29 Apr Art is our Voice, our Shield, our Sanctuary
This May Day, all across the United States in theaters, cinemas, galleries, museums, comedy clubs, bookstores, schools, campuses, and cultural spaces, people are staging events that celebrate artistic expression. Under the banner of Fall of Freedom, we stand together in creative resistance, because when free expression is under threat, art becomes our voice, our shield, and our sanctuary.
We live in a time when dissent is punished, truth is twisted, and silence can seem safe. Yet, we can choose to show up. We can choose to listen, to feel, to think, and to act. This is why we must resist. Because our freedoms to speak, to question, to create, to love, and to live without fear are not privileges. They are rights, earned, defended, and carried forward by all of us. When we forget them, they fade. When we remember them, they rise again.
We ask this of you: keep freedom alive. Whether you are an artist, librarian, a technologist, or a truck driver, a nurse or a banker, a teacher, a student, or a parent, you have a role in this. Every person who speaks honestly, creates bravely, or simply refuses to look away is part of this movement.
When we act together, our words cannot be silenced. When we stand together, freedom stands taller. Thank you for standing with art, with freedom, and with each other. If you are in NYC on Friday, May 1st–May Day– please join us at the Film Forum where we will be introducing Nuestra Tierra (Our Land), a documentary film from extraordinary Argentinian filmmaker Lucretia Martel, produced by New York’s finest Joslyn Barnes. The film centers on the 2009 murder of Indigenous activist Javier Chocobar who along with his community was defending the rights to their lands against capitalist interests.
Regardless of where you are this weekend, you can join the Fall of Freedom with activities already planned in communities across the U.S. You can also stream our film BORDERLAND | The Line Within. And, access resources and organize your own screening of the film, this weekend and beyond.
No act of courage is too small. You must ask the questions that fear cannot answer. You must tell the stories that power cannot erase. You must imagine the futures that oppression cannot destroy. Start a conversation. Share a story. Defend a voice. Because the truth matters. Art matters. And courage is contagious.*
