Theater, or the importance of imagination

(This one really isn't about education....or is it?) When I see the pictures in the news, over social media, in TikTok channel videos of goons (is there a better word?) dressed in Amazon-bought ICE-labeled tactical vests and balacava-covered faces, I'm reminded of the persistent and important role that theater plays in human history. We adore a pagaent, a spectacle of repressentation where no one has to be themselves and where our fantasies -- good and evil -- can live as reality if just for a brief moment. We can denigrate cosplay all we want but it is profoundly impactful and influentioal to our thoughts and subsequent actions. Right now the stage is large and every one of us has a role to play. Theater is our imagination come to life and we can only become in real life that which we have the capacity to imagine. So our question as a people is whether we can imagine any future other than the one represented and inhabited by the would-be oppressors playing out their fantasy of domination and cruelty. Can we imagine a future that does not demonize others for who they are, that prizes learning and curiosity, that exhibits care for even those we might cast as "undeserving"? I had the fortune(?) to grow up indoctrinated in a faith that preached radical love for others, minding the plank in your own eye, keeping your viture quiet and your deeds loud. It's not a vision you can live up to fully, but it imagines a better way -- or at least that's what I took from those many years of constant messaging. It's radical because it doesn't depend on a supernatural bogeyman or enforcer, but on human acquisition of more knowlege, deeper understanding, more quiet, more listening. In a way, it is the opposite of theater, or perhaps more theater turned inward, but it relies on public imagination even so. There is no way to that vision except to see it acted out over and over in tiny ways. Some might say we need less theater in our public spaces -- I say we need more -- more of the sort that acts what could be. That shows us glimpses of a tomorrow that is actually better for all. My wiser, more accomplished firends indulgently tell me I'm a dreamer, an unrealistic idealist. I say that may be true, but without the capacity to dream of difference we are sentenced to an ugly and cruel sameness that i simply won't accept. So please, join me and the other dreamers on Saturday at a No Kings rally to act out how the world CAN be better. Bring your best cosplay game as a citizen of a place that welcomes the stranger, feeds the hungry, encourages the curious, accepts the different, and builds a sustainable future.