We can whisper if you’re afraid.
You watched as people were silenced, fired, arrested, assaulted or shot during a protest.
In Chicago, Broadview and the suburbs, masked, gun-toting, camouflage-wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pounced on a roof-working immigrant, praying pastor, video-filming TV producer and barb-throwing cyclist.
You stayed home from Saturday’s No Kings Day and feel guilty.
The First Amendment is in danger. The constitutional rights of freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition are no longer guaranteed.
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show for nearly a week after comments he made related to slain conservative Charlie Kirk. It fired anchor Terry Moran after he criticized White House adviser Stephen Miller and President Donald Trump and gave Trump’s presidential library $15 million to settle a defamation suit.
CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show after he criticized the network for paying $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
At MSNBC, political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired after he suggested Kirk’s statements might have contributed to his murder.
Also fired after Kirk’s death was Karen Attiah, a Black opinion writer at The Washington Post, for her social media posts that included” “White America is not going to do what it needs to do to get rid of guns.”
Months earlier, Post owner Jeff Bezos killed the paper’s Harris editorial endorsement and revamped the editorial section to focus on “personal liberties and free markets,” whatever that means. He donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and attended inaugural celebrations with other tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai.
Federal funding for PBS and NPR has been killed and government broadcasters such as Voice of America dismantled.
Trump’s White House has thrown reporters out of briefings and sued The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for defamation.
Books are banned. History rewritten. Federally funded programs told to cease using language about diversity, climate change and LGBTQ+ issues. College campuses, museums, federal parks and government agencies must cancel “woke” programming.
Freedom of religion is also threatened. The administration created the Task Force to Eradicate anti-Christian Bias, which suppresses religious diversity, and allows ICE to make arrests inside houses of worship.
In Chicago, agents patrolled a church offering bilingual Mass and in Broadview barred activists from giving Communion to detainees at the immigration processing center.
Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were threatened with jail for objecting to an out-of-state militia deployed to Chicago.
Charges have been filed against former FBI Director James Comey, former Trump aide-turned-critic John Bolton and New York state Attorney General Letitia James.
So you can be forgiven for self-censoring in this beehive of vengeance.
Still, there are cracks in the MAGA armor as Trump domestic poll numbers drop. Increasingly more American institutions and individuals are fighting back.
In recent weeks, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown University rejected the administration’s preferential funding compact that limits international students and definitions of genders and restricted freedom of expression. The Universities of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Southern California quickly followed.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened canceling Pentagon credentials if journalists didn’t agree to government censoring. Nearly all news outlets turned in their badges. Even Fox News refused to sign.
Jane Fonda and hundreds of other entertainers have revived the Committee for the First Amendment, a group originally formed in 1947 during the Sen. Joseph McCarthy Communist-hunting era.
Playwright Lynn Nottage, visual artist Dread Scott and dozens of other artists are planning nationwide protests called the Fall of Freedom to “unite in defiance of authoritarian forces” the weekend of Nov. 21.
Chicago journalists, unions and individual protesters sued federal agents who used “extreme brutality” to silence free speech. Included is Rev. David Black, the praying Presbyterian minister who was sprayed with pepper spray and hit in the head by a pepper ball. Responding to the violence, a federal judge says ICE agents must wear body cameras in Chicago and limit use of tear gas.
The revolt is growing. Saturday’s No Kings Day, the third massive protest against Trump this year, drew over 7 million people at over 2,600 rallies in 50 states, according to early estimates.
On his social media account, Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated video of him wearing a crown in a fighter jet depositing excrement on protesters.
Historically when 3.5% of a population engages in nonviolent protest, it’s impossible for the government to ignore, according to Harvard University researcher Erica Chenoweth. She cites peaceful revolutions in the Philippines, Serbia and Madagascar as examples of overcoming dictatorships.
To save the First Amendment, self-censoring must end. Turn off your mute. We need 12 million bold Americans to make that 3.5%.
Write letters to your elected officials; boycott businesses that don’t support diversity and inclusion; donate to organizations suffering from withheld federal funding; and wave a sign at the next protest. Buy a whistle. Vote.
Oh, and make sure you tune in for three-time Grammy Award winner Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl in February. A record-breaking TV audience for a Spanish-singing artist who has criticized Trump’s immigration policies will be a dramatic rebuke.
Christine Ledbetter is a former senior arts editor at The Washington Post who lives in Illinois, where she writes about culture and politics.
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