Tag: death

My Growing Activist Nihilism

Peregrin Wood

April 17, 2025

The image you see here is the design of a bumper sticker I just ordered to put on my car. I’m also getting a t-shirt with the same design on it.

The message is an invitation: Deport me, because this is not the country I grew up in.

There are a huge number of things an activist can say in this particular moment. There are lots of clever slogans, and important issues to deliver messages about.

This message best represents both the issue that feels at the center of everything that’s going wrong with America and the sincere feeling at the core of my response to that.

The cruelty of Donald Trump centers around nationalism, the idea that the purity of national identity is more important than anything else. Trump is willing to sacrifice the ideals of American democracy in order to temporarily protect the territorial absolutism of the American national identity.

In response, I feel disgust for the United States of America. It is revolting to me that half of American voters chose fascism over freedom.

So, I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.

I have all the privileges of being an American citizen, but I don’t identify with what the American nation stands for anymore.

My belief in American idealism has been completely shattered. My trust that the Constitution and the rule of law will be honored has been annihilated.

To be an American for me is to live in betrayal. Even if we can defeat Donald Trump, and remove all his fascist underlings from their positions of power, I will never again believe that the USA can be relied upon to stand against totalitarianism.

I’ve seen too many Americans who feel a nasty thrill at the idea of an authoritarian government that uses its power against the people they don’t like.

So, in my activism, I am not hopeful.

I don’t have confidence that the fascists can be defeated. I have too much experience with the small minds and small hearts of Americans to think that this is going to end well. I don’t believe what Woody Guthrie sang: “All you fascists, bound to lose.”

My goal is, given the disintegration of national values, to hold true to my individual values. I want to stand for non-violence, and for the liberties that were once guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.

I don’t feel at home in America. It doesn’t feel good to live in the USA.

I’m not proud to say it, but the day-to-day ugliness of the fascists is making my attachment to life wear thin. So, in my activism, I don’t want to leave anything behind.

I don’t want to fight, because I don’t want to be like the fascists, but I don’t want to play it safe, either.

I would rather be destroyed than to live in silence, watching the fascists flaunt their hatred day after day.

I don’t want to be an American any longer.

So yes, deport me.

This is not my country.

I don’t belong here, and I’m tired of putting a brave face about what is happening in America.
Photo, Video, and Media Coverage of The Audacity’s 2/22/25 Camden Die-In

James Cook

February 23, 2025

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:

Tag: death

My Growing Activist Nihilism

Photo, Video, and Media Coverage of The Audacity’s 2/22/25 Camden Die-In

The Audacity:

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