Karan Kuppa-Apte is a rising junior and Edan Kauer is a sophomore. Both are FIRE summer interns.
In American courtrooms today, song lyrics are being treated as confessions and fiction is being read as fact.
On July 24, Reps. Hank Johnson (GA-04) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37) reintroduced the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act, a bill aimed at reining in a surreal injustice in the American legal system — using artists’ creative fiction as evidence against them at trial.
This is not a hypothetical. As of June of this year, courts have seen over 820 cases where lyrics and other artistic work were presented as supposed proof of guilt. That number doesn’t include what’s buried in sealed records or never covered by the press. These aren’t smoking guns either — they’re lines from songs.
Through their creations, artists depict their struggles and bear their souls. And under the First Amendment, such creative expression is protected. Yet it is repeatedlyusedagainst artists in court.
In a press conference celebrating the Act’s reintroduction, Johnson and Kamlager-Dove were joined by groups such as the Recording Academy, the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), PEN America, and FIRE.
Johnson pointed to the importance of this legislation in protecting “artists of color who disproportionately face scrutiny and unjust consequences stemming from their creative work.”
But the problem of treating art as evidence is not limited to rap or hip-hop. This affects all creative mediums, including film and literature.
“Unfortunately, it has become a growing problem where artistic expression is used against artists,” said Greg Gonzalez, legislative counsel at FIRE. “Their art is distorted, misconstrued, and presented as fact in court.” He added, “But these works of fiction aren’t confessions — they are creations.”
Left to right: Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, co-founder and CEO of Black Music Action Coalition; Jen Jacobsen, executive director of the Artist Rights Alliance; Greg Gonzalez, FIRE legislative counsel; Rep. Hank Johnson (GA-04); Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37); Chelsea Green, chair of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees
Also at the press conference was Erik Nielson, professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond and co-author of the book Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America, which cites nearly 700 cases in which prosecutors used rap lyrics as evidence against artists. Describing his research, Nielson said he “was shocked that this could happen in a country with the First Amendment” and lauded the RAP Act as “an important first step in protecting art, regardless of who the artist is.”
Under the RAP Act, artistic works can only be used as evidence against the artist if they relate to “specific facts” alleged in the crime or complaint that cannot be supported by other evidence.
This means that in order to use artwork as evidence in court, the government must prove that the artist intended for it to have “a literal meaning, rather than figurative or fictional meaning.” In other words, unless the art contains things like information that only the perpetrator would know, it cannot be taken as fact and must remain out of the courtroom.
This issue extends beyond ideological differences, and similar legislation has passed in both the Republican-led statehouse of Louisiana and the Democratic-led legislature in California. Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, president and CEO of BMAC, summed it up perfectly: “It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a constitutional one.”
We’re hopeful this bipartisan momentum will continue at the federal level. No artist should fear their work being used against them as evidence for crimes they didn’t commit. No artist should have to self-censor to avoid intense legal scrutiny. Indeed, without such freedom, many of the greatest works of American art would never have come into being.
“When creative expression is treated as criminal evidence,” said Gonzalez, “artists begin to self-censor. They hold back. They stop taking risks. And when that happens, we all lose.”
Cass McBride pulled into the parking lot of Atlantic Cape Community College just as the morning fog was lifting. The campus was quieter than she remembered—fewer cars, fewer conversations, fewer reasons to linger. The culinary arts building stood at the edge, windows clouded with dust, the café shuttered and dark.
Javi Sandoval sat beside her, scrolling through an email on his cracked phone screen. The college had just announced what everyone already knew: Atlantic Cape’s culinary program would be consolidated with Rowan College at Burlington County by the fall. The words were clean and administrative—“efficiency,” “realignment,” “cost savings”—but everyone understood the message. This place was being downsized, absorbed, and eventually erased.
“They’re moving all the classes to Mt. Holly,” Javi said. “That’s over an hour away. No shuttle, no support. Just go if you can. Or don’t.”
Cass nodded, her hands resting on a worn-out canvas bag filled with cookbooks and a half-used chef’s coat. “They say it’s about opportunity. But it feels like they’re just trimming away everything that made this place ours.”
Inside the student center, the old café was locked, its chalkboard menu still faintly showing specials from months ago—creamy risotto, grilled seasonal vegetables, apple tart. Meals once made by students, for staff and faculty, as part of their hands-on learning.
They walked around to the back hallway near the faculty offices, hoping to find someone who could give them real answers. That’s where they found Professor Reilly, sitting on a bench with a cardboard box beside him—books, a stained apron, and a union button that read: EDUCATION IS NOT A BUSINESS.
Reilly had taught part-time in the culinary program for over a decade—early morning sections, night classes, summer workshops. He was known for lecturing about labor history in the middle of baking demonstrations, quoting Eugene V. Debs while folding dough.
“They gave me fifteen minutes,” he said when Cass asked what had happened. “No severance. Just a letter. Said my ‘contract wasn’t renewed due to program restructuring.’ They didn’t even spell my name right.”
Javi sat down next to him. “I thought you were protected. Weren’t you in the union?”
Reilly chuckled. “We tried. We organized. But it’s hard when most of us are part-time and disposable. Admin smiles during bargaining, then turns around and guts your job through ‘curricular updates.’ They always find a way.”
Cass asked him if he’d stay in the area.
“I’ll stay,” he said. “Because this is where the students are. Because someone needs to remind them they’re not crazy for wanting more than just job training and debt. They deserve an education that feeds the soul, not just the economy.”
That night, Cass and Javi drove out past Pleasantville, where empty storefronts now stood beside a few remaining restaurants, barbershops, and bodegas. They passed through Margate and Ventnor, where beach homes glowed in early evening light, and the golf courses were still lush and quiet. In Somers Point, they saw the “Help Wanted” signs outside the waterfront restaurants—jobs with no benefits and long hours, perfect for students who no longer had classes to attend.
The casinos in Atlantic City still blinked and buzzed, but the crowds were thinner, and most of the profits came from online betting now—clicks from phones, not chips on tables.
They camped that evening just off Route 542, in a small clearing where the Pines bent gently in the wind. The stars came out slowly.
“I miss the kitchen,” Javi said. “The way Reilly used to talk about food—like it was a kind of justice.”
Cass pulled out her copy of The Grapes of Wrath, the one Reilly had recommended. She turned to a page he had dog-eared for her. “‘And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.’”
Javi looked up at the trees. “I keep thinking about people like Bernie Sanders and AOC. The way they talk about socialism, unions, public schools—for them, it’s not just politics. It’s survival. Dignity. Like what Reilly was trying to teach.”
Cass smiled, the firelight flickering on her face. “Yeah. It makes you think maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe it’s the start of something different.”
The wind moved through the Pines, steady and low, like an old voice telling stories to those who still cared to listen.
That’s where fiction can come in. But most climate fiction presents gloomy scenarios: think the waterless world of Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series or our earth after a virus wiped out most of human life in Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” trilogy.
In contrast, Baden’s story showed more positive solutions. Her own research found that 98% of her readers changed their attitudes. A month after reading the story 60% of readers actually adopted a green alternative.
She’s set to release “Murder in the Climate Assembly“, a fictional story about the ramifications of a murder that takes place in a citizens’ assembly on climate.
Some media organizations are now including climate change awareness initiatives that use fictional examples into their marketing campaigns.
Baden worked with BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, to create social media content that provided solutions with a tinge of humour. For example, they contrasted the carbon footprint of two popular characters from books and movies: James Bond who drives a gas guzzling sports car and has a walk-in wardrobe versus Jack Reacher who traveled by bus and shopped second-hand.
Making environmentalism fun
Pilot testing showed interesting results: “If we just presented the negative one like James Bond, some people laughed and thought it was funny, but a few people thought they were being a bit preached at and switched off,” Baden said. “Whereas when you kind of had both together with a bit of humor, that seemed to hit the right spot.”
Pike agreed: “Comedy too allows us to let our guard down. When we open our mouth to laugh, our mind is open to learn.”
When Pike was in Chile working on the PhD that led to her book she found that she loved the animated series “The Simpsons“. In 2008, one of the three TV channels played Simpsons episodes endlessly, she said. Simpsons creator Matt Groening intended his show to make people aware of environmental challenges and complications in ways that start conversations, she said.
Context makes a difference too. “I read ecoactivist discourse in South America and it seemed so darn white and privileged,” Pike said. “If you read “Burning Rage of a Dying Planet” in a comfortable U.S. suburb, it’s one thing. If you read the same book in Chile, it feels different, almost too precious, definitely not the tone I would take in talking about ecology in South American countries.”
The Center for Health Communication at Harvard University says that showing, not telling induces stronger emotional responses as visual imagery and helps our brains understand abstract and complex associations like those between climate and health.
Connecting emotion to change
Telling stories through books, plays or social media also help to create emotion, and change beliefs and behaviours. They may also reduce feelings of anxiety and depression that surface when bombarded with alarmist news about the climate crisis. Focusing on solutions is more effective.
Pike said the way to get through the barrage of media messages and talk about the climate crisis is with honesty, independence and humour. “Acknowledge the hypocrisy and move on toward solutions,” Pike said. “A solution offers me a choice, agency, a chance to put up a sail and navigate to a goal.”
Pike taught a class called “Environmental Reporting for a Hopeful Planet” in the spring 2024 semester. One assignment was “Forest Friday”: students were asked to read, watch or listen to examples of environmental storytelling.
One week, the students were assigned a video of Rebecca Solnit. She’s a writer, historian and activist who has been examining hope and the unpredictability of change for more than two decades. In 2023 she co-edited an anthology called “It’s Not Too Late”, a guide for finding hope even while climate change-induced disasters continue. This is what one student said after they watched that video:
“I felt reassured by her calmness and her endless lists of knowledge of times and places in which meaningful change has occurred. I think she makes many great points about the way that just because ideas don’t always get the opportunity to fully take shape they are still impactful on society as a whole.”
So, what’s the best way to write about the climate crisis?
“Read environmental writing and write,” Pike said. “Be so deeply curious about how ecology works, how nature and culture interact, how businesses and institutions works and their role in the climate crisis.”
Ways to write effectively
Having a community of people who also write about and care about the environment can also help. But most importantly, Pike said: “Work to tell a story well.”
This means reading the publications which interest you and seeing if your story would be a good fit. Try different mediums. Take Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax”. It’s a children’s book written in 1971 about a character who speaks for the trees as a business tycoon destroys the environment. The story encourages activism and involvement in making the situation better. In it the Lorax tells us: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
More recently, there are films like “Flow“, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best International Feature Film, and “The Wild Robot“, which was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Animated Feature.
In both, climate change is a world-building element; one showed a submerged Golden Gate Bridge, the other showed a flood of biblical proportions. But they’re both animated films, with cute animals coming together to save the world, reaching a younger audience who will grow up with climate change and its impacts.
Creating a story that can make people think about our planet and how we can tackle climate change isn’t easy. Pike said it is worth persevering.
“If you get tired, don’t give up,” Pike said. “Rest and get back to it when you can. We all plant seeds and it’s hard to say which ones will take.”
Three questions to consider:
What makes you switch off the news when a story about climate change comes on?
What happens to our brain when we show, rather than tell, in our writing on climate change?
What might you learn in a course like “Environmental Reporting for a Hopeful Planet?”
David John Baer McNicholas’s first novella is inspired by a darkly comedic poem he once wrote about a town that outlawed canned food and built a massive trebuchet, or catapult, to hurl the cans into the distance — only to receive thank-you notes tied to bricks hurled back at them.
Lately, McNicholas has been entangled in a real-life plot eerily similar to his writing. At the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, food pantries were empty despite a $50,000 grant meant to support them. When student publication The Young Warrior printed criticisms of school officials for these failures and the Associated Student Government began investigating, administrators swiftly retaliated — kicking students out of housing, putting them on probation, and even threatening them with lawsuits.
This may sound like the plot of a neo-noir film bleak enough to rival “Chinatown,” but for McNicholas, a creative writing student at IAIA and the founder and editor of The Young Warrior, it’s reality.
Young Warrior editor David McNicholas recalls, “Oh shit, they’re going to throw everything at me” for exposing the administration. (Ponic Photography)
McNicholas connects IAIA’s pattern of silencing dissent to broader institutional failures. He recounts how during a faculty meeting with the Board of Trustees, a sculpture professor once dared to mention an academic paper written by a former IAIA department head. The paper showed that even conservative estimates put IAIA’s staff turnover rate at about 30%. McNicholas says when the professor brought it up, “everyone in the meeting clammed up, and later they came down on him hard. They told him he embarrassed the dean of students and demanded he write a public apology and retraction. He wrote a coerced apology and quit the next day.”
The Young Warrior published the academic paper before quickly being told to retract it.
“We want better,” says McNicholas. “Student retention is 50%. Graduation is 25% . . . The faculty, staff, and students here are top-notch people, but the administration just supports the rising stars and lets everyone else evaporate.”
McNicholas’s own showdown with the administration began when he published an anonymous student letter and flyer accusing the dean of students of bullying and suggesting food-pantry funds had been misappropriated. The letter and flyer resonated with the student body, according to McNicholas, and many came forward to thank him and to offer support.
I love this school. I love the community. I love the students and the faculty. I struggle with the administration after this, but I think that that struggle was there long before I came along. I just kind of exposed it.
When McNicholas published the anonymous letter and flyer, he says students were being forced to buy meal plans they couldn’t always use while the dean of students, McNicholas says, dismissed the need for food pantries altogether, claiming, “Students have meal plans; they don’t need food pantries.”
This explanation rang hollow for McNicholas who, like many of his peers, falls below the poverty line and relies on food pantries to survive.
After the letter and flyer came out, the administration promptly accused McNicholas of “bullying” staff with his publication, and IAIA Provost Felipe Colón put him under investigation.
“They came down on me primarily, but also on a peer who had made an Instagram post, of all things,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Oh shit, they’re going to throw everything at me.’”
Anticipating housing sanctions, McNicholas preemptively left campus and lived out of his van.
“It sucked, because I wasn’t prepared for it. I had to go sleep in a friend’s driveway,” he remembers. The forcefulness of the school’s response only made McNicholas more suspicious, bringing to mind Shakespeare’s famous line, “The lady doth protest too much.”
Institute of American Indian Arts Can’t Ignore the First Amendment
Page (Two-Column)
Tell the Institute of American Indian Arts to lift sanctions against David McNicholas and revise its anti-bullying policy.
The situation escalated when the administration denied that the grant even existed during a meeting with McNicholas and other members of the Associated Student Government who had taken an interest in the matter. Despite the administration’s denials, an anonymous source provided McNicholas with a photocopy of a grant award letter for the rumored $50,000. Armed with this evidence, McNicholas and the ASG president confronted the administration, only to face threats of legal action.
The administration’s behavior took an emotional toll on students, according to McNicholas. One day, the ASG called a meeting to discuss the situation — just ASG members, since advisors employed by the college couldn’t be trusted — and the ASG president showed up in tears. She had just come from a meeting with IAIA President Robert Martin, who delivered a shocking ultimatum.
“She said that he told her the school was seriously considering suing ASG — and her — because of the bad publicity,” McNicholas says. “She came to us and said, ‘They told me to fix it.’ She was in tears, you know, and that made me mad.”
When they confronted the provost with the grant award letter, he changed his tune.
“He showed up at the next meeting and said, ‘Oh, you know what? I did some looking, I researched it, and I think I found the grant that you guys were talking about, and I’d like to come and explain how it was spent,’” McNicholas recalls. “I was like, yeah, I bet you do.”
Meanwhile, Provost Colón’s investigation of McNicholas for publishing the student critiques found him responsible for violating the school’s unconstitutional anti-bullying policy. Exhausted and beaten down, he was unable to attend the meeting where the provost attempted to explain the grant’s expenditures. McNicholas says, “I got the sheet he handed out, which showed budget-to-actual figures, but when pressed to release the ledger, he claimed bank statements might not go back that far. We’re talking a year, maybe two at most. I think he thought you could say that because he was with a room full of like 19, 20 year olds. But if I had been in that room, I would have pushed back.”
Though McNicholas later successfully appealed the housing sanctions and recovered about $2,000 in lost fees, he remains outraged at how other students were treated.
McNicholas never did accept IAIA’s “as little as possible” philosophy, in which truth had no place, power thrived on silence, and the ones who dared to ask questions were the first to pay the price.
“What I really can’t stand is that they did the same thing to a 19-year-old freshman for making an Instagram post. That person didn’t move out on their own accord. They lost all their housing and meal plan money. They lost $2,000,” McNicholas says. “They kicked that person out, kept their money, and made a 19-year-old student homeless. As far as I’m concerned, that’s unconscionable.”
Not only did the sanctions against McNicholas affect his ability to participate in campus life, they also threatened his employment opportunities, including a federal work-study opportunity that should have been protected from administrative interference.
“I was hired to be an orientation mentor at the end of last summer,” he says “And the day before I was going to start, I got a call from the director of that program who said, ‘Yeah, you can’t participate because you’re on institutional probation.’”
Finding himself ruthlessly targeted by the administration, McNicholas turned to the press. Teaming up with a few peers, they went to the Santa Fe Reporter, and the article that followed — which detailed the administration’s retaliatory actions against him — made an immediate impact.
“When that article came out, both the interim director and dean of students were gone within days,” he says. “Like, they were gone.”
Anticipating housing sanctions, Young Warrior editor David McNicholas preemptively left campus and lived out of his van. “It sucked, because I wasn’t prepared for it. I had to go sleep in a friend’s driveway.” (Ponic Photography)
After the Santa Fe Reporter exposé and leadership shakeup, the food pantry miraculously transformed. A 20-foot-long conference table in the Student Success Center, once filled with nothing but cans of tomatoes that no one was using, suddenly became a bounty of groceries.
Last semester, McNicholas delved into the intersection of journalism and free speech through an independent study. His research included works like Dean Spade’s “Mutual Aid” and FIRE’s “Guide to Free Speech on Campus,” laying the groundwork for his evolving understanding of rights and responsibilities.
This semester, McNicholas has already published a new issue of The Young Warrior, which reflects his growing interest in matters of free expression. The issue includes a letter from FIRE written on his behalf and a personal acknowledgment of his own rights and responsibilities as a journalist.
“Yes, the school violated my rights and they need to be held accountable, but also, I could have been a better journalist. And there’s room to talk about that,” he says with characteristic humility. The issue also strikes a lighter tone with a comic poking fun at the provost — because, as McNicholas says with a grin, “why not?”
The intersection of art, politics, and personal freedom is a driving force for McNicholas. “My work is very personal,” he explains. “I live in a political morass metaphorically surrounded by people on both sides of a binary who think censorship is fine as long as it’s censoring the other guy. I’m a non-binary thinker. I’m an anarchist. For an artist like me to make art, I can’t be worried about who I will offend. I can’t tailor my work to thread between all these idiots who can’t think for themselves, who can’t be critical without taking sides. If I worried about that, I couldn’t get up in the morning. I couldn’t be an artist.”
McNicholas never did accept IAIA’s “as little as possible” philosophy, in which truth had no place, power thrived on silence, and the ones who dared to ask questions were the first to pay the price. Nevertheless, he speaks with deep affection about IAIA.
“I love this school. I love the community. I love the students and the faculty. I struggle with the administration after this, but I think that that struggle was there long before I came along. I just kind of exposed it.”
