
David, a white trans woman with sharp cheekbones, a sideshave, and brown/grey hair. She's smiling from gender euphoria.
September 22, 2025 at 7:26 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Quote post with an album you rate 10/10.

Said it before, I'll say it again: an incredibly underrated '90s queer masterpiece.
The case for Tanita Tikaram's "Lovers in the City" with her in a suit, resplendently futch, curled up on a chair. The inside of the "Lovers in the City" case, with Tanita Tikaram looking towards the viewer, still resplendently futch.
September 5, 2025 at 3:12 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Glad that this part from my latest piece @transnews.network is resonating with folks. It's a particularly important point and I hope more people in our movements and wider communities take it to heart. It's way overdue.

Read the whole thing here: transnews.network/p/nc-dems-an...
“As the South goes, so goes the nation,” W.E.B. DuBois said, drawing the links between Jim Crow and America's wider capitalist hellscape. It was bleakly, eternally prescient. Sadly, the left — including the queer left — has far too often written off the region, while our enemies have always seen it as a place to consolidate power and hone their tactics. It is telling that there is far more attention paid to raising money for trans people leaving the South than there has ever been to strengthening the far larger numbers of us who are here to fight for our homes and for each other.
August 20, 2025 at 5:27 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
1) Almost certainly a massive undercount, so take with some salt. Some useful info here, but measuring a highly marginalized/erased population is incredibly difficult.

2) Percentages do line up with other studies showing that the South has the largest queer/trans population. Y'all ain't ditching us
Screenshot from Williams Institute study showing estimates of trans demographics. The South has the largest numbers of trans adults and youth by a solid margin.
August 20, 2025 at 2:56 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Ok, I'm interested.
An image of Mortarion from 40k, a figure in a pale cloak holding a scythe, with the words "wear a mask scythe the fash"
August 4, 2025 at 3:06 AM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Handing things over to @matildabliss.bsky.social to cover the next portion of this Asheville city council meeting. #avlgov #avlnews

Please support @avlblade.bsky.social by subscribing (and getting this lovely "gentry tears" mug): patreon.com/AvlBlade

Or donating: paypal.me/AshevilleBlade
An Asheville Blade mug with tea in it and "gentry tears" in black lettering
July 29, 2025 at 9:59 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Update: I have a sideshave.
David, a white trans woman with pale skin, dark hair, glasses and a fresh sideshave.
July 9, 2025 at 5:28 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
If you want to be a girl, you can just be a (very genderqueer) girl.

Early 30s vs early 40s.
David, a white trans woman, very early in her transition, with slightly long hair, a scarf and a fairly somber expression David, a white trans woman with glasses and a dark brown sidecut, this spring, wearing black dress with leather straps. She's smiling and looks far, far happier.
July 8, 2025 at 3:26 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
But even after they'd gotten an independence far more on their terms, revolt continued. They'd inflicted the costs of the war effort on the populace. Shays' Rebellion in particular utterly terrified America's founding elite. The rebels were warning that "the great men are going to take all we have."
“I have labored hard all my days and fared hard; I have been greatly abused; been obliged to do more than my part in the war; been loaded with class rates, town-rates, continental rates, and all rates, lawsuits, and have been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors. I've had my cattle sold for less than they were worth: I have been obliged to pay and no body will pay me. I have lost a great deal by this man, and that man, and t'other man. The great men are going to take all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it; and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors or lawyers. I design to pay no more.”
July 4, 2025 at 3:10 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
In the 1760s-1770s, the British Empire's hold on its American colonies was rocked by revolts and riots, many against slavery and press gangs, many multiracial and radical.

The gentry "founding fathers" were terrified, so they sought to co-opt "independence" in a way that preserved their power...
Upheaval in Charleston in the mid-1760s against British rule from multiracial riots by sailors and the enslaved. Officials are scared shitless. From "The Many-Headed Hydra" The "motley crew" of sailors and the enslaved, much feared by the gentry over the 1700s, revolt again in the 1760s on, sparking a "revolutionary crisis." From "The Many-Headed Hydra" Anti-slavery revolts spread in 1760s and 1770s, including African-Irish 1774 revolt in Boston, upstate NY, Norfolk, Charleston and the Tar River region of NC. Anti-slavery resistance is rising right into 1776 "The new American ruling class redefined 'race' and 'citizenship' to divide and marginalize the motley crew." The Constitution was primarily geared to repress ongoing domestic revolt against the gentry, especially by those whose actions had done much of the work of actually weakening British rule.
July 4, 2025 at 2:44 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Post your favorite Doctor Who. Wrong answers only.
Marlene Dietrich, rocking a dark suit complete with tie and waistcoat.
June 30, 2025 at 8:12 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Important history: with major political parties and the legal system zealously backing slavery, abolitionists formed "vigilance committees" that made those laws de facto dead otg.

From my piece "Living in the Prologue," about lessons from America's long civil war: www.patreon.com/posts/living...
Galloway landed in Philadelphia in late 1856, where he quickly found support and a place to stay from that city's vigilance committee. Often ignored in the mainstream narrative, these multiracial organizations played a major role in abolition's resilience. They provided aid and housing to those who escaped slavery. They also “hired spies, employed informants and organized militia” to stop slavers by any means they could. At the time all major political parties, as part of the rickety grand compromises to preserve “the Union,” supported the protection and enforcement of slavery. In 1850 they made the Fugitive Slave Law far more draconian. Northern political notables like Daniel Webster threatened the vigilance committees with the full power of the state. The legal system backed up the slavers time and time again. Often it seemed like the abolitionist cause was hopeless. It wasn't. The committees and the movement they were part of steadily grew in strength despite the political establishment nearly unanimous in wanting them gone. In 1854 the Boston committee's militant wing battered down the door of the federal courthouse and killed a u.s. marshal in an attempt to save their neighbor, Anthony Burns, from deportation back to the South. The national government literally sent in the army — 2,000 soldiers with artillery — to stop them. While that rescue tragically failed, the authorities couldn't easily deploy that kind of force often. Actions like these helped curb the fugitive slave law's power.
June 27, 2025 at 5:16 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Important history: with major political parties and the legal system zealously backing slavery, abolitionists formed "vigilance committees" that made those laws de facto dead otg.

From my piece "Living in the Prologue," about lessons from America's long civil war: www.patreon.com/posts/living...
Galloway landed in Philadelphia in late 1856, where he quickly found support and a place to stay from that city's vigilance committee. Often ignored in the mainstream narrative, these multiracial organizations played a major role in abolition's resilience. They provided aid and housing to those who escaped slavery. They also “hired spies, employed informants and organized militia” to stop slavers by any means they could. At the time all major political parties, as part of the rickety grand compromises to preserve “the Union,” supported the protection and enforcement of slavery. In 1850 they made the Fugitive Slave Law far more draconian. Northern political notables like Daniel Webster threatened the vigilance committees with the full power of the state. The legal system backed up the slavers time and time again. Often it seemed like the abolitionist cause was hopeless. It wasn't. The committees and the movement they were part of steadily grew in strength despite the political establishment nearly unanimous in wanting them gone. In 1854 the Boston committee's militant wing battered down the door of the federal courthouse and killed a u.s. marshal in an attempt to save their neighbor, Anthony Burns, from deportation back to the South. The national government literally sent in the army — 2,000 soldiers with artillery — to stop them. While that rescue tragically failed, the authorities couldn't easily deploy that kind of force often. Actions like these helped curb the fugitive slave law's power.
June 27, 2025 at 5:16 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Without downloading any new pics, describe your gender.
A woman in a black, flowing dress — probably ritual in nature — stands on a snowy path. Ahead of her, six figures in coats salute with swords, crossed.
June 23, 2025 at 3:28 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Yes, Braxton Bragg is in fact an incredibly fitting symbol for a crumbling regime and the brittle, blundering gentry who run it. Not shocked Hegseth adores this guy.
Bragg is generally considered among the worst generals of the Civil War.[1] Most of the battles he engaged in ended in defeat. Bragg was extremely unpopular with both the officers and ordinary men under his command, who criticized him for numerous perceived faults, including poor battlefield strategy, a quick temper, and overzealous discipline.[1] Bragg has a generally poor reputation with historians,[1] though some point towards the failures of Bragg's subordinates, especially Major General and former Bishop Leonidas Polk—a close ally of Davis and known enemy of Bragg—as more significant factors in the many Confederate defeats under Bragg's command. The losses suffered by Bragg's forces are cited as highly consequential to the ultimate defeat of the Confederate States of America.[1]
June 19, 2025 at 9:57 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Expressed a wish that this existed and now, thanks to a comrade, it does.
The clasped hand meme, with one reading "Fighting ICE" and another "Fighting AI" with "Burning Waymos" in the middle.
June 9, 2025 at 1:59 AM
davidforbes.bsky.social
One of the most beautiful and powerful poems of queer defiance out there.

Rita Mae Brown wrote "Sappho's Reply" in the aftermath of Stonewall, amid a wave of organizing and confrontation. It's the origin of the rallying cry "An army of lovers shall not fail/cannot lose."

Needed now more than ever
Photo of Rita Mae Brown's "Sappho's Reply" from her 1971 book "The hand that cradles the rock" My voice rings down through thousands of years To coil around your body and give you strength, You who have wept in direct sunlight,, Who have hungered in invisible chains, Tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.
June 2, 2025 at 2:18 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Buncombe County government (annual budget $440 million) using canned "AI" art for post-Helene outreach when there's *a lot* of struggling local artists they could pay to create actual art.

Far from the worst thing they do, but it's telling. #avlnews #avlgov
A screenshot of a post from Buncombe County government about a post-Helene survey, using that terrible "Ghibli"-style "AI" dreck depicting several survey-takers.
May 29, 2025 at 7:08 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
Ain't that celebratory today, but the radical/queer parts of goth have genuinely helped keep me alive, so...

Here's to the harbingers of a black dawn, the razor cut of the old stories, the dancers in the ruins and the moon shining triumphant through shattered towers.

To the end of every imperium.
The final painting from Thomas Cole's gothic as hell "Course of Empire" titled "Desolation." Forest and moss overcome the ruins of a city once grown "great" on the suffering of others. A single crumbling column in the foreground faces the moon over the water. Despite its title there is a sense of beauty, peace and hope amid the ruins of oppression.
May 22, 2025 at 4:46 PM
davidforbes.bsky.social
These Black militias, directly organized by their own communities, were radical abolitionists and a force to be reckoned with, fighting Union army racism and waging an effective guerrilla war against the confederacy. Lincoln was eager to stay on good terms with them.

(From "Living in the Prologue")
Research over the past decade has revealed that coastal insurgents weren't scattered brigands, but highly organized coalitions that could quickly call councils and coordinate action over an extensive area. While some were already in the area before the ports fell, afterwards they rapidly gained strength. As for their goals “these self-organized groups held political beliefs far more revolutionary than those of the Union army or all but the most ardent Yankee abolitionist.” The ports became public hubs for a “defiantly egalitarian” politics. Throughout the war federal commanders weren't generally keen on this kind of self-organization. Outside the occasional abolitionist plenty of officers wanted the war over without slavery's end. In late 1862 they even arrested some of New Bern's Black militia and returned a refugee to her former “owner.” But a strike by Union scouts and a threat of riots by Black locals quickly reversed both. This official hostility never entirely went away, though it subsided a bit in early 1863 when Black militias proved decisive in stopping confederate assaults on several ports. The insurgents also fought a bloody secret war with regime death squads, marked by night raids and ambushes instead of formal battles. In April 1864 Lincoln met with a delegation of Galloway and several other prominent insurgent figures from the North Carolina ports. The president greeted them with an unusual, almost obsequious, hospitality. The few observers to the meeting noted that the delegates weren't deferential. They were direct that they wanted “the greatest of privileges” — their political rights and autonomy — and pointedly emphasized the dire straits the war effort would be in without their support. The incident comes off not as a commander-in-chief giving orders, but as essentially autonomous militias fully aware of their leverage and a government eager to keep them actively on their side.
May 16, 2025 at 9:17 PM