Page 196 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

AVIVA RAHMANI

RAPED BY MONSTERS; CROSSING A RICKETY BRIDGE

Since the Election of this administration, and the crushing of resistance at Standing

Rock, the task of establishing alternative models has become infinitely more challenging.

February 7, 2017: Mitch McConnell silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren in the Senate.

“(A) rebuke of Warren came after the Massachusetts Democrat read a letter written 30

years ago by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., opposing the

nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship.” -CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/elizabeth-warren-silenced/

February 8, 2017:

T.'s militants ring Warren with bayonets in the midst of a rally crowd trying to free her,

while Gov. Christie rapes her in their circle. I thought it was about the De Vos

appointment.

Now I think the ether was screaming through the zeitgeist that we are all being raped by

these monsters. It isn’t only women who are being attacked. Anything vulnerable,

beautiful, or wise seems under attack, which is why Christie and De Vos featured in the

dream as representing attacks on civil integrity and public education. Women in this

country are being implicitly raped by the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump. We are

being raped by the normalization of rape culture, assaults on Planned Parenthood, and

the Health Bill proposed to date. As a woman, I am outraged by this suppression of

human rights. As an artist, it increases my anxiety about my own and others’ freedom of

expression. The dream viscerally illustrates my fears. As the producer of The Blued

Trees Symphony, it makes the songs of the tree-soloists in that project more complex

and dramatic in their crescendos.

The mission of the Blued Trees Symphony is to define human relationships to other

species, to trees, water and soil as the basis for public good, a definition that could save

humans from the worst consequences of the Anthropocene Era and a fossil- fuel-based