My friend and colleague, Mary Fillmore, An Address in Amsterdam, considering why she was continuing to write about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam and the many forms of resistance that had existed there, said that while she understood she would probably not change the minds of those who support the administration’s actions, she could encourage those who do understand how critical these times are to resist, to stand up.
This reminded me of Dan Berrigan’s essential statement when so many of us were protesting the Vietnam war until eventually it was brought to an end, “Don’t just do something -- Stand there.”
We are, once again, being called to stand there. In the last days, Donald Trump has done everything he can to incite activity to which he can respond by militarizing and controlling this country. Over the last almost 6 months his actions have been increasingly called, autocratic, dictatorial, fascistic and even Hitlerian.
One action after another by the President resembles Hitler’s activity in 1933 as Timothy W. Rybeck wrote in the Atlantic, January 2025, “Hitler dismantled the democracy in 53 days.” From his first days, this President has been governing by fiat, by executive orders, through rulings which like Hitler’s, systematically disables and dismantles this countries democratic structures and processes.
It took twelve years and global action to end Hitler’s rule. We don’t want our situation to escalate as Germany’s did. We don’t want to wait so long for the restoration of our freedoms. I was in the GDR in 1989, having passed through Checkpoint Charlie in order to be able to visit Ravensbruck in East Germany and take a train to Poland to make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Berkinau and eight other Death Camps. I didn’t know in May 1989 that the Wall would come down within months as the countries in the Soviet Bloc were liberated. But the GDR had ruled oppressively from 1961 to 1989. We don’t want to wait that long for our freedoms to be restored.
For the last days, Los Angeles and now the entire country have been protesting the flagrant, brutal, illegal actions of ICE who wants a free hand to terrorize, arrest, detain, deport, without due process, hundreds of thousands of hard working, mostly dark skinned person with a Latino cast. people upon whom we depend for most of our necessary labor, including food production, hospital services, construction, day laboring, etc. This is a reign of terror in the way the President bullies and terrorize anyone who might oppose him. But it isn’t ICE, really, who is doing this. It is the President. To support and ‘protect ICE’ the President has federalized the National Guard in flagrant opposition to the will of the Governor of California and is bringing 700 marines into Los Angeles. Even though they are not authorized to fight against their own people, they will be be given the authority to detain protesters. All of this against the will of the Governor, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, all of whom have jurisdiction and against the will of the great majority of Californians.
Over last twenty years, I have been able to support the grassroots peace building organization everyday gandhis, first imagined by Cynthia Travis, with Liberian peace builder, trauma specialist Bill Saa. Many of the current leaders are ex-child soldiers. I have heard them speak of the moment they were taken into the rebel camp, or the militia, or a gang, or even the then Liberian President’s army. Their initiation as child soldiers was to kill a member of their family, or their best friend, or a pregnant woman they knew, or a respected Elder. And if they didn’t, then the gun would pass immediately to the person next to them or one who knew them well and who would be required to kill them on the spot. What happens to the soul of those who are intimidated in that way?
There is another accompanying story to this one. One of the original ex-child soldiers graduated from medical school yesterday, June 11, 2025. He asked Travis to bank the money it would have cost to come to Gambia to witness his graduation. “We will use it to build a medical/Indigenous clinic here in Voinjama, Liberia,” he said.
Voinjama, during the brutal civil was considered the most dangerous place on Earth. The first action of the nascent everyday gandhis was to sponsor a mourning feast so that the dead, who could not have been properly buried during the war, could be crossed. Just as the war weary women of Liberia rose up in unexpected numbers, and unexpected relationships, the former ‘enemies’ gathering together Christians, Muslims, Traditionalists to literally take the guns away from their fathers, sons, brothers, uncles to such an extent that they brought down the brutal government of Charles Taylor, so did a thousand people, who had been warring with each other, gather for a Mourning Feast where the ceremony requires them to eat together from a common bowl without being enemies, Muslims, Christians, and Traditionalists of the many tribes and languages of Liberia.
On the one hand, we may not be able to persuade those who do not recognize the violations occurring to Democracy, and on the other hand we may in time find the ways to transform so as to be in relationship with each other and with the land as the times require. And so we speak out and we stand up and we stand there.
I look at the weapons and uniforms of those in the military and the police force and ICE. What happens to their souls when they are required to act against their families, their kin, their people? For we are their people and so they are ours. I believe we are also called to stand up on behalf of these ones who, surely like so many from the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, will surely suffer extreme cases of PTSD from the requirement to act against their soul knowledge, against what is legal, ethical and kind.
In the face of such disruptions as are already occurring or to augment them, the President has planned an event which he hopes will overwhelm, intimidate and subdue the citizens of our country and the nations of the world, North Korean style, through a vulgar military display, expected to cost $45 million. It is scheduled for Saturday June 14th, his birthday. Accordingly and inevitably, over 1500 No Kings rallies are already planned in response to the parade.
You know all this. Why am I repeating it? Because writers have to speak out. It is our sacred responsibility. And in alliance with the writers, all of us need to stand up. Because the task of the writer is to meet the times with words, to break the silence that fear imposes, it is all of our responsibility to stand up together, peaceably to break the larger silence that the administration wants to impose.
Therefore, it is simple. We speak out and we stand up. Speak out and stand up. And thereby, we protect the life of the community, the people, the nation, the natural world, the wild, Earth and the future. Speak out and Stand up and Stand there.
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On June 22, 2025 Deena will present at Uprising Together to explore how to meet the most difficult times with wisdom, integrity, and heart. Reflecting on extinction, climate dissolution, and rising fascism, she will share insights on how we can respond with ethical action and vision. Want to join in person or online? Register here.
I have been freely offering my writing to the community for 60 years and posting essays on Substack since January 2022. If you can support the work with a paid subscription or an intermittent donation and / or recommend it to your friends and colleagues, it will be greatly appreciated. (It helps the work circulate if you share or leave a comment and check ‘like,’ when you do.)
Thank you Deena for writing the words that embolden us to stand. Together.
That this is a repeat of my family’s WW 2 exp except on a grotesque scale teaches me ironically to not fall victim to lies and to know precisely what the lies and distortions are and how they emerge. It helps in anticipating what’s going to happen next. Yes it’s a showing up in any way individually it suits us as displayed in the creativity of the streets here where I live which is not far from the action. There’s a lot of singing of Stand by me, dancing, drumming, artwork graffiti, all spontaneously erupting. And there are some who decry the lack of leaders of the stature of mostly Black leaders of years ago but it’s harder to decapitate the diverse threads that makes us stronger. I see POC getting bolder and smarter and many 20 year olds like on YouTube are so sophisticated and actually make me believe that everything my generation did is not for nothing but actually has helped them to multiply. They are the children of the generation that came of age on 9/11. Trump and Co are incapable of truly leading, let alone rule, anyone. Their hatred of the POC is who they are and I like to believe that the energy of Lamar and his incredible stand - in They not like us, that enables us to disconnect from ideology that runs counter in any way to who we are. The right has no idea what they’re giving birth to.