When are America’s artists going to answer the call to protest? June 14 would be a good time to start

In a little less than two weeks from now, your elected president is going to preside over a showy military parade in the streets of our nation’s capital — on his own birthday. Chances are low that he’ll actually wear sunglasses and gold shoulder epaulettes, but his trademark Mussolini scowl will likely be in place, and you know the hair will be perfect. And MAGA nation will be expected to present displays of adulation proportionate to the fanfare (and price tag) of the occasion. 

Closer to home, in Santa Cruz, on that same day, a plucky band of performers known as Dangerous Neighbors will be presenting a sketch comedy show called “Deflating Fascism,” which, by its very name, clues you in on a bit about what they’re up to. (That evening, June 14, will actually be the second in a series of four shows over two weekends for the production, at Actors’ Theatre). 

In the scale between that one enormous public spectacle and the other very small performance in a theater that holds fewer than 100 people, we should expect a bedlam of activity across the country of a political nature. Locally, Indivisible Santa Cruz will be doing its part in the nationwide “No Kings” mass protest to take place that morning. 

Who knows what else might happen that day? But as a proud American terrified of the country’s slide into tin-pot authoritarianism, I am hoping and praying that the day might evoke Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, with perhaps a more 2025 take on “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.” I’m hoping that June 14 marks a turning point in history.

I’m hoping that America’s artists are about to get to work.

In my fantasy, Bruce Springsteen, who’s been more politically salty in recent weeks than he’s been in years, decides to stage a secret free concert the same day as the D.C. rally, and it’s here he debuts some breathtaking new song of solidarity, a worthy heir to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” written during a different rise of fascism. 

It doesn’t have to be Springsteen — in fact, maybe it shouldn’t be the dusty old white guy. Maybe it might be even more galvanizing coming from Chappell Roan or Bruno Mars or Harry Styles. Maybe in some Freaky Friday style mind-body mash-up, we could combine Taylor Swift with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — if we’re asking for the moon.

In the real world, however, all creatives have a role to play in the moment. We too often think of artists standing up to the current administration in terms of a Jimmy Kimmel monologue or a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, that to engage in that playing field you have to meet vulgarity with vulgarity, or go tit-for-tat with mockery and ridicule. And that kind of toxicity is just too much for many artists to deal with. 

But there is another realm that presents a real challenge for America’s artists. It has nothing to do with the topical social-media food fights of the daily feed. It has to do with restating the values and principles of what’s at stake in the fight, to bring a new coat of paint to concepts like democracy, the rule of law, due process and the constitutional system, to find a new way to expose corruption, mendacity and tyranny. 

I realize how silly it sounds to expect some celebrity to sit down and write a hit song about the rule of law. But, in 1940, Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land,” and recast American patriotism in the widest terms possible by his simple words and images. Norman Rockwell did something similar in the visual arts realm, defending what is honorable and real about the socio-political system that we’ve all grown up in, and that we’ve all taken for granted. 

Let’s give Dangerous Neighbors their due — at least, they’re standing up to the moment. Dangerous Neighbors is a longtime sketch-comedy troupe, representing the partnership of writers and performers Bill Burman and the late Eric Conly. They’ve been on the Santa Cruz theater scene for decades, though they’ve been dormant at least since the pandemic — Conly died of cancer in 2021. 

The group wasn’t necessarily from the San Francisco Mime Troupe school of theatrical political satire. Their targets were more broadly the absurdities of everyday life and the distorted values of American culture.

Now, however, Burman is bringing back the troupe with longtime friends and collaborators like Suzanne Schrag, Jonathan Carter Schall and Bob Vickers. The new show offers up a series of original comedy sketches, many of them new, but a couple of others representing some “greatest hits” sketches from the troupe’s catalogue.

At first, Burman said, he wanted to present a show that offered his audiences a respite from the grind of living in 2025. “I thought, politics is just so toxic, I don’t think anyone wants to think about it. So, I thought I would do a completely non-political show because people need a break. But, in good conscience, I couldn’t do that. So it’s about half and half now, stuff that is addressing what’s happening and half completely random sketches that have nothing to do with it.”

Burman said it was entirely a coincidence that the show’s second performance would happen to fall on “No Kings” protest day. But, at the same time, the performances are also a benefit for Indivisible Santa Cruz. 

Certainly, this Dangerous Neighbors show isn’t going to topple any tyrants, no matter how much it draws blood. But every voice is needed at a time when the institutions we depended on to serve as a kind of check on authoritarianism — the news media, corporate America, Congress, and most spectacularly, the two political parties — are failing us. The nation’s creative artists haven’t done much better. 

“I have been disappointed in the lack of an artistic reaction to what’s been going on,” said Burman. “I think a lot of people don’t want to incur the wrath of a third of the people, or whatever number it is that supports him. It’s understandable. On the other hand, I’m just so sick of the fake patriotism. ‘Land of the free/Home of the brave,’ we’re not that anymore. Most Americans know less about history and the Constitution than my immigrant wife, who became a citizen during the first Trump administration.”

During that first Trump term, folksinger John Craigie tried to meet that moment with a song he called “Presidential Silver Lining,” in which he claimed we have better music under Republican presidents: “Artists are better when they’re bummed.”

Is Craigie right? Are artists ready to step up and preserve the wild and messy democracy we’re all used to? We regular folk can go to the protests, wave our signs, pressure our electeds, push whatever buttons that are available to us. But our musicians, writers, filmmakers, and graphic artists are the ones who can effectively counteract state-run spectacle. And it’s high time for them to get to work. 

We are a nation of images and taglines, mottos and memes. Woody Guthrie understood that better than anybody.

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