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Saturday, February 1, 2025

RESISTING FASCISM ~ America (After Ginsberg) by Joseph Sexton

Joseph Sexton's plays have been produced in NYC by Love Creek productions, The Chain Theatre (winner, audience choice), The Players Theater, The Secret Theatre (finalist, audience choice) and online at From the Couch theatre company.  His full length work, Storytime and Other Tales of Love and Deception was workshopped by Rising Sun Performance company as part of their summer Laboratorium series. His short play, CRB Therapy, has been selected to be published in an upcoming anthology of covid stories. 
After a long stint in Brooklyn, he currently resides in Tarrytown, NY. 

His plays are available at the New Play Exchange. jsphsexton@gmail.com



ABOUT THE MONOLOGUE

America (after Ginsberg) was inspired by Allen Ginsberg's poem America. Ginsberg's poem is structured as if the speaker is confronting America as a single person and addressing his difficulties in fitting in with the dominant culture and looking closer at some of post WWII America's fears such as the cold war and political unrest. I tried to follow Ginsberg's lead with contemporary eyes looking at those that America is leaving behind as we rush to close our doors to the rest of the world.

     ~ Excerpt published by permission, all rights held by the playwright.

If you enjoy a piece published in the RESISTING FASCISM project, we encourage you to reach out to the playwright to tell them so. If the playwright has not included an email address or website, let us know at info@nycplaywrights.org and we'll pass along your message.


We all build our fortunes on the backs of our immigrants. We give the unlucky ones dollars as they huddle in the street just a few steps away from the, born Americans slumped in their opioid funks. I am quietly grateful for their addictions because at other times I see them, out in the street, large, and mean, and resenting what I have. Collecting coins so they can push us all away for just a little longer. I am happy to escape the city to a place where there are no sidewalks, so the addicts are forced to huddle in cheap apartments; out of site while the local, mostly white folks, pretend there is nothing happening as they cheer on a heartless and unforgiving America. They blame the other and hide their secrets. Their politics can no longer be ignored as they have set the great American democracy experiment on fire. The smell is noxious. We are alarmed but do little as corporate America scrapes away the last meat from the bone. THE FUTURE IS NOW.


Latest fascist atrocity: Trump Blames D.C. Plane Crash on DEI—and Then Says He Has No Evidence 

It's likely that many who voted for Trump are racists, but is this really what even they wanted? Automatic blame for a tragedy on anybody who is not a white man?

Related story: Trump Gutted Key Aviation Safety Committee Before D.C. Plane Crash

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