Here Begins a Roadtrip of Dissent

Journal Entry #11

In the heart of the Florida Everglades Photo: Jose Mejia / @josemeji4

Enough is enough.

It is now 2026 and I’m on a roadtrip of dissent. Why? Because it’s necessary. And joining me on this journey is none other than the famous Rook T. Winchester.

CLOSER TO THE EDGE and OwlMedia are joining forces to cover the necessary stories.

I’m ready to interview real people: the ones being affected by the fascism plaguing America and the ones ready to fight against it. I’m ready document dissent in real time, yell at the ICE agents terrorizing communities and witness those communities band together to drive them out. I’m ready to amplify truth in a time where lies trade at high prices, recycled by state-sanctioned right-wing pundits and consumed and regurgitated by the lowest common denominators.

I’ve been ready for a while. While I permeated in the obligations of my privileged holiday season, I lied in wait for what the next year would bring.

I rung the New Year in during an annual family trip to Vegas, racked with guilt at the excess I indulged in while the world continued to burn around me.

I needed a break. Nine years of shouting into the void, screaming we would end up in this exact place if we didn’t get our act together. One year of traveling to protests every other week, documenting dissent and trying to get involved wherever I could in a desperate attempt to help turn the tide in the final hour.

One week in Vegas and it felt like a betrayal of a years worth of work.

I cannot bring myself to rest while the wicked wreak havoc on the world at large. I can only drown my sorrows in the free booze the cocktail waitress passes me at twenty minute intervals while I chip away at the 5-dollar-minimum video craps machine, wallowing in self-loathing at my complicity in the crudest displays of capitalism.

As the sun of a new year rose on a hungover me through the curtains of my hotel room, I longed not for the revels of the adult playground outside the twenty-third story window. I wanted nothing more than to be back on the ground, documenting the madness and the moments between, in a modern day America desperately in need of voices ready to push back against the dissonant screaming of trolls and tyrants.

But when I got back to North Carolina after leaving the city of sin, I found my car totaled on the side of the street where I left it parked.

It was a scramble to remedy the situation. The lack of a working vehicle presented a major problem. Rook and I had planned the road trip near the end of 2025, and we already had obligations to fill. He was set to fly into Miami, and I had planned on driving from North Carolina all the way there to pick him up. We would meet Jose Mejia and travel to Alligator Alcatraz a few days after arriving.

I was set to hit the road the next day but a hit and run from a suspected drunk driver over the New Year’s weekend took my means of doing so. Thankfully, as my car was carted off to the junkyard, my father offered his old SUV for the trip.

So the next day, I hit the road.

My first stop was in Charleston. Serendipitously I ended up being in Vegas at the same time as an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. We caught up over a lost decade, and after telling her about my roadtrip, she offered me shelter in her home-city to break up the long drive to Florida.

I had never been to Charleston. Walking downtown was the peaceful palette cleanser I needed before making the long drive to Florida and getting back to the fulfilling yet emotionally taxing work ahead of me.

And then the news broke. As I lurched over a smoky pool table in the middle of nowhere, my phone screamed at me from inside the pocket of my jet-black jeans.

During the escalations of ICE in Minneapolis, an innocent woman, Renee Nicole Good, was murdered in cold-blood by one of the cowards in face-covering.

Rook T. Winchester was already in Minneapolis covering the protests against ICE. I gave him a call to take the temperature on the ground there and to link him up with Dawoke Farmer who was heading to Minnesota with a mission to antagonize the American Gestapo for their crimes.

In only a couple of days Rook would be leaving to meet me in Florida, not knowing just how intense the situation on the ground would get in a city he was gearing up to part with.

I left Charleston the next day and made my long drive to Florida. Nine hours of open road and blasting the music from my personally curated driving playlist and I finally made it to West Palm Beach where I met Jose Mejia. There we covered a vigil for Renee Nicole Good.

You can check out images from the vigil here:

We stayed at the vigil for an hour, paid our respects and met some of the organizers, but by its end my body felt like it was shutting down. I needed food and sleep after such a long drive. We drove an hour longer to Ft. Lauderdale where I was able to get both.

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The cool breeze of the previous night did not prepare me for the January Miami sun. By the time we made it to the Miami airport to get Rook, my back was already soaked with sweat.

We had no plans: an off-day with no interviews on the docket or protests to attend. So we decided to be tourists, much to the dismay of a local like Jose.

We spent our morning eating ceviche and having a few pisco sours when we were jump-scared by a traffic collision that happened a mere twenty feet from us. An SUV drove right into a moped, flipping its driver over the front of their car. Thankfully both parties were okay, but it did enough to send us a jolt to kick-start our day.

We went to the botanical gardens, and then went to the Holocaust Memorial, before ending the day with some good food and drinks, and a plan for the next day.

You can read Rook T. Winchester’s recount of the first day in Miami here:

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The next day we attended an ICE Out For Good protest in Boca Raton where a larger crowd than we expected gathered to pay their respects to Renee Nicole Good and demand an end to ICE’s tyranny.

There we interviewed the organizers of the protest from Hope and Action Indivisible and spoke to Oliver Larkin, a progressive candidate in Florida’s 23rd district. You can read all about that and watch the interviews here:

After a successful protest and gathering a lot of footage, Rook convinced us to travel out to the Everglades. We took an airboat on Buffalo Tiger’s Airboat Tours on Miccosukee Reservation Land, owned and operated by environmental activist and tribe member Betty Osceola.

Photo: Jose Mejia / @josemeji4

Photo: Jose Mejia / @josemeji4

Rook had already made acquaintance with our airboat captain John, having spoken to him the previous year while working to contact Betty Oscoela for an interview.

He told us she’d be making fry bread at a hippie music festival just thirty miles further into the Everglades. Naturally, we knew we had to go.

I’m sure Rook will write about the experience in length, so I’ll spare the details, as I’m more inclined to share the work we did than the leisurely experiences we had. I will say though, attending a hippie music festival in the middle of Big Cypress Swamp is a core memory I’ll always cherish.

We made sure to have as much fun as possible, communing with fellow bohemians and vagabonds. Necessary joy, knowing the weight of what we were covering the next day.

Here’s a short clip from the festival:

We ended up getting a hotel in Downtown Miami later that night, as we would need to be there the next day to catch the bus for the vigil outside of Alligator Alcatraz. I woke up the next morning and walked out onto the balcony of our hotel, soaking in the towering skyline and editing some of the content we captured the previous days.

My next piece will be about our experience at Alligator Alcatraz, the interviews we conducted, and the road moving forward.

So much is happening all at once, and its been hard to remember to enjoy the road while this country destabilizes in real time. I feel like my mind fractures into so many places at once on the daily and its a daunting task just to pick up the pieces up before I’m even able to use that mind to approach my work.

I know so many others feel the same and so many have it so much worse. That’s what this work is about. Helping others to pick up the pieces of their fractured mind. To share stories, share feelings and show that none of us are alone in this fight.

Together we can win, but only together.

If it were up to me this roadtrip would never end. I’d stay on the road of dissent, covering anything and everything I can. Hopping from one place to another. Maybe I will.

We’re supposed to end this specific trip after Chicago, but I’m thinking I’ll head to Minneapolis directly after if ICE remains terrorizing that community and escalating. If I’m able to make the money to keep going, I don’t think I’ll stop until we win.

If you’d like to help us on our road to dissent, please consider donating to our GoFundMe here: GoFundMe