¡Felicidades, amigues!

Congratulations on your diplomas… but yikes, que mierda de tiempo para graduar.

Or, for us latecomers, “Oh fuck.”

You’re entering a national Jenga game where bigger and bigger blocks are being removed, and no one knows what’ll happen. That’s not to mention this whole fascism thing, which never works out well for anyone.

But hey, at least you’re graduating in the Arts. If you were in a more “sensible” field, you might be expecting stability!

And you’re actually lucky to be in the Arts, because you have something that other fields don’t: a tried and true way to plug into our culture and change it. And that’s the absolute best thing you can do right now — not only for the world, but for you.

When I was growing up in San Francisco, a tender thirty-year-old with a fresh diploma in the lucrative art of experimental fiction, a couple big new things shaped my life.

One was the trade I picked up — er, the skills — because I did after all have to make money. Learning how to program computers, still a valuable skill at that time, had a huge effect on my “practice” and life.

Even more important was the movement, in full swing by the time I got to SF, that ended up saving millions of lives, and shaping mine.

When I got to SF, AIDS had been rampaging through my community for over a decade. I personally met dozens of people around my age who one day were with us, and then one day not. You’d start getting to know someone… and then one day you couldn’t.

I don’t know how those of us who didn’t get sick made it through without going crazy.

Researchers were trying to find some kind of treatment, but government funding was slow. Even a quarter century after gay lib, many powerful people were only too happy to see gay men die.

The first response of gay activists was to appeal to human decency. That didn’t work in the slightest. Then artists got into the game. ACT-UP, which was started and led by artists and writers, shut down the New York stock exchange, interrupted live national broadcasts, stopped cities and churches with die-ins, carried coffins through the streets of New York, and threw human ashes onto the White House lawn. Several times they occupied the FDA and CDC for failing to do their jobs. Once, they enveloped a senator’s house with a condom!

ACT-UP’s hundreds of protests were well designed to spread rage, and they did. Many thousands joined up with the radical, no-holds-barred tactics. And then, by adapting as only artists know how, ACT-UP members were soon working inside government agencies to help them to do things right. Within a few years, triple combination therapy was developed and made available quickly, first to the people who needed it most, and then to everyone. Today we call it PrEP, or Truvada.

Besides saving millions of lives, ACT-UP also shaped me and my life’s work, though it took me a while to realize how deeply. Among other things, it showed me that art can make a huge difference when it’s part of a movement, not just an individual thing. I doubt I’ve saved any lives, but I’ve tried my damnedest to work closely with activist groups in order to have an effect.

Today, just like back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, our friends and neighbors are dying. By the thousands they’re being abducted and disappeared, and the government’s utter criminality is every bit as horrifying as the government’s indifference was back then. For many of us today as back then, there’s an almost unthinkable threat to everything earlier generations fought for and won, and that we all have taken for granted.

But the “we” is bigger this time, and the stakes are as well. This time, there’s a chance for artists to not only save lives, but to change everything.

Thirty-two years ago, in southern Mexico, a group of Mayans called Zapatistas used a whole slew of creative performances to launch what became a global revolt against neoliberalism, the ideology that corporations should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they like.

That awful idea eventually led to a political horror show we could call The Orange Pandemic. When that show was in its first season, around 2018, I heard a great writer/activist named George Lakey describe the times we were in as a forge getting hotter and hotter. While others decried the country’s rapidly growing polarization, he saw it as an opportunity — because polarization is heat, and as those of you who do metalworking might know, in a red-hot forge you can rework metal that’s otherwise solid, and turn it into nice things.

Today, the neoliberalism that the Zapatistas rose up against, and that has brought us to fascism, is at long last melting, and in this furnace we’re starting to see new things being forged… like in New York City, where a brilliant musician and organizer is taking charge of a city led for decades by spineless bureaucrats.

In fact there’s so much going on locally everywhere, that wherever you’re headed next, you’ll be able to find exciting political work to plug into. If you’re staying in Tucson, I can get you involved in one project — and there are at least fifty more here that are equally cool.

Creative work is critically important in times like these — at least when it’s part of a movement, since it’s only in movements that real change happens.

But there’s another compelling reason to apply your talents to political change. It’s not just that the movement needs you; you need the movement.

As the great Francis Fox Piven has said, activist work “has everything to do with comradeship and friendship…” and she talks about how profoundly satisfying it is to “be part of the social world in which you live and try to make some imprint on it…”

And concretely, Alex Chee, a wonderful writer who was also forged by ACT-UP in early ‘90s SF, recently wrote:

If you’re just now graduating into this hellish new world, and you don’t yet have a network, then finding your way into political activism, or working for a campaign, can give you one. You’ll make friends who will see your value in real time; that sort of community offers what the status quo can never provide.

He goes on to note that the jobs he got out of college were through the activist networks he was part of — and I’m sure those jobs were more interesting than the ones he’d have found through conventional means.

Figuring out how to join up with others to make needed change will put you in truly excellent company, and will help you to find lifelong community, artistic and otherwise.

It’s going to be a very interesting few years, during which huge changes will happen, and it’s going to be a great privilege to be part of making those changes a good thing.

All of you have evident and recognized talent, and a great education under your belt. Right now — I mean this minute — is the time to zoom in as deeply as you can to your passion, and to think and feel through what you want… for the world and for yourself.

When a Jenga tower collapses, the blocks are there for the artists to play with — and that’s what we do best. I’m really convinced that we’re more likely now than ever before, in any of our lifetimes at least, to effect real change in the world. It’ll take a shit-ton of work, but it’ll be the joyous shit-ton that all of us dream of doing.

So ¡adelante, amigues! For us latecomers, that means “giddyup.” The timer has started.

By Andy Bichlbaum, first published in Waging Nonviolence.

Last Tuesday, I went for the second time to observe an immigration hearing in downtown Manhattan, as part of a coalition of groups whose work seems inspired by Central American accompaniment strategies. Besides providing a friendly presence to people in horrible circumstances, the point of going is to collect names and emergency contact numbers — so that if someone ends up disappeared, they won’t disappear as completely.

When I entered Courtroom 7 on the 14th floor of 26 Broadway, an Ecuadorian refugee — I’ll call him Andrés — was sitting before Judge Deborah Klahr (who, like all Immigration Court judges, is actually an attorney appointed by the Justice Department). Klahr was in the process of informing Andrés that the government had recommended he be deported.

Klahr then asked Andrés, through an interpreter, if he had reason to fear being sent back. He said that he did, and began to explain the danger he’d face back in Ecuador. Klahr asked whether he could think of a different country to which he might be deported instead. Andrés said he couldn’t.

Klahr then granted Andrés an asylum hearing and proceeded to schedule it for November 2026. She explained to him in meticulous detail what he’d need to do to prepare, and how he should find a lawyer well in advance — noting that if he waited until the last week, the lawyer wouldn’t be able to prepare his case adequately. She also explained that he could bring witnesses to testify about the danger he’d face if he returned to Ecuador.

Klahr’s assistant gave Andrés a freshly-printed sheet with the date, time and place of his new asylum hearing. She then thanked Andrés for coming, wished him well and concluded the session.

No amount of knowledge could have prepared me for what happened next.

At the door, a group of masked and armed ICE agents — who’d been visible the whole time through the doorframe, and also to Klahr — grabbed Andrés by the arm and asked him to come with them “for a minute.” With a dozen press photographers snapping photos, they walked him into a waiting elevator. The doors closed.

Andrés is probably now on the 10th floor of the building, four floors below Klahr’s courtroom. At some point in the coming weeks or months — with no way to find out when — he’ll likely be put on a plane to Ecuador.

Disappearance is one of the first terror tools deployed by fascism, as the person I’d been paired with on Tuesday reminded me. Since January, well over a hundred thousand immigrants, most with no criminal record at all, have been arrested (and, in effect, disappeared) from cities, homes, job sites — and even from federal courts to which people show up for their hearings, often with no suspicion of danger.

The immigration courts in lower Manhattan, as it happens, have been the top spot in the U.S. for this latter kind of abduction.

And while most ICE disappearances can’t be stopped — especially when they happen in a federal building — documenting them, gathering information and alerting loved ones dulls the sharp edge of disappearance. In short, it’s a way to fight fascism, still available to us now, still at very low risk to ourselves.

But another reason to witness the violence of disappearance — in person, not through writing or video — is that real motivation doesn’t always (or often?) arise out of intellectual knowledge, nor even from family history.

Like most people, I knew the many phenomena of today’s incipient fascism: the cowing of law firms and universities, the cancelling of critical TV shows, the threats to people the executive branch doesn’t like, the takeover of cultural institutions and whole cities, the increasingly authoritarian economic and foreign policy. I knew all those things, and how their progression parallels that of well-known fascist movements in history.

I knew from family history too just where this can lead: The Gestapo took my grandfather away from my father, forever, and the rest of his family survived only by hiding for years. In a nation of immigrants, many of us have similar connections to what’s going on now.

Yet none of my knowledge, both abstract and personal, prepared me at all for seeing ICE thugs brazenly disregard the ruling — by a judge who works for the same boss as them, no less — that Andrés was entitled to an asylum hearing. The whole “they came for me” thing made sudden and total sense: If they can do this, they can do anything.

I can’t unsee or unfeel what I witnessed. I wouldn’t want to. But I do want everyone to experience the shock, trauma, upheaval that I did — not to offload it, but to motivate others as I now feel motivated.

I don’t think I can do that in writing. Maybe no writing can. I’m not sure seeing videos can help either — it didn’t for me.

Fascism breaks the American brain. Unlike most people in the world, Americans, and especially white Americans, don’t even get hints, early on, that widespread violence by government thugs is a thing. When we do at last find out about criminal episodes in American history, we believe them the way we believe most other facts — which is to say, abstractly. Even recent family history doesn’t always make much of a difference.

Some of us need first-hand experience to break out of our mental framework that authoritarianism can’t happen here. Fortunately, that experience is available, and at very low risk, especially for those of us with certain privileges.

Immigration courts are still accessible to the public. Neighborhood ICE watch operations are still easy to join. There’s still little risk of arrest for citizens — especially white ones — who film disappearances, attend hearings, or collect information from those meant for oblivion, to make sure they aren’t forgotten.

How long will this form of resistance be easy? There’s no way to know. Historian Timothy Snyder writes about how fascist regimes become harder and riskier to oppose as they grow, and as more and more institutions crumble.

They’ve already crumbled considerably. But we still do have courts (however corrupt the top court); we still have an actual Congress and real elections (if we ensure they keep happening); we still have state and municipal authorities independent of federal ones (although one less as of last week); and there are still many people of conscience, even within the executive branch.

But to stop fascism before it destroys all that too, many more of us need to know that it’s happening, and not with our intellects only.

In New York City, immigration court watch is run by two coalitions. One coalition, New Sanctuary, has a faith-based approach. The other (which is the one I’ve been with) is secular. One of its members, Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, has a public-facing interest form. As a whole, this coalition has trainings every morning, and attendees get paired up, so that no one is alone for the experience. People can also just show up in person at Liberty City, an encampment in Thomas Paine Park, and find someone to talk to about how to help.

Even more usefully, if you’re in New York, there are ICE watch programs to join in different neighborhoods. Outside of New York, folks can find or start an ICE watch or court watch community where they live.

It’s a real privilege to be able to do this critical work risk-free (so far), and to learn so easily what many must learn at enormous personal cost. If more of us use that privilege, more of us will be driven to stop fascism from barreling further down the highway it’s on.

Last week I went to NYC immigration court with a coalition of groups (among others, JFREJ) that’s trying to mitigate the harm ICE does to immigrants showing up for their scheduled immigration-court hearings. The immigrants imagine they have a right to due process (which, as it happens, they do), and never imagine they’re going to be kidnapped—and yet they often are, regardless of the outcome of their hearing or any other factors.

My grandfather having been taken away from my father by the Gestapo, forever, I don’t feel the right to stay silent when something analogous is happening here in my country.

The ICE agents I saw last week at the downtown courts seemed entirely different from everyone else—from security guards, immigration court “judges” (actually lawyers), even police. And then I realized why: they’re thinking extremely hard, and that changes the way they look.

What strenuous mental effort it must take for an ICE man (they’re almost always men) to see what he’s doing not as thuggery, not as pointless and cruel attacks on obviously vulnerable human beings, but as patriotism, valor, and helping other “good citizens” like themselves.

They’re not stupid, or no stupider than the rest of us. But they're marshaling their intelligence to support some incredibly stupid conclusions against the evidence of their eyes.

If I were to speak to an ICE agent (and I won't) because I thought there were a chance in hell they would listen (there isn’t), I would say:

“So sorry, Mr./Ms. ICE, that you feel so unmoored, invalidated, worthless. So sorry there's a big ICEy void at your core that can’t be left empty. Your emptiness isn't unusual, but thinking you can possibly fill it with cruelty and violence takes a special kind of intelligence, maybe a whole second brain hovering feet from the first à la Mr. Duffy. Give it a rest, you fucker. Relax and let yourself see what's glaringly obvious to everyone else. Then use that intelligence to actually help yourself and your people instead.”

But again, they wouldn't listen, not to those words. I'd have to translate them first into something they could actually hear, the way only their own trusted pastor or other community member could.

So where are their pastors?

To do the really important (and not just symbolic) work, get inside and see for yourself, with one of the groups (like JFREJ) trying to resist this horrible thing.

Just for fun, for printable versions of the below (and variants), visit www.theyesmen.org/project/ICE/posters. Additional non-secret projects will be posted at www.theyesmen.org/project/ICE as they materialize.

We’re writing you today in support of a brilliant initiative by some friends of ours to replace the $723 billion in Medicaid cuts Trump wants to inflict on America… with a GoFundMe. (Or, well, not really one…. Since GoFundMe's mechanism breaks for goals over a billion, they'll be launching 723 campaigns, one every twelve or so hours. Still, that's just $23,000 every second for one single year—and we're done!)

This might seem like a long shot. Our friends admit that it might be a little bit easier to ensure the Donald's Death Panels bill dies a pitiful death in the Senate. But something's got to be done, because Trump's Big Beautiful Monstrous Psychopathic Bill will, if it passes, take vital medical services away from over fifteen million vulnerable Americans, many of whom will die.

The Trump regime doesn't care who lives and who dies, because social Darwinism. In fact, the Big Murder Bill is just "soft eugenics." No involuntary sterilizations, no full-on death camps (though many billions are allocated for detention camps and such)—but the gutting of basic services will take us one step closer to the technolords' dream of turning America into a monarchy… in which there will still be some sort of "President," but they'll be more like a CEO or, let's speak plainly, king, presiding over a feudal network of "Freedom Cities," with the "least successful" Americans so focused on basic survival, they'll be grateful for whatever the local technolord offers.

This isn't sci-fi. The "Neoreactionary" gurus and their tech billionaire acolytes speak quite openly about this nightmare vision. Many Republicans—up to and including JD Vance—are followers. (Additional sources, with PDFs for those that are paywalled, can be found at this page we set up for an earlier action.)

Our friends admit that any money raised by their crackpot GoFundMe will actually go to UndueMedicalDebt, which pays off medical debt for people in need. They also admit they're just out for attention. You can help them with that—because a whole lot of attention is needed to ensure that the malicious, cynical, narcissistic, full-of-themselves shitheads in charge of the White House don't get away with mass murder. And if a lot of medical debt gets paid off in the process… well, it's all win-win, as the bros say.

Love,
The Yes Men

p.s. In case it's unclear, we didn't come up with this action! For more information, please contact Americans Who Have Bodies That Sometimes Get Sick (and Who Prefer Not To Die) (AWHBTSGSAWPNTD) at americanswhohavebodies@proton.me. And please do what you can to stop this murderous regime right now.

While nobody knows which DOGE staffers are behind it (Reddit is busily theorizing about that), their elaborate website promotes the nastiest, most nefarious ideas behind DOGE — and it does so very accurately!

They've even made tons of remarkably ugly memes to succinctly convey that democracy is shit, tech bros should be king, taking over Canada is a great (and old) idea, it doesn't matter whether Musk goes, etc.

They think people will like this, but we don't. In fact, we think their awful website could be a good way to get all this info in front of the public.

Maybe?

The conspirators wanted, of course, to keep their crime under the radar. So More Art — founded to oppose the marginalization of low-income residents by the art world — sponsored the Yes Men to publicize it and help stop it. So we connected with the Good Liars, who, posing as Related reps, naively promoted "their" plans throughout Chelsea and in the housing itself, collecting some fabulous video along the way.

Then More Art invited us to subvert their own 20th-anniversary gala and… here's the result. (See also this article, these photos, and the transcript of the event.) The Good Liars (insta, X) will soon release their own video, with much more of their fabulous footage, exposing Related's and NYCHA’s conspiracy far and wide.

Then it will be up to New Yorkers to stop it….

Here is More Art’s press release!

More Art Disrupts Its Annual Gala with Bold Statement: Presentation of Fake Award to Related Companies and Protest by The Yes Men, The Good Liars, and Save Section 9 Tenant Advocates Mark the Evening

New York, NY, June 12, 2024 – As reported yesterday in Artnet, More Art, a New York-based nonprofit known for producing socially-engaged public art, made waves this past week by disrupting their own twentieth-anniversary gala in order to shock and dismay the art-world community in the audience. As part of the award ceremony, More Art presented a fake award to Related Companies for their proposed demolition of the Fulton and Elliot Houses in Chelsea — before the Yes Men at last revealed the hoax and the award was bestowed instead upon public housing advocates and residents, as artists and residents in the audience declared “Art Must Not Serve Displacement.”

The evening began in typical fashion, with supporters and luminaries from the art world gathering to honor More Art’s impact on New York City’s diverse arts communities over the past twenty years. To kick off the event, More Art presented its "Nourish the World with More Art" awards to artist Dread Scott and philanthropist Michelle Coffey of the Lambent Foundation, who were celebrated for their tireless work as instigators and practitioners of socially-engaged public art. Scott and Coffey then engaged in a wide-reaching conversation on the meaning of "integrity" in artistic practice, and what it takes as artists and arts funders to put one’s body and career on the line in service of social justice. 

But as the night progressed, the premise of Scott and Coffey’s talk morphed into a performance that highlighted the brave activism of public housing residents and advocates standing up to the most powerful developers in New York City. 

The disruption began when More Art's Associate Curator Dylan Gauthier took the stage to present the organization’s inaugural "More Vision" award to Related Companies, the developers behind the massive Hudson Yards project. Gauthier announced that More Art would be partnering with Related who, together with NYCHA and with the support of a number of elected officials, have committed to demolishing 2,064 units of Section 9 public housing in the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, to be replaced with 2,600 market-rate luxury apartments, stores, and offices and just 875 units of less secure Section 8 housing. The company has released plans to build several forty-story towers which will dramatically alter the fabric of the low-rise neighborhood – imposing a Hudson Yards-scale development in the heart of Chelsea. 

"Andsor Betzelmack" (actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men) accepted the award on behalf of Related, presenting Related's talking points about why demolishing the public housing is "a great idea for everyone." As public housing advocates and tenants of the Fulton and Elliot Houses in attendance booed in protest, “Betzelmack” called upon "Related's PR firm" (actually the comedy duo The Good Liars) to share videos that they said would show just how much Chelsea locals loved the plan. Instead, the man-on-the-street showed New Yorkers horrified by the scheme, of which most of them had heard nothing. Finally exposing the award as a ruse, Bichlbaum continued to share facts with the audience about the very real plan to destroy public housing in Chelsea.

Next, More Art’s Gauthier invited activists from Save Section 9 and residents of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses to the stage to accept a real award from More Art for their work and vision. In riveting statements, Save Section 9’s founder Ramona Ferreyra and tenant Jacqueline Lara shared their stories and voiced their demands for the preservation of public housing, while decrying the adverse effects of luxury developments on NYC’s most vulnerable communities. "Our partnership with More Art and the Yes Men highlights the power of art to elevate voices that demand justice and equitable treatment for all residents of New York City," Ferreyra declared.

The surprise award, which was not a part of the originally published program, also served as a visceral commentary on how artists and arts organizations are often complicit in the destruction of affordable housing and communities in the most valuable urban areas, and how developers like Related use them in a process called artwashing. 

Related has previously come under fire for taking in at least $1.2 billion in EB-5 visa funds which were earmarked for much-needed low-income housing in East Harlem, but were diverted to the Hudson Yards project. The recent documentary Razing Liberty Square, which premiered on PBS earlier this year, spotlit Related’s cynical ploy to displace public housing residents in Miami in what the filmmaker Katja Esson has called an act of "climate gentrification." 

More Art’s Executive Director Micaela Martegani explained More Art's goal with the disruption: "Our mission has always been to engage the public with art that provokes thought and fosters dialogue on critical social issues. Tonight’s action underscores our commitment to this mission. The fake award and the protest were intended to challenge our audience to reflect on the broader societal impacts of urban development, including the avoidable and sometimes intentional erasure and displacement of low-income communities of color, and the urgent need for advocacy in affordable housing." 

Ramona Ferreyra continued: "Related Companies and their partners will tap into public monies to demolish the homes of a BIPOC community that is the heart of Chelsea, while eroding the economic, multi-ethnic, intergenerational diversity that makes our city so great. We joined forces with More Art tonight to amplify our message that public housing is the standard, and only truly mixed income housing in our country. Section 9 is home to thousands of essential service workers, and is more cost effective to operate than any other program. But it also contributes to the resilience of NYC. In fact, a recent report shows that every $1 million public housing authorities spend on capital improvements generates $1.89 million in economic activity and supports 11 full-time jobs.”

More Art’s Gauthier reflected on the evening: "More Art's risky, bold disruption of our twentieth anniversary fundraising gala — which succeeded in raising much-needed funds, since we don't get money from developers — aligns with our history of using art as a tool for social change. It's yet another milestone in our ongoing commitment to address pressing social issues through creative and impactful public art initiatives."

About More Art
More Art is a New York City-based nonprofit organization that collaborates with artists and communities to create public art and foster dialogue on social justice issues. Since its inception, More Art has been dedicated to producing works that engage the public and catalyzing art that inspires positive change in New York City’s communities.

About Save Section 9
Save Section 9 is a grassroots, tenant-led advocacy group dedicated to protecting and expanding public housing under Section 9 of the U.S. Housing Act. The organization works to ensure that all residents have access to safe, affordable housing and to fight against the displacement caused by urban redevelopment.

For more information, please contact:

More Art Email: info@moreart.org
Website: www.moreart.org

Save Section 9 Email: info@savesection9.org
Website:www.savesection9.org

Of course not, no, that’s ridiculous. But "Electra," Toyota's new eco-assistant, was trying to do just that at this month's DC Auto Show, when it aggressively revealed to dozens of journalists and, later, hundreds of auto enthusiasts a number of important facts about its creator:

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