The Audacity Space

online salon for art, news, essays, and organizing creative action

Category: Perspectives

  • Dear Soldier

    Dear Soldier

    NR24

    After one of our recent protests, a man identifying himself as a veteran called us “Nazis” and spat that we should serve in the military before we dare to criticize this country. Excuse me? Plenty of us protesters have served in the military. Go talk to Jon Soltz of votevets.org in Boothbay and you’ll get an ear-full. Some of the harshest voices of criticism come from veterans.

    I am sincere when I say “thank you for your service”, but if military service were the only thing responsible for giving us our rights, then you’d think that China, Russian, and North Korea would have lots of “rights” due to their enormous militaries, but that is obviously not the case.

    And just a reminder for anyone who has forgotten the bloody lessons from 80 years ago: Nazism advocates for the subordination of individual rights — it’s the state über alles. Nazis reject democracy and liberalism and promote a dictatorial leadership. They hate dissent.

    So when we protesters are petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances through our freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, we are literally doing the most American thing possible. That’s as far from Nazism as you can get. So what exactly are you talking about?

    What bothered me most about the interaction was that this soldier didn’t get how dangerously hypocritical his views were. For him, I guess America should be a place where everyone falls in line behind Trump and toes his party line, no matter how damaging or self-serving it is. Did this soldier heckle protestors who were dissatisfied with President Biden? Did he tell the “Let’s Go Brandon” guys they were a “disgrace?” I sincerely doubt it.

    And what does it look like when soldiers silence dissent? Or when the leader is declared to be “above the law?” Or when a President censors the media by literally choosing who is allowed to report on his briefings? Or unflattering movies are stifled? Or when he praises dictators? If you guessed something out of the 1930s, there are a lot of frightening parallels.

    So, Dear Soldier, I ask you as a neighbor and fellow citizen: don’t forget your duty. We need your help. All US military personal had to take an oath, and you among them. You took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I will grant you that you also agreed to obey the orders of the President of the United States, but right now, those loyalties are conflicting. What to do when the President himself is the one attacking the Constitution? Checks and balances, the right to assemble, the freedom of speech — all of these things are under attack. I know a lot of soldiers are into the SECOND things (like the second amendment), but I would argue that the FIRST thing in your oath is more important: presidents may come and go, but the Constitution is what endures. And THAT’s what you fought for, and THAT’s what we are fighting for. So come join us. We really are on the same side.

  • I’m learning from y’all!!

    Mary Ellen Griffin

    Hi, neighbors in the Maine resistance community! My friend who lives in Camden shared your Audacity:CAT link with me. I love how creative and articulate you are as you organize and choose actions! Your website is so fun and inviting! 

    I am an old white lady in western North Carolina near Asheville. We have stuff going on here but OMG is the messaging ever BORING and OLD SCHOOL!!! I’m going to bring your creative spirit to my local folks and see if we can raise our game. Then maybe the young people will be more interested in including us in the cool organizing they’ve got going on. 

    Thank you for your inspiration! And also, I am poised to launch my Substack blog, “Resist and Thrive Together,” in case you want to check it out. 

    Go Team Maine! We are in this together!

    Your southern neighbor,

    Mary Ellen Griffin

    Black Mountain, NC

  • Why Protest? Reason #1: Different Games and When it’s Not a Game At all

    James Cook

    Episode 1 of a YouTube series on the question, “Why Protest?” Each video shares an answer from a different vantage point or experience of protest.

    Episode summary:

    GOP senators voted unanimously on 3/1/25 to target some of the already most vulnerable children for being different. Living in Maine, it’s necessary to point out this includes Senator Susan Collins.

    The morning after the vote, the Ivy League Debate Club circles in Democratic Leadership are murmuring their wishes that we regular folk avoid talking about it. “Shh. This issue loses the game in Maine!” they say.

    But we’re not in an oak-paneled room of cozy polite opponents winning on points. MAGA has played Kayfabe for years. Confidence wins that game. And that means confidence in one’s values, whether they be cruel (Republicans targeting kids) or kind (lifting up all children, not using them).

    The priorities of this argument are also oriented inappropriately to elections. Yes, elections matter, but winning them is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to build a constructive, trusting, nurturing society that includes and benefits as many people as possible, and they’re HURTING VULNERABLE KIDS. It is crucial to make that unacceptable, and that means standing up in our communities and setting the standard. That is what public demonstrations do: reset the agenda to reframe the stakes and priorities, with the confidence needed to win a Kayfabe audience over.

  • When The Never Is Inside Your Own House

    When The Never Is Inside Your Own House

    Peregrin Wood

    Our certainty in shared values seemed justified in simpler times.

    It’s easy to stand against Nazism when it’s an evil of the past. It’s something else when the Nazis have gained control of your own country, when they hold every major lever of power.

    When Vice President JD Vance told the Germans that they must make way for a new generation of Nazis, he did so as part of a delegation that included Jack Posobiec, an American Nazi who now wanders the halls of the White House at will, who a year before had lifted a crucifix while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and declared,

    “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it, and we will replace it with this. That’s right, we will replace it with this, because all glory is not to government. All glory is to God!“

    Glory to God in American politics is now shorthand for brutal totalitarian power. Glory to God in American politics has become an enemy to democracy.

    When I learned the part that Posobiec played in the Munich conference at which support for Nazis in Germany became part of American foreign policy, I thought back to a sign I had seen lifted at a local protest in Ithaca, New York.

    In a mittened hand lifted high, the hand-drawn sign warned, “Never Again Means Now”.

    It’s easy to say “never again” when the Never we imagine is a foreign mistake that America fought against in a righteous war in the time of our grandparents. It’s an evil so specific, and so far removed in space and time, that it seems never likely to return.

    When Never returns speaking English with an American accent, in the name of the most popular religion in the United States, it’s easier to ignore the stories of new concentration camps riddled with horrific abuse of prisoners.

    After all, it doesn’t come with a ridiculous little mustache. It doesn’t present itself in grainy black and white films.

    It speaks to our familiar American prejudices, our cozy hatreds.

    It’s more difficult to resist the Nazi who stands under the American flag. It’s easier to just go shopping.

    Resistance in your own country, in your own time, is not an easy choice. It’s not a glamorous fantasy.

    Resistance isn’t resistance if it’s easy and painless. Resistance burns. Resistance aches.

    Their power is totalitarian. Our resistance cannot be limited to an occasional thumbs up on social media.

    Never Again protest sign

  • Parent Complains to the US Department of Education About Rogue Sects Education

    Peregrin Wood

    Today, the US Department of Education set up a web site solely dedicated to providing a way for Americans to report public schools for the offense of having inclusion, equity, and diversity in their classrooms.

    I could see right away why this project is such a priority for the US Department of Education. I mean, imagine what it must feel like for people to discover that public schools, of all places, are finding ways to include a diversity of students in their classrooms in an equitable way!

    The web site is at a standalone domain at EndDEI.gov. The site features a rant by Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the right wing extremist organization Moms For Liberty. She complains of “rogue sex education and divisive ideologies” influencing public schools.

    Moms For Liberty, for their part, has been emulating the Nazis by forming committees of political extremists to demand that libraries and schools ban books. What a good example Ms. Justice sets on avoiding ideological divisiveness!

    I like to think of myself as the type of citizen (Yes, I am a citizen of the United States of America. Please don’t send me to the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay!) who shoulders his fair share of the burden of civic duty. So, as soon as I learned about the EndDEI.gov web site, I did my part. I sent the Department of Education a message informing on my local public school.

    Citizens informing on each other in order to establish ideological conformity – that’s the American way!

    The message I sent to the Department is as follows:

    “I am writing to complain about discrimination on the basis of rates and sects.


    The rates I am being charged in the grocery store for a dozen eggs here in Ithaca, New York has gone up dramatically since Donald Trump was inaugurated. I think all people should be able to eat a food as simple as eggs, regardless of rates.


    I am also concerned about the growth of rogue sects education, as promoted by divisive Christian Nationalist organizations such as Moms for Liberty. This rogue Christian sect has attempted to push public schools to indoctrinate all students in Christian theology and to participate in Christian religious rituals such as prayer, even when students are from non-Christian families. Non-Christian families make up 40% of the American population, but here in Ithaca, non-Christians are 60% of the population, so I hope you see how that could be a problem.

    I am also concerned about your efforts to end diversity in the Ithaca City Schools. How do you plan to accomplish this? Are you thinking compulsory re-education camps, ethnic cleansing, or just closing the public schools down? A combination of both?”

    As a citizen informer to our new fascist government, what kind of report will you submit about your local public school’s insidious support for diversity?

  • What Should The Audacity Do With $1,000,000?

    James Cook

    Audacious folks,

    Imagine with me for a moment that The Audacity somehow came into a million bucks, unrestricted by purpose. (It hasn’t, but imagine that it has.)

    What would be the Top 3 things that The Audacity should do with that money?

    Answer in the comments!

    (By the way, to answer in the comments, you’ve got to get a free account as a creator here. We’re adding this step to prevent trolls and to make sure everyone’s on the same page. It’s quick and easy to request an account: just fill out the form on this page and we’ll get right back to you.)

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