Art and Activism
& Acts of Freedom
How could I miss January 20th, Inauguration Day, when tracking key anniversary dates of the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath - historic in the U.S. for its non-peaceful transfer of power?
I had in mind to post on the 20th and then close this tracking effort on February 13th, the last day of Trump’s second impeachment trial. From there, move forward from and within the times as they happen to be.
Instead, I’ll linger in between those two dates, free for reorientation to what issues they’re bringing up in their counterpoise. As to the dates themselves, I had to let them go, because my thinking was too formulaic when I thought towards them.
Not that I’m against - as you know if you’ve been with me from early on - poetic rhythms and transformative prompts (see The New Not Normal).
Insert Repetition with Regret
Exactly one year ago on this date…
So, here I am, in the balance between memory of Inauguration and Impeachment Acquital, hoping to pounce on what can be done, what should be done. A personal question, a political question.
For the moment, here (where I am) - resolving/re-solving tensions between art and activism.
Trigger Events
Inauguration: clearing, yet festive balloons banner into barricades and are stratosphere disappeared upon promises, promises
Impeachment: subterranean corridors backdoored (Republican) to irresponsible the crimes, let slip the creeps
A year in, what are the grounds and verticals for hope of better times? For building?
In the midst of the Trump regime, I shuddered at the onslaught of offenses against immigrants: travel bans, border wall, shameless flagrancy of home and workplace raids, ripping children out of the arms of their parents - the inhumane, insane calculation of open cruelty as a means to the end of creating an enemy class in our own country. My Jewishness revolted against policies and dehumanizing cockroach rhetoric reminiscent of the holocaust and my Jewishness impinged upon my conscience a duty to welcome - and defend - the stranger. My paradoxically irreligious (anti-institutional), humanistic anti-fascism sought a front line in the struggle against hate-empowered oppression.
I placed my efforts in solidarity with immigrants whatever their status against the lies of criminalization and Trump’s frenzy of racism, bigotry, xenophobia. I worked most extensively with two groups in Washington D.C., one faith-based and one secular, which often coordinated in strategic tandem for public advocacy and private intervention. We worked shoulder-to-shoulder with individuals and families directly confronted by a brutal immigration system. Our ethos inverted the brutalizing confrontation through human contact - human standing with those threatened, human standing between them and those doing the threatening. Human face to human face on all sides, we were at the brunt of an administration-spurred surgent aggression. Effective for care and witness, and sometimes for outcome, yet never quite enough. What can I describe in the face of a middle-aged woman - wife and mother of six, here since 2005, legal work permit since 2009, taxpayer, nanny, housekeeper, homeowner - shackled wrists-to-ankles at the Baltimore field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and bussed to a Maryland detention center soon to be deported? What can I describe in the faces of the ICE officers facing down crowds of her family, friends, community supporters, and peaceful protestors? Visage gives way to empty space - triumph of force dissolves individualized humanity.
Now, a year into a new administration, many advocates fault Biden for failing to sustain the moral indignation and impetus he campaigned on with regard to these issues; they point to the stalling of immigration legislation in Congress and slow restructuring of the asylum system at the U.S.-Mexican border left in ruins by Trump.
Please check out the following nonpartisan reports which tell a different story about the Biden administration’s ongoing dedication towards sane, humanitarian action on immigration.
Migration Policy Institute - Greater Change Than Is Recognized
Pew Research Center - Key Facts About U.S. Immigration Policies and Biden
In decisive answer to lack of legislative results in Congress, Biden - through executive action and regulatory changes at DHS - reversed much of the damage done by Trump. In fact, in extensive repair of the previous regime’s institutional deviousness, Biden issued more than three times as many executive orders on immigration than Trump did in his first year - rightly perceived at the time as drastic. Rules to humanize interior enforcement at ICE have led to a plummeting of deportations in 2021 (reported here as a negative by the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies).
Still, legislative disappointments so far - not only in immigration reform but in voting rights and in the Build Back Better package with its provisions for climate change and a social safety net - leave much uncertain beyond this not necessarily permanent relief from top-down virulence in the ongoing systemic racism and inequities of how we treat newcomers within our borders. Forefront peril at this juncture: it isn’t at all sure all is safe for free and fair elections when multitudes deny the reality of 2020’s free and fair election, ready to impose Trumpist overseers at every level of adminstration over ballot and voting machine; that, or insurrect “better.” Even if we get through the next few years with democracy more or less intact, what best efforts might contribute to creating a just society, a hopeful future, and some semblance of commonweal?
To boot, deportation numbers began to creep up again as the pandemic eased (at least before the omicron wave); meanwhile, pandemic-related health measures at the border - Title 42 “expulsions” - all along have justified (or excused) the denial of hundreds of thousands of migrants their legal right to seek asylum. As to the increase in deporations, which are prosecuted by ICE, it isn’t surprising that the institutional culture of sweeping enforcement would soon militate against new rules designed to give humane consideration to each person’s constellation of circumstance and character and the impact removal would have upon their family and community. ICE obviates its own reform. DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ memo of September 30th, 2021 (Subject: Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law) emphasizes repect for the prosecutorial discretion of ICE personnel as “a deep-rooted tradition” in the immigration arena. This is a two way street regarding enforcement priorities and institutional values. ICE officers can ignore the guidelines as they see fit. And they do:
"We have heard from some practitioners that they are getting requests approved but many are still running into obstacles with ICE even for cases that seem to fit the guidance to a T," says Jen Whitlock, policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "It seems to depend a lot on geographical jurisdiction."
In interviews, half a dozen immigration lawyers from different parts of the country expressed confusion and disappointment about how the new guidance is being applied. Several suggested that ICE staff hired during the Trump administration, which took a harder line on interior enforcement, could be undermining the new policy.
Based on my own experiences interfacing with ICE, I’m unsurprised. The culture is as traumatizing as anything I’ve encountered in my life: its ferocity is a deep-rooted tradition. My experiences brought me to the conclusion that ICE is beyond reform. Then, as outlandish and impossible as the concept of abolishing ICE seemed to me at first, as impractical as the Abolish ICE movement seemed to be, I started to entertain a belief - not yet in the practical possibility, but - in the denunciatory necessity of calling for the actual abolishment of ICE, a paramilitary force as rogue and sadistic as any to have shamed the nations that have unleashed them throughout history. Soon, in context of an art installation and writing residency I participated in on the National Mall, a poem emerged out of this expanse of clarity - (eyes kept open) on malice transparent - and from that poem, its idealistic vertices, the conviction emerged as well that it is possible to undo an established instrument of power.
Abolish ICE poem Cato's Ceterum Censeo on ICE on Up, Up with Liberation
In retrospect, it’s glaring that my activation and politicization - again, in resolve of what should be done under the dire circumstances, of what I should do - reflected as well a crisis in my writing life. At least, mid-trajectory malaise.
Typical in many ways, the internal creative arc: daily curve, project curve, years to decades, lifetime curve. Never in denial of the ultimate uses of art and poetry - always reading! The greats.
But what can I write that will serve a seemingly destitute future? How can I write when there are direct attacks on the present? And the past snaps its worst at our heels, eager to repeat.
Even in the best of times, writing thoughtfully is the most exacting task. I found some action for the days of outrage.
There is overall purpose; and then there is the day-to-day, the present with its own point. What is to be done above all and what is to be done daily. Placement of precious energy, precious time.
In short, commitment is deeply personal.
Commitment is personal, and can remain in the realm of art and thought and be as valid and as illuminating as power/to power as advocacy and direct action. Discovery of purpose is an internal, self-revelatory - personal - process. When attempting persuasion, when rallying for a cause, this is the universal to be remembered out of respect for each individual’s potential turning towards a unique purpose. The political is personal.
Art in admission of the recurrence of atrocity can’t evade the political. Same for any life purpose or career. Yet art evades its own essence when lowering its aspiration only to what serves the times - no less than the compromise that pays heed to ever fluctuating valuations of the marketplace. Maybe the most effective action for you today is a thought, a realization.
Every act of freedom begins with a thought - an opening in the given patterns, then a hint of movement, direction, intuition just your own giving shape to a feeling-idea realizing itself in a word, a phrase, a fresh start.
Poetic chirp.
Syncopations of a liberated mind, free spirit. Available to anybody.
Whether art or activism, the action is purposeful (the real antithesis here is purposelessness). Vocation or apathy.
Unless, there’s a basic dichotomy of perception: is the world upside down or is the world just spinning around?
Jimmy Cliff in lyric freedom covering a Joe Higgs original
Apropos of purpose, individual commitment…
I wanted to touch upon congressman Jamie Raskin, who led the second impeachment trial and who I’d encountered close up on Zoom in the year before as a member of the advocacy team for Rosa Gutiérrez Lopez, then in sanctuary at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda. Doña Rosa herself embodies the truly personal fight for freedom, for herself and her family.
I’ll save going deeper into all that for a follow-up post later this week. Postponement, a tiny act of - writing - freedom. Please expect a celebration of two invincible spirits. Simultaneously, for ongoing and incoming readers (a readership clarifying in my awareness as a cohort of intellects and artists, and those engaged in public health or socially conscious careers, or who carry a historic sense into contemporaneity), I’m interested in digging into and honoring how personal a matter it is - and how valid it is in its variability - to rouse in ourselves the energy and dedication to engage best efforts towards… well, you answer what.
I’ll go ahead and mention here one of the reunions I’ve had the great benefit of enjoying, thanks to this platform (relevant to the topic of “Art and Activism”). I’m excited by quite a number of reconnections coming out of this project, often through comments on the Substack site or through private email replies. Dennis Leroy Kangalee reached his hand out through both, including offering a black comedy/black comic curriculum in response to my announcement post for The Killing Joke (click to see his comments à la “The trickster: any conscious and intelligent Black person in America. Period. (Ha!)”); my thorough engagment with his curriculum will be the subject of another entry down the line. At last, last week, we had to talk. I hadn’t heard his voice since 2014 or 2015, our crossed paths in theater work. Most refreshing was the exuberance and shock rekindled in noticing the gap, all that’s happened in the time that’s passed - how shocking and weird things have become since Trump and, then, the pandemic. Companions along the way experience with you the grinding down step-by-step, the numbness, togetherness in getting inured, slow-boiling frogs. Bracing good cold water to feel once again the strangeness of all that’s happened. To feel shuddery, to feel that shock. The world is weird! The world is indeed upside down!
You can hear his rich, resonant voice here: Visual Liberation podcast
Kangalee - actor, poet, playwright, filmmaker, and social critique critic of cinema - demands of art acts of freedom. His full-length 2001 feature As An Act of Protest made him a Hollywood outlaw. He survives wise to the ways of sellout bribery. Affirms his voice and vision as activism par excellence - like every rebel artist’s noble clinging to integrity, the one true power. Here are some quotes from the seminar he’s currently presenting at high schools around New York, Visual Liberation: Decolonizing the Gaze.
I want to make it clear it is the Artist’s task to bring up the vision, not an answer. Problem solving is the Activist’s domain.
The "protest artist" is like the ice upon a body of water; it’s the frozen lake - enabling the Activists (realizers of the vision) to carry themselves OVER the water to the other side…
Interesting that he uses ice imagery…
Art or Activism, each has its purpose, each is to its purpose.
You to yours, whatever it is, take care to shore up the source of your real strength. Your opinions, really, are worth two cents. Test your thought for gold. Acquiescence and conformism only add to the forces that be (admittedly, there can be a right side for such, and you must take sides for justice, but then there intrudes that polarity between personal discernment and the party line). For no cause allow the subjection of your radical subjectivity. Your unique purpose and your own true calling (vocation = calling) is your true force.
The world is weird. In an upside-down, bizarre, unsettling sense, yes - but also weird in an ancient, uncanny, magickal subversion of the given. That Old English weird, wheel of fortune etymology in wyrd wording, for otherworldly intervention, eerie twists of fate, “having the power to control destiny” - anything can happen. Still, to this day, anthing can happen.
And that is liberating: a weird, true thought is a decisive act of freedom.
In conclusion, I declare ICE must be abolished.