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Participants including Karen Finley and Coco Fusco held a “First Amendment Day Rally” to protest attacks on expression, from book bans to censored art.
The First Amendment Day Rally on December 15, 2025 (all photos Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)
A group of cultural leaders, artists, and local politicians gathered today, December 15, at the Federal Hall rotunda in Manhattan, where the Bill of Rights was introduced 243 years ago, with a deceptively simple message: “The First Amendment was born here; we will not let it die here.”
Co-organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship, New Yorkers for Culture & Arts, and the newly formed First Amendment Culture Team (FACT), the event brought speakers including artists Coco Fusco, Karen Finley, and George Emilio Sánchez in defense of creative freedom in the United States.
Also among the speakers was at least one artist who has been directly targeted by the Trump administration. Felipe Galindo Feggo’s illustration of migrants watching July 4th celebrations through a border fence was withdrawn from a display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History after the White House included it in a list of objectionable artworks. The gallery dedicated to Latine art where Galindo’s was being shown quietly shuttered ahead of schedule, Hyperallergic reported in August.
Speakers included artists artists Coco Fusco, Karen Finley, and George Emilio Sánchez.
“I am proud to be an American of Mexican heritage, yet today I also feel vulnerable,” Galindo said in his address. “I cannot help but ask: Is this how artists in Hitler’s Germany felt when their work was labeled ‘degenerate’ art?”
“Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of democracy, and every attempt to suppress it must be fiercely resisted,” he continued.
The hour-long “First Amendment Day Rally” drew a small crowd of just around 50 attendees to the admittedly rarefied confines of the Federal Hall rotunda in New York City, a progressive stronghold. But the issues raised by participants — not only the censorship of individual artworks, but also mass book bans, federal funding cuts, and right-wing attempts to erase Black and LGBTQ+ history — are having far-reaching and devastating consequences across the nation.
Artist Felipe Galindo Feggo speaking at the Federal Hall Rotunda in Manhattan
To some of the speakers, the current climate of oppression feels like a chilling repetition of history. Finley is one of the NEA Four, a group of performance artists who sued the National Endowment for the Arts in the early 1990s after their grants were vetoed due to a Republican-backed “decency clause.” Though a district judge ruled in the artists’ favor, the Supreme Court overturned the decision, and the NEA stopped funding individual artists altogether.
“Our case really was a precedent because it decided that the government could deny funding or support based on ‘decency,’ and now what do we have? We’re seeing books being banned, we’re seeing what’s happening at universities, with research funding, and in terms of healthcare, whether it’s trans healthcare or reproductive rights,” Finley told Hyperallergic.
“So much of what we were fighting for within our own work — what we were creating art to bring awareness about — is now even more in jeopardy,” Finley said.
Coco Fusco reads the 14th Amendment during the event.
One of the rally’s most moving statements came from the self-described disabled choreographer and dancer Alice Sheppard, founder of the Kinetic Light ensemble.
“For disabled people, art and the social fabric are intimately connected,” Sheppard said, addressing the public. “My creative practice, my life, depend on the work of those who fought for accessibility. My creative practice, my life, depend on those who fought for my freedom.”
“So no, I will not be silent,” she continued. “As the government attempts to silence us, I will not be quiet.”
