BULLETIN SEVEN: The Test Was Silence

Seventh in a Series on Election Integrity and American Memory

BULLETIN SEVEN: The Test Was Silence
Seventh in a Series on Election Integrity and American Memory
By Robert J. Rei — April 16, 2025 (Noontime edition)

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There’s a video going around.

A professor walks into class, calls on a student, and without warning says:

“Leave. You’re not welcome here. Get out and don’t come back.”

The student—confused, startled, obedient—gathers their things and exits.
No one protests.

Then the professor turns back to the room.

“Why does law exist?”

Students begin to answer: order… rules… structure.
He waits. Then one voice says it:

“Justice.”

And he says:

“Then why did none of you stand up when I unjustly removed one of your own?”

The room was being tested.
And it failed.

This is the test we are facing now.
A president is ejecting voices from the public square.
A Court rules, then stays silent as its orders are ignored.
And Americans—so many of them—remain still.

This bulletin is not just about elections.
It is about what we allow to happen when we are not the ones being expelled.

Justice is not something the law ensures.
Justice is what people insist upon, when the law is being twisted.

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When journalists are silenced, did you speak?
When protesters were arrested, did you notice?
When the word “homegrowns” was used to justify camps, did it make you pause?

Or did you believe it would never reach your row in the classroom?

The Declaration says we are born with rights.
But it says more than that. It says governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

What happens when we consent by silence?

WHEN THE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS REWROTE THE CONSTITUTION

First they came for the college educated
And I did not speak out
Because I was not college educated

Then they came for the LGBTQs
And I did not speak out
Because I was not LGBTQ

Then they came for the Non-Theists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Non-Theist

Then they came for the liberals
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a liberal

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

—Adapted from Pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came”
by Robert J. Rei, December 9, 2023

We failed the test once already.
We still have time to answer differently.

What happened in November 2024?

More bulletins to follow.

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Thank you for reading.
If this story rang too familiar—if it reminded you of moments when you stayed seated when you should have stood—then share it. Restack it. Pass it on.
The Spiral begins with one voice refusing to stay quiet.
Let this be that voice today.

Robert J. Rei — April 16, 2025

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
—Toni Morrison