Au Revoir Les Enfants

Written By Pink Flowers

Nazis are not the worst, y’all — for realz!

Watching Au Revoir Les Enfants. That’s some heartbreaking shit to watch. Little kids gettin’ snatched up by the Nazis. When I was the age of the kids in the movie, I’d of thought “What, villians the Germans!” Now, I’m smarter than that. The Germans—the Nazis—were messed up, but that’s not what makes a Holocaust. What makes a tragedy like what happened to the Jews, was a whole lot of average people—most people—doing jack shit.

We live in a world where awful shit happens because most would rather not do something. It’s not even tragic. It just is. That’s kind of why I find it easy to forgive the Hitlers (and the Trumps?) of the world. As bad as they might be, it’s the sheer mediocrity of the rest of folks that makes them—the monsters among us—even possible. It gets to be so easy blaming the wrong-doers, meanwhile we let the do-nothings off the historical hook. We even demonize do-gooders for failing to be average.

Get burned up as you want. Most people you know would not have raised a finger to stop a single atrocity history has served up. Most people have even tried to stay the hands of people (stop people) who want to get involved in ending social ills. That’s one that keeps me scratching my head. Serenity is being able to live with any peace of mind in a world where most people don’t share your morality. How do we continue living with a sense of wholeness, as one among many, when we know full well the whole body is a basic bitch?

Fortunately nature has a way of righting the balance and whatever is out of whack eventually implodes in itself. That don’t mean we should make it any easier for the bullies. I just don’t need to feel like it’s all on me—or any number of us—to restore order. That’s the consolation in all of this. A lot of people will suffer the tremors of human nature, but for the most part the same basic bitches that won’t raise a finger to stop a wrong, won’t raise a finger to do one either.

It’s best we live in a world of the ordinary. A few out of balance on either side makes it all work, I guess. What do you think?

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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