Dissent is democracy

My lens focused on Social Justice: Civil Rights; Women’s Choice and equality; Black Women Marching for social, economic and legal justice; Vigils protesting U.S. military training in torture techniques; Occupy Movement, for economic justice for the 99 percent of working Americans, rather than the wealthiest 1 percent; Poor Peoples Campaign for decent healthcare and education for our Nation’s poorest; Immigrant Rights; Students’ March Against Gun Violence; and, Freedom of the Press, Expression and Assembly--sustaining a viable and humane democracy and society only if actively exercised by its Citizens.

 
Acknowledgement and gratitude to contributors who shared their stories, commitment and creativity, and allowed me to photograph their banners.  It is hoped that the Exhibit captures the spirit of Dissent in our Democracy, and gives encouragement to the next generation who are taking up their banners and speaking out for their future, the future of their children, the planet and for the life of all beings.

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The story:
 

Dissent is Democracy began as a way to process personal and collective shock, anger and despair following events of  9-11-2001. In its aftermath, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, followed by war on Iraq on March 20, 2003, ending in December 2011, nearly a decade later. 

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In 2001, my husband and I were living outside Washington, D.C. just a few Metro stops from the White House.  I was a social worker with a nature photography side-business.  Having participated in a local festival, I was home that Tuesday morning, cutting nature images for a collage.  As I watched the news, the World Trade Towers, ablaze and billowing smoke, flashed onto the screen.  I spent the next eight hours transfixed on surreal images of destruction, as the cutouts became a collage and a way to process despair amidst a national tragedy.  

 

The war drums were soon beating loudly in Washington.  Targeting Muslims and people of Arab descent as the enemy, disturbed me and many others in the U.S. and around the world.

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In October 2001, citizens converged on the Nation’s Capital to protest the invasion of Afghanistan.  I grabbed my ancient Pentax K-1000, boarded the Metro and made my way to Malcolm X Park.  Marching, talking with people that day, I re-affirmed my civic duty not to remain silent, but to be an active participant.  With my camera as witness, people from all walks of life are shown exercising their First Amendment right to Freedom of Expression and Assembly, and give a face and a voice to collective dissent against war and for a more just society and world.  

 

Life experiences that shape us most often have deep origins.  Growing up in a small segregated southern town, I was educated to a world of social and racial injustice early on.  A visual, visceral memory: witnessing three African-American students endure stony glares on narrow stairways to and from class, the first to integrate my allwhite high school in 1965.  The air was thick with racial tension, as a billboard  outside town read, “Welcome to Ku Klux Klan Country,” removed only in 1977;  2015, the  community again witnessed racial acts of vandalism and intimidation at an African American Church.

By the late 1980’s, I became aware of our government’s destructive policies in Central America.  Refugees were fleeing and flooding across our borders during repression and civil war, as their governments’ militaries disappeared, killed and tortured citizens who spoke out for better living conditions, and the right to organize.  Volunteering for the Central American Refugee Center (CRECEN)  in Los Angeles, travelling on human rights delegations to El Salvador, I saw first-hand how U.S. funding for right wing governments devastate the very poor.  I heard witness accounts from those who had been tortured and visited mass community gravesites.  

 

I met my husband at CRECEN and, on our wedding day in January 1991, Desert Storm, the first invasion of  Iraq began.  A decade later, another invasion and war, this time, Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Documenting became a weekend activity.  Prior to Invasion:  February 15th, The Day the World Said No to War -  30 million protested worldwide, hoping to build public opinion against impending war.  Claiming Weapons of Mass Destruction (never found), war became a foregone conclusion. March 20, 2003, media headlines blared, Night of Shock and Awe, as rockets lit up the sky over Bagdad, U.S. saturation bombing killing civilians as well as military targets. The world marched for the next eight years, as body bags arrived at Dover Air Force Base and the death toll mounted.  Veterans took to the streets; mock coffin processions and Arlington West, a temporary cemetery, was constructed on the sand in Santa Monica, CA. American soldiers: 4,424 dead; 31,952 wounded. A half million Iraqis dead and their country’s infrastructure destroyed.  Back home, veterans struggle with trauma and readjustment to a society that does not fully acknowledge or grasp the psychological and social cost of war to them, their families and the very fabric of our society as a whole.  Healing and repairing injury to body and soul becomes an individual, community and national responsibility.

 

Dissent is Democracy was shown as a collective for the first time in April 2019, at the Glass Outhouse Gallery in Twenty nine Palms, California.  Images are accompanied by descriptive text, quotes and reflections.

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