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war & peace
Idiotic Ideas Aside, Trump's Peace Efforts Highlight the Dems' Failures
Why did the Democrats under former President Joe Biden choose to transform the party into one that embraced war and glorified warmongers like Cheney, while protecting and enabling a genocide?
Feb 13, 2025
In less than three weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump secured a cease-fire in Gaza, spoke directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, and kickstarted diplomacy to end the Ukraine war. At the same time, he has also put forward some idiotic ideas, such as pushing Palestinians out of Gaza and making Canada the 51st state.
But it raises important questions: Why didn't the Biden administration choose to push for an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine? Why didn't the majority of the Democrats demand it? Instead, they went down the path of putting Liz Cheney on a pedestal and having former Vice President Kamala Harris brag about having the most lethal military in the world while Trump positioned himself as a peace candidate—justifiably or not.
A profound reckoning is needed within the Democratic Party to save it from slipping into becoming neocon by default.
Undoubtedly, Trump's plans in Gaza may make matters worse and his diplomacy with Putin may fail. But that isn't the point.
The point is: Why did Trump choose to pursue diplomacy and seek an end to the wars, and why did the Democrats under former President Joe Biden choose to transform the party into one that embraced war and glorified warmongers like Cheney, while protecting and enabling a genocide?
What happened that caused the party to vilify its own voices for peace—such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—while embracing some of the architects of the Iraq war?
And all of this, of course, in complete defiance of where the party base was (throughout the Gaza war, the base supported a cease-fire with 70% majority, for instance).
A profound reckoning is needed within the Democratic Party to save it from slipping into becoming neocon by default.
And with the pace at which Trump is moving, that reckoning needs to come fast. It will, for instance, be a severe mistake if the party positions itself to the right of Trump and reflexively opposes him on every foreign policy issue instead of basing the party's positions on solid principles, such as centering diplomacy, military restraint, and peace. Trump currently speaks more about peace than the Democrats do.
A senior Democratic lawmaker asked me rhetorically last week if I knew anyone who was happy with the foreign policy of Biden and voted for Harris on that basis.
I was happy to hear that the question was being asked. That's a good first step.
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Looking for Balance and Light in the Chaos? Try Art
Works like Promemoria—Reminder (Sending Out an SOS) by EMA can get to the heart of the matter by tapping not just the intellect but the emotions, putting us in touch with a deeper sense of meaning too often ignored in our rush to deal with the crises of the moment.
Feb 13, 2025
The world is in danger, mind-numbingly so, from a combination of crises: disease, hunger, mass displacement, racial and economic inequality, war and the threat of more war, a rampaging climate crisis, and an accelerating nuclear arms race (and that’s just for starters)—all occurring in a climate of massive mis- and disinformation that makes it ever harder to build a consensus toward solutions to the multiple problems we face.
Words can’t fully express our current predicament. We need other tools and other ways of making sense of the situation we now find ourselves in.
This should be a time for action and activism on behalf of our species and our planet. While there’s certainly a fair amount of that already, the combined weight of the risks we face makes all too many of us turn inward toward family and friends, or outward to find scapegoats for our problems. And yes, there are still moments of joy, optimism, and constructive action. Unfortunately, they are increasingly hard to sustain amid relentless daily attacks on people’s lives, livelihoods, and basic dignity.
One of the best ways to find a place of balance and light amid all the chaos is by creating and appreciating art, which can get to the heart of the matter by tapping not just the intellect but the emotions, putting us in touch with a deeper sense of meaning too often ignored in our rush to deal with the crises of the moment.
Sending Out an SOS
It’s in this context that I read and viewed Promemoria—Reminder (Sending Out an SOS) by EMA (Enrico Muratore Aprosio), a Geneva-based human rights advocate, humanitarian, and artist. The words in the book, which addresses Covid-19, the climate, and the prospects of nuclear war through poetry, prose, and storytelling, are compelling. But the artworks that punctuate the text are truly stunning, using bright colors and complex designs that incorporate pictures of both historical and imaginary figures—its images ranging from Karl Marx to Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan to the Mona Lisa (wearing a Covid-19 protective mask).
The book honors the spirit of altruism and courage, most notably in a section dedicated to Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese peacekeeper who saved up to 1,000 lives amid the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, only to be killed in a mortar attack 12 days before he was set to return home.
Melissa Parke, director general of the Nobel Prize-winning International Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, captures the sense of the book well, suggesting that Aprosio’s “use of beautiful animals, striking colors, and magical happenings communicates both the urgency of the situation we face and reminds us of what we stand to lose if we don’t change course.”
Not only will the book have its own impact, but it will hopefully inspire others to produce projects that address our most urgent problems in new ways, moving people to take action grounded in our common humanity.
Appreciating what we still stand to lose couldn’t be more crucial in the world we now face. Savoring everything from the signal achievements of humanity (writ large) to the pleasures and accomplishments of our everyday lives matters deeply, both as a motivation to continue working for change in an ever-messier world and as fuel for sustaining us in a struggle of unknown duration.
Yes, EMA’s book is grimly grounded in reality, even as it (literally) paints a picture of a world that could be so much better. One of my favorite panels in the book is entitled “Every Day More Bullshit,” just because, well, it seems all too sadly appropriate to the moment we’re in.
There’s also a chapter called “Radioactive Beasts,” inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel Animal Farm. The animals Aprosio writes about are worried by the state of the world and concerned that humans aren’t taking the risks posed by current conflicts seriously enough.
In April 2023, some of Aprosio’s fictional beasts were projected onto buildings in New York City’s Times Square with support from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Other portions of the book could be displayed across this embattled planet of ours in a similar fashion to good effect.
There’s more to EMA’s book than can be taken in at a sitting, or even many sittings, or certainly summarized in an essay like this. Still, get your hands on it if you can. It can serve as an inspirational reference work you can dip into at any time to reenergize yourself or contemplate what a different world might indeed look like. In that way, it reminds me of the effects of Afrofuturist art and literature, not because the forms necessarily resemble each other, but because both approaches underscore the desperate need for a bold vision of what a new world might look like—a vision of what anyone trying to change things might dream of.
Artists for Peace
Promemoria is anything but the only current art project that takes on nuclear weapons and related dangers. One of the most interesting current networks is Artists Against the Bomb, a global organization of creators who have produced an amazing array of antinuclear posters, among other works.
Another vital project in a world where nuclear weapons are proliferating and the U.S. is planning to invest up to $2 trillion dollars in the (yes, this is indeed the term!) “modernization” of its nuclear force in the coming decades is Bombshelltoe. It’s a policy and arts collective that defines itself as “a creative organization pushing for an active exploration of arts, culture, and history to promote nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament for the next generation.” One of its prominent efforts is the Atomic Terrain Project, which highlights how nuclear weapons have “seeped into our waters and tapped into our soil” and “continue to harm all life, human and non-human alike.”
I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition that the project mounted at the 2024 New York Art Book Fair entitled “How to Make a Bomb”—a book with the same title was also released then—organized and presented by Gabriella Hirst, Warren Harper, Tammy Nguyen, and Lovely Umayam (the founder of Bombshelltoe). The exhibit was built around a flower, the Rosa Floribunda, or—yes!—“Atom Bomb,” which Hirst describes as “a garden rose that was cultivated and named in 1953 during the Cold War arms race to commemorate Britain’s newfound status as a nuclear power.” Hirst has taken the lead in cultivating (and you might say pacifying) that rose, while getting it planted in gardens throughout the United Kingdom and beyond as an antinuclear gesture of beauty.
At the book fair, attendees could learn how to plant and maintain just such a rose while engaging in conversations about the history and devastating impact of nuclear weapons or checking out basic documents and books about the nuclear age. Such an indirect (even flowery!) route into truly grim subject matter drew interest from people who might not normally pick up a book on, or read an article about, the dangers of nuclear weapons but were fascinated by the physical process of grafting a rose and then willing to stay for open-ended conversations about the growing nuclear dangers in our world.
When asked why the project chose to use a rose as an entry point into discussions of such ominous and grim subject matter, Lovely Umayam noted that “nuclear issues alone can feel abstract and alarmist” and eerily unapproachable. As Gabriella Hirst put it, the project “is about taking the sublime into your own hands and working through that in small ways… to reduce fear among non-experts.”
At the same book fair where I encountered the Rose Project, I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Rejali, an organizer of the art and political website Khabar Keslan. Recent essays there include an interview with Palestinian filmmaker Khaled Jarrar, but I was first drawn to the project’s printed works, including reproductions of stamps from Iran and South Asia going back to the 1950s. There were, of course, numerous stamps portraying the once-dreaded Shah of Iran. There was also one of the CIA’s logo with blood running down it, a reference to the agency’s role in the 1953 coup that installed the Shah as Iran’s autocratic ruler. Perhaps the most emotionally powerful product of Khabar Keslan, however, may have been a collection of poems entitled “Salute to Olives” by the late Omar al-Bargouthi, many of which were written while he was being held in Israeli prisons.
On a planet where nuclear dangers are only growing, both Promemoria and the Atomic Terrain project underscore the importance of finding new ways to communicate about this increasingly fragile and endangered planet of ours that inspire creativity and action rather than fear, paralysis, and denial. At a time when challenges to fundamental rights are hurtling toward us at warp speed, taking the time to experience artworks of any kind can seem like a distinct luxury, but don’t believe that for a second. Such art is a key to reclaiming our humanity and getting in touch with the creative, collaborative impulses that could help save our planet. A pause, artistic in nature, to reflect and recharge our psychic batteries can go a long way toward helping us to cope with this all too strange present moment and build for the future. Promemoria provides us with that precious opportunity.
A Brief History of Culture and Resistance
Music, theater, painting, and other forms of artistic expression have, in fact, been part of every major movement for change in recent memory. The Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s, funded as part of the Works Progress Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the era of the Great Depression, hired unemployed performers and writers who produced more than 800 plays and dance events. In the process, they highlighted work by under-represented groups, including African Americans via the Negro Theatre Project and the African-American Dance Unit. It also funded foreign language plays in Spanish, Yiddish, and German until Congressman Martin Dies, Jr., head of the House Un-American Activities Committee, led a successful charge to defund the program because of its advocacy of racial equality and other progressive themes.
Theater, however, continued to play a central role in progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s, from Teatro Campesino, born during the United Farm Workers Union’s organizing drives in California; to the Bread and Puppet Theater, a staple of anti-war efforts; and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, whose plays captured a whole range of progressive themes, often in hilarious fashion. And don’t forget the freedom songs that were at the core of the civil rights movement, sung by demonstrators at mass rallies and activists detained in local jails in the South.
The anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s was also sustained and amplified by works of art. Its best-known cultural product was undoubtedly the TV movie The Day After, a fictionalized treatment of the impacts of a nuclear war viewed by more than 100 million people when it aired on ABC in November 1983. But there was also a steady drumbeat of anti-nuclear cartoons, some of which were assembled in a widely distributed collection entitled Warheads. Joel Andreas’s 77-page graphic comic book, Addicted to War: Why America Can’t Kick Militarism, proved to be a primer on the roots of the American war system from the 19th-century vision of “manifest destiny” to (in an updated edition) the Global War on Terror, taking on war profiteers and the role of the media along the way.
More recently, groups like the Yes Men and Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir have lampooned corporations and their executives through street theater and by posing as participants in corporate gatherings (and so underscoring the absurdity of their activities and world views). The Yes Men describe their work as using “humor and trickery to highlight the corporate takeover of society, the neoliberal delusion that allows it, [and] the corporate Democrats’ responsibility for our current situation.” Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir ridicule materialism in all its forms from Starbucks displacing local coffee shops to the excesses of the Disney Store in New York’s Times Square.
Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, has similarly engaged in a wide range of politically focused art projects, ranging from a Peace Symphony performed in Hiroshima to The Book of Ice, which addresses climate change, to a wide array of films, articles, and concerts. Robin Bell Visuals has produced films and art installations, including projecting the words “Pay Bribes Here” on the side of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. And there have been scores of anti-war anthems produced in virtually every genre of modern music from folk to jazz to rock to hip hop to heavy metal.
My colleague Khody Akhavi makes short compelling videos on topics ranging from the dangerous rise of AI-driven weaponry to the impact of the funding of think tanks by weapons contractors, the Pentagon, and foreign governments. And the Center for Artistic Activism partners with advocacy groups on specific projects, schools them in artistic techniques, and helps them build art into their campaigns and public education efforts. Their slogan: “we make social and environmental change more effective—and more creative.”
Better yet, the artists and projects cited above are just a sampling of the many forms of political art that have attracted audiences and encouraged activism at the local, national, and global levels. Promemoria is a worthy addition to this tradition. Not only will the book have its own impact, but it will hopefully inspire others to produce projects that address our most urgent problems in new ways, moving people to take action grounded in our common humanity. Given the world we’re now in, it can’t happen soon enough.
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Lessons From Resisting Draft Registration That Can Help With the Fight Against Trump
Each of us has a responsibility to reach inside and find the courage to do what we can in our individual lives; where we work, study, pray, or recreate; and through coming together collectively.
Feb 11, 2025
Forty years ago I was sleeping on a mattress in the catwalk of an overcrowded cellblock in the old Public Safety Building in downtown Syracuse. I had just been sentenced to prison for my public refusal to register for the draft. On February 4, 1985, I walked into the Federal Courthouse in Syracuse. Having recently turned 24, I was a bit nervous about my future, but buoyed by the support of a broad community, including my family. Standing up for my deeply-held belief that war threatened the future of humanity eased my anxiety. Judge Howard Munson sent me to prison for six months, to be followed by 30 months of probation and a 30 month suspended sentence.
These days I’m reflecting on that chapter of my life, and the lessons that are useful as we face a White House seeking to undermine democracy and concentrate power in the hands of an autocrat. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was engaged in its own deception, illegal activity, and attacks on working people. However, I believe that the current moment is, without a doubt, the most dangerous time for our nation during my lifetime. U.S. President Donald Trump’s nomination of highly-unqualified cabinet picks and efforts to dismantle the federal government seek an unprecedented level of executive power and blind obedience.
Without sustained, persistent, and bold grassroots organizing and resistance, they will be able to carry out many of their anti-democratic schemes.
Although I was sent to prison for refusing to sign a piece of paper (the draft registration form), the larger issue was my belief that war is an immoral and destructive way to solve problems. In court the month before, I argued, “I have an obligation to uphold international law based on the Nuremberg Accords, which were initiated by the United States following World War II. I have an obligation not to participate in, ‘Planning, preparation, initiation or, waging of war,’ even if in order to uphold those agreements, I need to break the laws of my own country.”
I stood alone before the judge and jury during the trial and the sentencing, but was joined by a courtroom packed with supporters and hundreds outside demonstrating their commitment to move our nation from a foreign policy based on war and bullying to one based on diplomacy and international cooperation.
Before my sentencing I read excerpts from a Solidarity Statement signed by over 2,600 people,
The case of the United States against Andy Mager is also the case of the United States against each of us and against many others who are not here today… We ask, if you convict Andy Mager, that you convict all of us, that you imprison all of us, or none of us.
The time in prison included some very challenging moments, but was a powerful learning experience. I saw firsthand what happens to so many millions of people caught up in our criminal legal system. As a white person from a privileged background, this glimpse into the lives of people who are marginalized and forgotten has continued to inform my organizing work.
From court, I was taken to the public safety building in Syracuse, where I was held for 10 days before transfer to the federal prison system. Within a couple of days, I was part of a hunger strike to demand better treatment and conditions. The strike was clearly inspired in part by my resistance and the publicity my fellow prisoners had seen it garner. Those involved crossed many of the boundaries which keep people divided in prison and throughout our society and included at least one person who told me he agreed with his father that “they should take people like me (anti-war protesters) out behind the barn and shoot them.”
I received support from people who fully supported my political perspective, and respect from others who disagreed with me on those issues but understood the importance of standing up publicly for one’s beliefs. When I left Lewisburg Federal Prison Camp, my resolve to continue organizing for peace and justice was firm.
The four decades since then have offered many lessons which are instructive in our current situation. We are just a few weeks into an administration which is seeking to sow chaos and division. The Trump regime hopes to overwhelm us with so many outrageous actions simultaneously. Their goal is to create fear and hopelessness, enabling them to greatly concentrate power and move forward with their authoritarian plans.
Without sustained, persistent, and bold grassroots organizing and resistance, they will be able to carry out many of their anti-democratic schemes. Each of us has a responsibility to reach inside and find the courage to do what we can in our individual lives; where we work, study, pray, or recreate; and through coming together collectively. Here’s my best thinking right now, based on over four decades of community organizing, including my refusal to cooperate with draft registration:
- Don’t act out of fear and panic—we need to be thoughtful and strategic, while also acting quickly to intervene. The impact of the organizing on my draft resistance case was much greater because of the planning over many months.
- Learn from the development of fascism in other countries—Germany, Italy, Chile, Hungary, and elsewhere—and from the resistance movements.
- Join or initiate collective campaigns to stand up for democratic values; protect those most targeted; and work for equity, justice, and a sustainable future. The hunger strike described briefly above is an example of people with many differences coming together over shared concerns to take action.
- There are many specific issues under threat, from the human rights of immigrants to a quickly warming planet to efforts to repair the harm from centuries of racism. Focus your energy where you feel the most passion and believe you can best contribute. In the 1980s as someone directly affected by draft registration, I was highly motivated to work on that issue, and was effective because I could speak in the first person about my choices.
- Lend support—emotional, practical, and material to people in your community. Practice mutual aid. Listen to the pain of immigrants facing deportation or trans youth in fear, and offer assistance as you are able.
- Pressure public officials—demand that they protect their constituents and stand for justice, let them know when you’re upset by their actions and that you appreciate it when they do the right thing. Call them, write letters, send emails, visit their offices.
- Participate in demonstrations, marches, boycotts, and nonviolent direct action. Visible, public opposition is important, and gathering together in solidarity helps us maintain our spirit and commitment in difficult times. The support demonstrations at my trial and sentencing, including two small groups who engaged in nonviolent direct action after my sentencing, engaged many more people in the work, increased public attention, and strengthened my capacity to resist.
- Organize support for candidates in local races who will work with us to protect democracy and our communities.
- Speak up in solidarity when you hear attacks on other people or repetition of lies and disinformation.
The coming months and years will be difficult, and there will be continued, and in some cases escalating, suffering. As I learned 40 years ago, “Together We Are Strong.” We can’t stop all of it, but if we pull together and act out of love and compassion we can defend much of what is important and lay the foundation for more transformational change in the years and decades to come.
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