Bad For Humanity
In 2016, when I lived in Denmark with my partner and children, I started identifying as an artist. I never gave up US media while living in Denmark, so I was listening to various people with platforms who were convinced Trump could not win the election in November 2016. The elections that George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 had killed any sense of altruism I had toward US politics or the propaganda I learned about in school that hyped up the US as the best country on the planet. I felt inside myself that Trump was going to win and the signs that he was into fascism were real for me. I was scared for my birth country, but I couldn’t find anyone in my personal circles or my media consumption who was worried at all. Instead of trying to do anything about the US election, I focused on my own life and didn’t try very hard to have conversations about what could be coming. I did a community building project focusing on refugees and art. Then I started building a path for my family to get out of Denmark. I wasn’t sure we would ever leave, but I could identify the obstacles that would make leaving difficult, and I worked on them instead of worrying. These projects help me stand proudly in identifying as a creator. The first major build to get my family out of Denmark took six weeks of my life to complete and was a literal construction project that I did myself until my body failed. I ended up needing four months to recover from the work. This was before I healed my gut using tibicos:ins. In the last of the months I spent healing, the election happened and Trump did win. I was terrified that the US would never see another election.
I wanted to protest somehow. I really could not rely on other people when I was living in Denmark. I decided to do my own street performance as a protest. I made a costume that I could carry on the train in a bag. I would take the train from my city to the busiest train station I encountered in my normal life. I could assemble my costume easily standing next to a public bench. I would spend a few hours singing a ten-minute set of song excerpts that I put together as a commentary essentially on the class warfare that happens all over the planet, not just in the US or Canada or Denmark. It is every country that tells their citizens to believe their life and way is the best in the world. It is every country that pays more attention to the humans who have accumulated resources instead of supporting the humans who have not. There are many places around the world where melanin in skin becomes a barrier to respect or success regardless of a person's merit. Much like my work exploring community rooted health practices and healing colonization, my protest was a way to find a voice and agency in difficult political times. I wore a placard on my front and back as I did my solo protest. The back said clearly “Trump is bad for humanity” and the front looked like Danish flags as a symbol to the Danes that I was friendly and a reference to a recent South Park episode. When people stopped to talk to me, I would stop singing and have conversations. It was such a liberating experience because my clothes and my songs pulled people from the crowds walking by who agreed. The only people who ever stopped to disagree were young men. I talked to them too until they became belligerent. I often think of the group of Kurdish refugees who passed me once saying Trump is a good man, but that was before US troops were pulled from Syria. I am sure the Kurds agree with my signs now. My first protest demonstration was on the day that Trump was officially elected by the electoral college. I ended up going out in my costume regularly after that day, usually coinciding with paschal season holidays because of the demands of my personal life.
My solo protests were part of a larger desire for change—an expression that systems built for profit can be refocused to support mutual care, like the preventative health mutual concept I explore in my current art project. Being able to protest whenever I felt I could was a cathartic and overall wonderful experience that connected me to people who made me feel better about the planet in general. I don’t have the resources to return to Denmark and protest again now. I do have the outfit still, but I don’t think it would go over as safely where I am. At least every time I describe what I did at Nørreport Station to someone where I live now they tell me I would get attacked and ask me not to do the same. It was a short project that gave me so much life and I can say wholeheartedly that I did tell Denmark about Trump—ten years too early for many to really care.