A recent conversation began with a discussion around the Oscar-winning movie I’m Still Here. Nominated for Best Picture and the winner of Best International Feature Film in 2025, it follows a true story that is eerily prescient for our times.

When her husband disappears at the hands of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971, Eunice Paiva protects her close-knit family with courage and dignity. In a review for NPR, John Powers notes that “It’s one measure of Latin America’s arduous history that it has spawned so many books and movies about dictatorship.” What they all share, Powers asserts, “is the awareness that history hurts.”

“Few films have shown this with more delicate intelligence than I’m Still Here, a moving new drama set during Brazil’s military dictatorship that began with an American-backed coup in 1964 and ended in 1985. Based on a memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Walter Salles’ movie is no political tract or manipulative tearjerker (although it may make you cry). Exploring the dictatorship indirectly, I’m Still Here tells the heroic true story of a wife and mother who steers her family through the rapids of tyranny.”

Our discussion of the brilliant Fernanda Torres—whose performance, as Powers writes, “is so subtle, so internal, so quietly shattering that, in a just world, she’d win all this year’s big acting awards”—led us to ask what we are each doing to fight the authoritarian takeover of our government in America today.

We each have special skills which we can use in our own worlds. However, every one of us can speak with friends and contacts to convey the truth as we see it. We can all be a better citizen.

I’ve thought multiple times about that conversation and the unique skills and platforms each brings to this moment. We are in a fraught time in the U.S. because of coordinated attacks on the rule of law, rampant and open corruption, and overt racism. We can all speak out, in whatever ways we have, against these efforts to destroy American democracy.

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The strength of musicians

One artist has decided how to use his strength to speak out to millions worldwide. Bruce Springsteen kicked off his latest tour in Manchester, England, and right from the start he let the audience know where he stood about our life in America. Springsteen launched this run of shows with three statements about the situation in the United States, with comments preceding his songs Land of Hope and Dreams, House of a Thousand Guitars and My City of Ruins.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times . . . Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”

Here’s a live version of Land of Hope and Dreams from a 2018 concert in New York City.

Musicians have often taken the lead in speaking up against fascism. The fact that today’s performers are attacked on social media by the would-be authoritarians tells us they are effective.

Just speaking up and not letting the truth get buried under lies matters. One way evil affects us is by isolating the mind and killing the heart. “Isolated minds disregard the essential value of others . . . when evil kills the heart it takes away love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and gentleness.” To combat that in your own life, remember the wonder amidst the horror. And consider a way of speaking up that works for you.

More to come . . .

DJB