Red is the color of...

Location: Florida | TRLD Entry: 001

We got a little name change and rebrand around here. I’m turning this space into a diary chronicling my reflections from living through the rise of Christian authoritarianism and the decline of democratic freedoms.

Heather Cox Richardson

routinely encourages us to keep sharing stories, using our voices, and standing for human rights and democracy. This project is my way to do my part. Courage is contagious. It’s easier to be brave when we can be brave together.

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A pen, a Moleskine, something to lean on… that's all you really need to start a movement.

Red. It's the color of fire.

Of warning. Of rage. Of rose petals.

Of oxygenated blood.

Of rebellion. Of being marked.

Of love. Of control.

Of pigments. Scarlet. Vermilion. Cad red light. Venetian red. Indian red. Crimson.

We are six months into what feels like a sprint through the stages of genocide.

No, that’s not hyperbolic. Unravelings don’t happen all at once.

Stage seven, Preparation. Check. Victims ID'd. Other-ed. Separated. Camps being built. Deportations, and detentions begin.

Stage 8. We're here now. Persecution. Forced movement. Masked men disappearing people in broad daylight.

Civil liberties, eroded. Raids normalized. Fear rampant.

The America I once knew is gone. But to be fair, the America I thought I knew was only ever true for some of us.

Red, the color of a tide that suffocates life. The color of the regime. Not sorry, I refuse to think of it as an administration when its acts are predicated on gleeful cruelty.

Red, the color of the notebook I’m writing in.

I write these words, and it feels like the opening scene for a dystopian YA series, but it's not. It’s playing out every day around me.

I was raised on The Sound of Music. Twice a year, every year. I practically had it memorized.

At 10, I used to imagine where I would hide if being hunted by an evil world government. It's harder to hide now.

We are being plunged into a surveillance state that would give George Orwell nightmares.

I fear our screens have lulled many to sleep. As long as it is just on a screen, it is happening to someone else.

We are okay. Or we fool ourselves into thinking we are.

I debated whether to write any of this publicly. It has risks that weren’t here 7 months ago. But holding an untold story is sometimes worse than the repercussions of telling it.

Silence feels like living erasure, and enough history is already being rewritten in real time. Gaslit. Denied, even though there are hours of video footage saying otherwise.

Worse, silence feels like being complicit.

I have lived in war zones overseas. I just never expected what I saw there to happen in my backyard.

I was more naive then. And by then, I mean 2 months ago.

The Great Experiment, as they call us, is, alas, still experimental.

It is not the guaranteed bastion of freedom our façades like to boast.

But I don’t know that we can call it a failed experiment. Genuine experiments exist to give results and reveal outcomes. And the final result is still far from certain.

Unfortunately, the cruelty happening now isn't a glitch in the system. Or a flaw in the matrix, it is the whole point. It is its very scaffolding.

People are disappearing. Communities gone, families ripped apart. While my FYP is overflowing with influencers selling the viral Halara shorts. They have pockets.

Like it's a normal Wednesday.

Like, they didn't just open up American Auschwitz and call it Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades just in time for hurricane season.

Red, it's the color of a thousand tiny cuts that bleed away our humanity. It's the color of the lights and stop signs we are careening past.

I may be wrong, but I don’t believe our system on its own will save us. Not this time. Because our system has been a large part of the problem.

Red the color of lipstick and resistance.

I'm not giving up hope. And neither should you. Systems can be changed. Problems solved.

Millions see the travesties and are saying, not on my watch.

I don't know what the path ahead holds, but I did not put my life on the line for years in South Sudan to be silent here.

Red, it's the color of Sudanese clay, soil soaked in 40 years of bloodshed. At least that’s what I was told when I arrived with my 6 bottles of water, backpack and a camp stove.

One of my favorite moments. The generosity, joy, and humility of the people I met never ceased to amaze me.

But even in the midst of such suffering, the incredible resilience of the people I got to know reminds me everyday we can tell ourselves a better story.

Red. The color of the tip painted on bamboo stakes that marked unexploded landmines and ordinances. Around water sources and boreholes. Under mango trees where people would sit in the shade. Along roads where people walked.

Cruelty isn’t anything new. But I never want to stop being shocked by it.

Red, the color of wine, of grapes that are crushed, of communion. Take, eat. Come drink. Go serve.

Red, the letters of words spoken by a Middle Eastern refugee who escaped an assassination attempt as an infant by a genocidal tyrant.

Jesus said:

“Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’"

To those claiming the name of Christ on Sunday, purchasing Alligator Alcatraz merch on Monday, jeering on the mass deportations on Tuesday… You do not serve the Jesus of the Bible, you serve a whitewashed, political caricature twisted by the love of power, made in your own image.

Unlike many of the scholars and media in this space, I’m not an outsider. I know the religious system that gave rise to our current state of affairs. I was in it for decades. I was ordained. Published.

But the deeper I went, the more unhealthy, abusive things I saw. Eventually, there was a point I had to leave.

There is hope, even at the edge of night. That said, we cannot afford to stay silent and wait to be rescued.

I’m sharing my journey here… In the hope that it will encourage you that you aren’t alone. Because you aren’t. And change is possible.

Red is the color of sunrises and autumn maples, of cardinals, zinnias, and watermelon juice on a hot summer afternoon.

A red letter day is a day of importance. I’d like to believe these words will be important for those who read them.

We don’t have to sit back and watch history unfold on our screens. We can each do what we can with what we have to be a part of shaping it.