⚡Do Not March DCI⚡

This is not a warning. This is a refusal.

In recent days, MAASIN released messaging asserting that immigration enforcement, specifically ICE, is now a risk factor that marching arts organizations and families should “prepare” for.

That alone should have ended this conversation.

If an arts activity requires families to consider federal law enforcement risk just to participate, the activity has already failed.

If organizations respond to that reality by issuing vague warnings instead of drawing firm protective boundaries, what they are doing is not safety. It is liability management.

I know how these systems work. I have been in seven cults. Drum corps was one of them.

That statement is not rhetorical. High-control systems share recognizable traits: sleep deprivation, control of food and water, medical neglect, isolation, retaliation against dissent, and constant reframing of harm as “part of the experience.” Drum corps has normalized all of this for decades.

We already know the record.

Kids get injured and are expected to march through pain. Sleep deprivation is routine. Dehydration and underfeeding are normalized. Medical care is delayed or denied. Sexual abuse has occurred and has been covered up. Whistleblowers are punished. Silence is enforced.

That alone should have been enough to shutter the activity.

Now add this.

When MAASIN publicly states that ICE activity is a concern for the marching arts without simultaneously stating that organizations will refuse cooperation, protect member information, or absorb that risk at the institutional level, the message being sent is not care.

It is deterrence.

This kind of messaging does something very specific. It tells undocumented and mixed-status kids that they are a liability. It tells them that their presence is a risk. It tells them that they should think twice.

No explicit exclusion is required when fear does the work for you.

Let’s be clear about responsibility.

Drum corps organizations, including DCI, are private nonprofits. They are not law enforcement. They are not required to act as extensions of ICE. If they choose to issue warnings instead of protections, that is a choice.

Warnings create paper trails. Protections create obligations.

MAASIN’s messaging protects institutions. It does not protect kids.

An arts activity should never ask children to accept bodily harm, psychological coercion, medical neglect, and potential exposure to state violence in exchange for participation. That is not education. That is exploitation.

I am not interested in reform. I am not interested in better wording. I am not interested in another task force or guide.

My recommendation is simple.

Do not march DCI. Do not send your kids to march DCI.

Not because of one new risk, but because this system has proven, over decades, that when danger appears, it protects itself first and pushes the consequences downward.

There are other ways to make art. There are other ways to learn discipline. There are other ways to belong.

This system does not deserve another generation.

Enough.

Edward Michael Francis