The World Was His Country

By JAMES M. CULLEN

Garry Davis was a song-and-dance man who was swept off the Broadway stage to become a bomber pilot in World War II, but he was so ashamed about the bombing of civilian targets that he gave up his US citizenship in 1948 and declared himself a citizen of the world.

Filmmaker Arthur Kanegis acquired the rights to Davis’ story in 2000 and wrote a screenplay that was envisioned as a narrative feature based on Davis’ life, before producers decided he was not well enough known to justify the projected $55 million budget. So Kanegis and producer Melanie N. Bennett switched to a documentary based on Davis’ 1961 memoir, “The World is My Country” (later reissued as “My Country is the World”). Kanegis and his team started researching archives in Paris, at the University of California in Los Angeles and in Washington at the Library of Congress and the National Archives. “We were stunned at what we were able to find in photos and old film footage,” Kanegis said.

Martin Sheen, as narrator, introduces Davis as “an actor, a song-and-dance man who lept off the Broadway state onto a world stage in 1948 … taking on cops, border guards, armies and whole nations, showing us that we don’t have to accept a world ravaged by war, plunging into environmental disaster.”

Davis gave up his citizenship at the US Embassy in Paris in 1948, turning in his passport and declaring to a consular officer that he was a world citizen. When the consul replied, “There’s no such thing,” Davis responded, “There is now!” With no documents, in similar legal shape as refugees around the world, he staged a six-day sit-in at the temporary headquarters of the United Nations in Paris, which was deemed international territory.

He attracted the support of French intellectuals, including Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, who helped him stage his famous “I interrupt” protest at the UN General Assembly. “I interrupt in the name of people not represented here!” he shouted from a balcony, continuing, “The nations you represent divide us and lead us into the abyss of total war. What we need is one government for one world. And if you won’t do it, step aside and a people’s world assembly will arise from our own ranks to do it.”

Davis then held a huge rally that packed 20,000 people to the Velodrome D’Hiver. The next day, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, with the Soviet Union abstaining. Its author, Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote in her newsletter “how much better it would be if Mr. Davis would set up his own governmental organization [because the UN was not a governing body, she conceded] and start then and there a worldwide international government.”

Over the next two years, Davis and his French colleagues registered 750,000 people as world citizens. He was jailed 34 times, mainly for being undocumented, but he formed the World Service Authority, headquartered in Washington, D.C., to issue world citizen passports and identity cards to more than 2.5 million people. Before he died, he mailed passports to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Sheen brought 91-year-old Davis onto a stage before a cheering crowd in Burlington, Vt., in his last performance, as Davis was dying of cancer. “I am very appreciative that you are here as an audience and I am here to entertain you,” he says. “So what do I need this cane for?” He throws away the cane and starts to tap dance, which the crowd loved.

Davis saw the rough cut of the documentary shortly before he died. “It meant so much to him,” Kanegis said. “It was very frustrating to him that he had this incredible amount to contribute to the world and the world wasn’t listening, and I think he died in much greater peace knowing his story would be told.” He added, “Cancer did finally get him, but he never stopped. Until his last breath, he was working for a better world.”

And the guy who wasn’t well-known enough to merit a feature narrative got a front-page obituary in the New York Times July 28, 2013.

“The World Is My Country” was released as a 71-minute feature-length movie in 2017. A 58 minute TV version played on Public TV stations from April through June. You can see the TV version, with a live Q&A scheduled for July 21, at TheWorldIsMyCountry.com.

James M. Cullen is editor of The Progressive Populist.

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2021

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