Several artists, musicians, actors, writers, offered their testimony in an event in Topanga Canyon, California, in alliance with the nationwide movement, FALL OF FREEDOM, over 700 artistic events as of 11/21/2025
These are my opening remarks: When I read that the artist Dred Scott and the playwright Lynn Notage were initiating Fall of Freedom, I remembered initiating the poetry readings accompanying Angry Arts which closed down the art galleries in 1966 to protest the Vietnam War and how important it had been then to say NO to government policies. But despite the extreme tensions of the anti-war movement, we did not imagine then that we would end up where we are at this time in this country.
I responded immediately because my latest book, The Story That Must Not Be Told, has just been published, and when I read the intentions of Fall of Freedom, I felt great camaraderie and also was aware it was 60 years since Angry Arts and 90 years since the beginning of the Holocaust and two years since the massacre in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people, and that it is heresy to say those last words and the President has called for the execution of members of congress for reminding the military they have the right if not the obligation to refuse illegal orders. And immediately, I remembered the fear that coursed through me as I was writing the book which I had no choice but to write because it is now my turn, as an elder, to stand up and say No as our ancestors have done for countless centuries.
A few years ago, a man contacted me from Germany as he was investigating the suicide death of his sister 50 years ago who had been a student of mine at the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman’s Building. For those 50 years he had been assuming, as did his family and community, that her suicide had been the result of a mother with a mean tongue and also her artistic disappointment. But within 2 hours, it was clear to me that she committed suicide in response to her grandparents ownership of a military ship building and aircraft company called Blohm and Voss the largest in Hitler’s Germany, one, which I quickly learned, had had a slave labor camp in 1944. He asked me to write the book and, again, I could not refuse although it required me to note the terrible parallel between the rise of Hitlerism in 1933 and the rise of Trumpism in 2025. The book, as if written by the Ina Andreae herself, as a Ghost, began to chronicle the relationship between events 92 years apart revealing the probability that Trump is following the Nazi playbook, blow by blow against newspapers, universities, jurists, non-Aryan, that is non-white people, and creating the equivalent of a Brown shirts militia. Writing these words in the book, and speaking them now, is of course exceedingly difficult, but their reality is why we are here. History teaches us the necessity of resistance. The Vietnam war ended in part because of the anti-war movement. And so, this is why so many artists, 700 events around the country, are standing behind these words which you can read on the Fall of Freedom website:
*** Mission
Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized. Institutions and media have been recast as mouthpieces of propaganda.
This is a nationwide wave of creative resistance
Art matters. Artists are a threat to American fascism.
*** What’s at Stake
Due process gutted. Universities threatened and defunded. Students kidnapped. Migrants deported. Troops deployed. Racism rampant. Cruelty celebrated. Political leaders arrested. Citizenship stripped. Health care shredded. Women’s rights rescinded. Wealth concentrated. Free speech eliminated. Genocide normalized. Science undermined. Arts assaulted. Journalism targeted. Departments shuttered. Grants rescinded. Trans banned. Lawyers capitulating. Coup makers pardoned. Budgets slashed. Abortion outlawed. Courts stacked. Boards replaced. Police unleashed. Nazis emboldened. Bombs dropped.
This is why we must resist.
***
When I wrote to the other artists here and asked them to join me, they all said Yes immediately as did Gio when I asked if she would host us. And thank you also, members of the audience, for being here and listening. Simply sitting in this room is an important act of alliance with freedom.
***
These are the poems I read.
THE LAST WORD
I
There will come a time
when a last word will be spoken
in this language. Afterwards
a great sigh will emanate from the trees.
They will begin to whisper among themselves
the sounds of courage and a wind will come
out of them sweeter than air.
In the silent place that feared the axe
a secret hollow will express the breath
they didn’t dare reveal. So many years
hiding the truth. The missing songs
of birds will emerge from the grasses
and the peoples who knew how to sing so
will rise up brown as the earth. Sometimes
the women and the cattle and the soil
share the same hues or the same timbre of praise.
Then there are the greens that repeat themselves
only in eyes and those who carried the leaves
in their vision, carry what prevails
when the last word has been spoken
and the heavens open up in unimpeded light.
The rush of blue then between sky and water
will be a waterfall of music and we
will not miss the bloody chatter that razed
everything to the ground, but will sing
the yellow pollen and the golden sap
in the dark colors of stones shining
in riverbeds.
What will you give up?
the Spirit asks.
I certainly do not need the last word,
I say.
I certainly do not need the last word.
Let it be spoken quickly and
be done with, so we can be still.
***
THE LAST WORD
II
There will come the time
before the last word will be spoken,
when the dead will listen
to learn what their fate will be,
what destiny the last word will fulfill,
and every word that ever was spoken
in that langue will be gathered
into one.
The harsh judgment of chance and
circumstance will be rendered
as the entire canon will be weighed
against the skin of sheep
and the bodies of trees.
Each word against each life
without pity. And everyone
who had ever spoken
will have to come forth
and claim their words
and what became of them,
how they served the living
and how they served the dead.
One way or another, whether
“Praise,” or “Damnation,”
nothing will be redeemed
and the great prison house
of language will fall,
and bury the last speaker
for there will be no one left
to do it in the mother tongue
to which she was born,
the one that held and rocked her
in its melodies and rhythms
its beauty and cruelty.
All words will go, as empires must,
into dust. This has been written so many times,
but we never believe we will die out,
die out by our own hands,
and by our own words,
by what we have spoken
by what we have sworn.
***
from RUIN AND BEAUTY THE END
A last poem on behalf of ruin and beauty. A last poem hovering somewhere near, alongside everything that needs to be said now, in this time.
In a clay bowl filled with white milk, we washed the dark feet of a soldier who had eaten human hearts. Another woman came and then another, washing, washing. Such forgiveness, acts of utter hopelessness and impossible hope. Forgiveness required that we sharpen knives until nothing could resist us, so we could sever the past from the future, for him and for us. He slashed and we slashed. The milk roiled in the earthen pot. Milk so white, pressed out of a living creature, milk I know because I nursed my sons, swirling about my burning hands. I searched to find all the love within me though the general had devoured the source of love so many times. He had assumed love would disappear from our planet forever; how else could he survive? When we were finished, the milk was so white it could have blinded us. Some deaths cannot be redeemed without acts of utter desperation.
Ruin, you see, is not the end of life despite museums of crumbling cornices and corner stones. Ruin is unremitting beauty flinging us to the ground. Ruin is a supernova exploding, an old one turning in on itself and becoming, in that moment, as much light as will blaze from the sun in the next ten billion years. Ruin is that gamma moment pouring out into the universe now.
Ruin and beauty:
Despair not, there will be a future;
There will be a future before
Or after we die.
***
BLACK AS A CROW
It could not bring me to believe in death.
Feathers so radiant with light
could only be the night sky,
could only be eternity.
A stream of blood from its yellow beak
drying on the pavement.
The roots of the tree
were not the right burial ground,
a neighbor’s cat was wandering
up and down the entrance
to the shul among the olive trees,
and though the ravens had fed Elijah,
I could not bring the one,
who had received the gift of dark from Apollo,
to Kol Nidre, the Hebrew prayer for the dead.
We spoke, Crow, he and I, as I drove us home,
of what concerns all sentient beings,
of all the vehicles that kill.
This morning, I laid him on the hill
At the feet of Avalokitesvara
Infinite compassion.
I stroked his feathers. I wanted
the dark light on my hands.
I did not take a wing or a single feather
though I know the animals
will dismember him,
despite his shroud
of pine needles and tobacco.
Here is my prayer:
Do not forgive us our transgressions.
Let the black light
that surrounds you
meet the ancient fire
in the core of the earth,
for the marriage of prophecy
and possibility. Sunlight
inherent in your beak,
speak to us.
Death,
Be so tender with me
When you lay my body down.
***
A GREATER SILENCE
Soon, there will be
a greater silence
then there is now.
I do not want
to be here
alone.
When the last tree falls
may I be under it.
May the last tree
take me down.
***
OH GREAT SPIRIT
In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.
Who have taught us. Who have guided us. Who have sustained us. Who have healed us.
Please heal the animals.
In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.
Whom we have slaughtered. Whom we have feared. Whom we have caged. Whom we have persecuted. Whom we have slandered. Whom we have cursed. Whom we have tortured.
Protect the animals.
In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.
Whose habitat we have stolen. Whose territory we have plundered. Whose feeding grounds we have paved and netted. Whose domain we have poisoned. Whose food we have eaten. Whose young we have killed. Whose lives and ways of life we threaten.
Restore the animals.
In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.
Forgive us. Have mercy. May the animals return. Not as a resurrection but as living beings. Here. On earth. On this earth that is also theirs.
Oh Great Spirit. Heal the animals. Protect the animals. Restore the animals.
Our lives will also be healed. Our souls will be protected. Our spirits will be restored.
Oh spirit of Raven. Oh Spirit of Wolf. Oh Spirit of Whale. Oh Spirit of Elephant. Oh Spirit of Snake.
Teach us, again, how to live.
***
Thank you for resisting fascism too.
