So You Want to Be a Dissident?

Images: Toledo Woman Suffrage Association, 191. Toledo-Lucas County Public Library via Wikimedia. Public Domain. | A sign at a Hands Off rally at the Washington State Capitol in the city of Olympia, Washington. Roc0ast3r via Wikimedia. CC0 1.0. | Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963. NARA. Rowland Scherman via Wikimedia. Public Domain. | Metro Station January 6, 2021. Kurt Kaiser via Wikimedia. CC0 1.0. | Anti-Vietnam War Protest, University of Illinois – October 1969. Gary Todd’s Flickr via Wikimedia. Public domain. | Two young girls carrying placards with the slogan “Abolish Child Slavery” in English and in Yiddish. Photo taken probably during the workers’ march, New York, May 1, 1909. Bain News Service – Library of Congress via Wikimedia. Public Domain. Article by Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer. The New Yorker – April 12, 2025.

Once upon a time—say, several weeks ago—Americans tended to think of dissidents as of another place, perhaps, and another time. They were overseas heroes—names like Alexei Navalny and Jamal Khashoggi, or Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi before them—who spoke up against repressive regimes and paid a steep price for their bravery. But sometime in the past two months the United States crossed into a new and unfamiliar realm—one in which the consequences of challenging the state seem to increasingly carry real danger. […]

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