Liberty Bleeds

LIBERTY BLEEDS

My friends,

I want to start this by saying that there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of you amidst the travesties unfolding in your beautiful land which have reverberated across the globe, every day, for months and months now. I feel the fear and uncertainty you must be living with, and my heart is with you always.

In 1948, a South African author named Alan Paton, wrote a book set during the times which led to the formation of Apartheid in our land. It is a heartbreaking read, called Cry, the Beloved Country. When I think of America, that is the phrase that comes back to haunt my mind, over and over again.

This work is not a subtle or understated piece. It never could have been. I realized a few things about feelings clearly in the last 18 months. The first was a mystery, solved by my autism diagnosis: I struggle to both identify and express my feelings in the moment, and in the spoken word. The second, is that when things are too painful for me to speak aloud, and I am silenced by overwhelming or intense feelings, they come out in my art and poetry. My Art becomes my voice.

This is one of those artworks. It was only after I had made it with Amanda’s gentle guidance, that I looked back saw the decades of anger, frustration, helplessness, fear and pain mingled in the tears shed as I drew and painted, with searing intensity – America’s spirit violated – heavy on my mind, fire in my heart. America, the land I had first visited and loved at first sight, only a few months earlier thanks to many of you here.

I thought of you. I thought of the marginalized, the disabled, the different, and the most vulnerable in your society, once held close to Liberty’s heart, now ripped away by the injustices and crimes against love and humanity, being perpetuated daily. I heard rumours of an autism register, and immediately the black triangles used by the nazi’s under the T4 program, targeting those they called “life unworthy of life” sprung to mind. I thought of my own countrymen and the long years of suffering they had to endure at the hands of bad men. Rich, conservative, cruel, power-hungry, patriarchal white men, devoid of conscience as they raped the heart and soul of our land. I thought about how similar these situations are. About those who built your great nation. I think about Women and Trans people, and how their rights to make their own choices about their bodies, are now being locked away. I picture the chubby hands of those men, closing the safe containing freedom and choice, about the slow, smug smiles as they spin the dial.

And now here we are, months later. War on the horizon. As I look back to the me who made this artwork, the quiet question, ‘how much worse can it get?’, playing at the back of my mind, I feel sick to my stomach.

This is America, ravaged.

As a survivor of multiple assaults in my 49 years on this planet, it is a feeling I know all too well.

This is Liberty dehumanized. Remember that word. That is what is happening to the marginalized in America and in her shadow, right now, as it has thousands of times throughout history, when despots reign unchecked.

The bizarre and terrifying statements, executive orders, threats and consequences of Trump’s time in office thus far, have left the world shaken and pale. The first insane salvo of executive orders that issued from the White House, many felt, was deliberately staged to send people into a state of panic and cognitive dissonance. I think it worked. And it escalated. But will only work as long as it’s not seen for what it is. A tactic. Not dissimilar from the shock tactics used in my own land a century ago. People in panic and survival mode find it much harder to strategize, which men like Trump have used to their advantage to subjugate, blind and manipulate, for centuries.

It was the people who saw through the fog, and organized, who won South Africa back. It is the people who will win America back. When the time for mourning is over, the time for organisation begins. It has begun. My heart swelled with pride as I saw you take to the streets to defend your liberties, your lives, and your fellow Americans.

The undoing of a lifetime of trauma, for me, was the day I found my voice. The day I screamed, the day THEY ran. I did not stop using my voice from that day on. You have seen my work: you know. And that is what I want to impress upon you to never forget. You have a voice, you are NOT powerless.

Amanda said it best:

“Human beings aren’t built to be silent. Especially human beings who are in pain….I’ve come to think that real freedom is not the freedom to be loud; it’s the freedom to be heard at any volume.”

This work is definitely more of a scream than a whisper. I feel no need to defend that. I needed to get loud about what is happening to you right now. We might start out by screaming when we find our voices. But once we find them, what we do with them will be unstoppable.

Screams are becoming whispers, calm and collected. Low murmurings of dissent, the hum of ideas, the birth of art, of music, of poetry, of expression. The fire has been lit. The fire that is hardening the resolve you need, like forged steel. YOU are the change that WILL come.

Hold fast, friends.

Love always,

Niki McQueen

Cape Town,
June 2025

 

You can see more on Amanda’s Patreon here, or donate directly to the ACLU here.