Author: James Cook

Shortly after noon on February 22, 2025, members of the theater working group of The Audacity gathered in front of the Camden Opera House to die.

As Oliver Kaplan of the University Denver notes in an essay for Political Violence at a Glance, the “die-in” is a time-honored method for making hidden violence apparent. Classic research on conformity has identified a troubling pattern: people are less inclined to be troubled by violence committed against people if that violence can be hidden from the senses. Die-ins don’t force passers-by to confront actual scenes of violence, but they do force people to symbolically confront that violence.

The Camden Conference had selected its theme of “Democracy Under Threat: Global Perspectives” before the election of Donald Trump and the rapid descent into authoritarianism, bigotry, and corruption of his first month in office. The Audacity’s theater group decided to use a die-in to augment the conference by bringing the subject of democracy home, and to draw attention to those people who are already dying due to the disintegration of democracy under the hammer of the Republican Party in control of the House, the Senate, the White House, and an increasing share of the federal judiciary.

Under a large tombstone declaring that “People Are Already Dying,” people lay with smaller tombstones reminding passers-by of the ways that the disabling of democracy leads to deadly consequences for real people.

_{^{[Photo Credits: Dora Lievow]}}

As conference-goers left for lunch, a demonstrator read the following statement:

People Are Already Dying,

and uncounted numbers more are

threatened by the wrecking of

American democracy.

We Stand in Solidarity with

the theme of the 2025 Camden

Conference, “Democracy Under

Threat,” and welcome attendees.

We Will Exercise Our Rights

to identify the threats to democracy

and to tirelessly advocate for an end

to this anti-democratic takeover.

Please Join Us in conference

halls, classrooms, and the streets.

We must stand together or fall alone.

We Are The Audacity, taking

Creative Action Together.

Occasionally, someone changed their mind, as happens in this video clip from Chris Wolf, reporting for the Pen Bay Pilot:

Chris Wolf’s February 22 reporting on the protest can be found here, and Daniel Dunkle’s reporting on the same day for the Midcoast Villager can be found here.

“This Could Be You,” reminds one gravestone captured in this photo set from Becca Shaw Glaser: