Kamala Harris bought us “joy.” As a substitute, we acquired a crushing defeat and a return to the depressing days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
I’m taking a look at {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 virtually identically inexperienced eyes gaze in tandem at somebody or one thing exterior 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 picture reveals a beaded “VOTE” bracelet on the wrist of the protester on the proper. 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 facet, nobody to consider 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 picture have found a special form of pleasure. It’s the pleasure of solidarity, of function and neighborhood. Ultimately, it is going to 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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