2 July 2025

The proximity of Independence Day and recently hearing filmmaker Ken Burns speak of his upcoming series on the American Revolution have together sent me back to re-reading “the unanimous declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”  Several statements against “the present King of Great Britain” stand uncomfortably out, beginning with the prologue to a long list of offenses asserting that the King’s history “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. [The direct quotation continues:]

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:  For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us . . . .”

And so, my fellow Americans, we protest—as a group on NO KINGS day, 14 June 2025, countering the Felon-in-Chief’s expensive fiasco of a birthday parade ostensibly celebrating the Army’s 250^th anniversary.

And we protest with the skills we have, like 96-year-old sculptor Nancy Schön’s weekend exhibition, “My Truth” at her Newton, Massachusetts home.  Creator of the beloved “Make Way for Ducklings” sculpture in the Boston Public Garden (and another one in Moscow!  See schon.com), Ms. Schön, of iconic, whimsical animals fame, might seem unlikely to produce political art so vehement in its impact that it both shocked and moved me to tears.  But it did.  The new collection “created to express her anger at the destruction being inflicted by the Trump regine” (as her exhibit brochure proclaims) speaks eloquently for itself.  And so, with the artist’s permission, I offer my own photos of her work together with her accompanying descriptions.

Brava, Ms. Schön.  Thanks for inspiring us to keep the fight for unalienable Rights begun in 1776 ongoing.