By The FirstBy Emily Barsh aka @EmilyTVProducer
This is a series of dispatches from behind enemy lines, here in the failing, broken state of California. You already know how corrupt and how ‘communist’ the once-Golden State has become. But you may not realize that amid this bastion of woke ignorance and cultish allegiance to a neo-Marxist government, you will find the fiercest, most dedicated and diverse adherents to the U.S. Constitution and to our nation’s founding principles.
In fact, our patriots are so inured to the hostility and never-ending assault on liberty, that when those who seek to destroy us double-down…we triple-down right back.
Meet Roxanne Beckford Hoge, a California warrior who refuses to give up the fight.
1. Name, rank, serial number…vitals; how long have you lived here?
I’m a mom of four who moved to LA in the late 80s to be an actor. Actually, I moved to become an actress but saying that now is against The New Rules. I’ve been a Screen Actors Guild member for 30 years and live in what once was the bucolic San Fernando Valley, where my husband and I own a business. In 2018, I saw that our state assemblyman was running opposed and became a candidate for office, which was quite the eye opener!
2. Tell us about your heritage/background.
My family fled the island of Jamaica because of their disastrous flirtation with socialism in the 70s, and I have no desire to pack up and run away from home ever again.
2. California has gone from great to ghastly, for all the reasons people know (progressive policies that have yielded crime, homelessness, unrest, scarcity, a culture war, energy and water shortages, etc.). Why do you stay and fight?
I love this state. I love the lack of humidity and bugs. I love my family and friends. I still love acting; there’s nothing more fun than getting paid to play dress-up while someone brings you a hot breakfast! My husband and I have built a life here with friends we love, and a plurality (though not a majority) of our extended family. To leave would require a wagon train and getting a group of several dozen people to agree on a destination.
3. What’s the most shocking/stark/drastic/radical thing you have seen change over the course of time?
The most shocking thing I’ve seen change was the eradication of the stench of human urine (on Hollywood and Vine, Third Street Promenade, and Downtown LA) right back to the welcoming of it and even worse smells, diseases, human detritus and despair. I didn’t know much about politics at the time, but I’d sure welcome a Mayor Riordan back with open arms.
4. What’s your line in the sand, when it comes to how far you’re willing to compromise with the radical Left?
My line in the sand was crossed a long time ago. When I get told by white liberals that multi-millonaire blacks are oppressed…and I don’t know what I’m talking about because the slavery my ancestors survived was somehow better than slavery in the American colonies. It doesn’t bother me much, because it’s all I can do to suppress my laughter. But when you come after my children, and all the little kids they know at school, and start divvying them up by melanin content and perceived privilege, I’m gonna get snippy. I talk about the damage the new race-obsessed ‘educators’ are doing in a few PragerU videos – which were deemed “simplistic propaganda” by some social justice overlords, so I must be doing something right. I am not an impatient woman; but I am judgemental, and when I can see people nodding along with policies and actions that are harmful to children, I can’t not speak up.
Too many of us are scared, and rightly so, because the Left has shown themselves willing to harm your ability to live and work, while committing the crime of thinking differently. But we must be just a little brave and be willing to smile and say, no thanks to madness. Say no thanks to putting your pronouns in your bio. (Unless your name is Taylor or Hunter or Pat. In that case, declare away!). Say no thanks to forcing kids to segregate at school into race-based groups. Say no thanks to wearing a useless paper muzzle. (It declares its ineffectiveness right on the package). Say no thanks when someone asks you to share your private medical status in order to eat indoors.
5. If a patriot from a red state were to challenge the premise that we patriots behind enemy lines are more patriotic than they are, what would your come back be?
Just like the defense of free speech means the most when it’s speech we disagree with, staying and fighting from #BehindTheBlueCurtain is some of the most vital work we can do if we want our children to grow up in a free and fair America. I can’t begrudge people who have to flee California, and who are able to do so. But anyone thinking we should all turn tail and leave has no idea of the out-sized influence the one-party-run enclave in Sacramento has over the entire USA. When they pass mandated ethnic studies requirements for high school graduation, you may laugh all you want from the relative safety of Utah or Alabama. But textbook publishers will print just one set of history books, and they’ll be California-compliant so they don’t lose out on our enormous market. The next thing you know, your kids in Texas will refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving because of its problematic overtones.
If the US military abandons an area to be overrun by the enemy, that creates a haven, a base of operations. Don’t abandon California. Support America’s freedom fighters.