On January 5, 2021 there’s talk of a “stolen” election “protest” to take place at our nation’s Capitol. Here, on the opposite side of the country, I beg my partner to pack up the car with me in the middle of the night. My WWII trauma genetics are flaring up in a big way and I feel a need to escape to Canada, now, before it’s too late. We don’t slip away in the night.
January 6th, I watch things unfold on social media – my good friend and colleague Nate Gowdy is in DC documenting the terrorist attack for Rolling Stone. Within a day the National Guard shows up here too, and my usual dog walk through the capitol campus is interrupted by tall chain-link fences defending the legislators inside.
Nate spent the better part of a year collecting his thoughts, photos and context for his first monograph Insurrection. I feel privileged to have edited his work. Now, over a year later, some of the terrorists arrested at the attack on the Capitol are having their day in court. The book feels important. A limited, second edition print is available here.
Nate and I were recently interviewed by Yuko Kodama on KBCS – you can listen to the interview on their radio archive.
I was honored to include a letter from the editor in the book. It reads as follows.
My maternal grandmother survived for almost three years at Auschwitz. For me, WWII always feels nearby.
Oma is cynical and practical and careful. She is physically active in the extreme, until she can’t be—which dramatically affects her mental health. Leading up to the 2016 election, I live with her and help around the house. Her PTSD-triggered dementia picks up in relation to Donald Trump’s rise in news coverage—she says that he sounds just like Hitler. On election night, huddled in front of her old TV, things start to look bad. Oma goes to bed early, pessimistic and scared. I stay up, convinced that things can’t possibly go the way they do. In the morning, I see the opened newspaper on her table with that smug orange face and the word “President” in the headline. For the rest of the day, Oma mutters to herself, “It’s happening again.”
Evil is a religious construct that does not exist. Leaders who emerge during times of civil unrest are a reflection of their volatile societal climate. Like pre-WWII Germany, we are divided and in disagreement on where to place the blame. We are governed by a democracy built on racism, bigotry, sexism, and ableism that prioritizes corporate profits over human rights. We exist in a celebrity obsessed culture that mistrusts intellectualism. Together, we are suffering the comprehensive effects of end-stage capitalism. As a nation, we are experiencing intolerable discomfort. People are scared. Our pain and fear present as anger. I am angry. The people in these photographs are angry.
Collective fury is easily manipulated. The eruption of fear and hate documented in these pages does not end with the leader who incited it. We are vulnerable to the next cunning politician who stokes our terror and encourages our rage. Our political activism is more imperative than ever. Vote like lives depend on it—they do.