Kamala Harris bought us “joy.” As a substitute, we obtained a crushing defeat and a return to the depressing days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
I’m {a photograph} taken by Stephanie Keith at an October 5 rally for Gaza and Lebanon in Manhattan’s Occasions Sq.. It captures a pair of younger protesters, one donning a Palestinian keffiyeh, marching in an embrace. Their nearly identically inexperienced eyes gaze in tandem at somebody or one thing outdoors the body. Their faces put on a pensive however targeted countenance. Within the background, a blurred mix of flags, protest indicators, and Occasions Sq.’s blinding digital billboards. The underside-left nook of the photograph reveals a beaded “VOTE” bracelet on the wrist of the protester on the best. However vote for whom, precisely?
Israel’s brutal US-backed assaults on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon left many American voters politically orphaned. For them, there was no “lesser evil” on both aspect, nobody to imagine or belief. The home was already on fireplace, and each presidential candidates confirmed as much as the race brandishing a field of matches.
Amid Washington’s butchery, fakery, and fuckery, people like these in Keith’s photograph have found a special sort of pleasure. It’s the pleasure of solidarity, of function and group. Eventually, it’ll prevail.
Hakim Bishara is a Senior Editor at Hyperallergic. He’s a recipient of the 2019 Andy Warhol Basis and Artistic Capital Arts Writers Grant and he holds an MFA in Artwork Writing from the Faculty of Visible…
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