On Saturday, April 5th, over 1,300 cities coordinated nationwide mass protests in opposition to the systematic dismantling of civil services by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I attended one such rally at Seattle Center; an estimated 25,000 of our neighbors gathered there beneath the Space Needle from noon to 3PM.
Speakers included House Representative Pramila Jayapal, and local representatives from the Gender Justice League. What I heard was appropriately inspiring, and more than worthy of coverage. But for this piece, I’d like to try something a little different. I want to direct your attention away from the stage, and into to the crowd.
In my eyes, three things set HandsOff! Seattle apart from any protest like it: the sheer depth of knowledge, creative expression, and intersectionality of its homemade signage. Even in the absence of formal coordination, the passion and rawness of the general public’s art uniquely captures this strange moment in American history with exceptional clarity and cohesion.
To be clear, mass-produced signage from organizer Indivisible was available. It simply wasn’t necessary. Instead, hundreds of Seattle families spent upwards of an entire, real-life workday channeling their fury into works of art. Attendees were so spoiled for choice— so completely and utterly surrounded by unique and highly personalized messaging— that they could go the entirety of the event without ever noticing the official branding.
Here is just a fraction of that artwork.1
K. Turner
Turner’s cartoon, which depicts Vladamir Putin and Elon Musk wielding Trump as an un-glorified hand-puppet, would not be out of place in the New York Times comic section.2 And like any good piece of political satire, there is truth in its absurdity.
Within his first 100 days alone, Trump has: publicly denigrated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, purposefully excluded Ukraine from their own ceasefire negotiations, pressured them into accepting wildly unfavorable terms, facilitated Russia’s continued bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure by withholding critical intelligence, and falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war in the first place.
And that’s just the stuff related to Ukraine. Trump also wasted no time in waging economic warfare against our closest allies, has sewn international distrust and discord by not-so-subtly threatening to annex Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, and even appointed Tulsi Gabbard– a conspiracy theorist with a well-documented and intensely troubling history of regurgitating Kremlin propaganda– as the director of National Intelligence. Regardless of whether he has pursued these policies with the explicit intent of serving Russian national interests, the result is the same.
This is to say nothing of the myriad of ways that Elon Musk has personally benefited from his own proximity to Trump. In exchange for obscene campaign donations, he has been given the president’s blessing to swiftly and extra-legally close the offices of multiple federal agencies which just so happen to have been investigating his companies. Musk has repeatedly been allowed to reap the benefits of both being and not being an official government employee, depending on which designation is most convenient at the present moment. Protests which target his business interests are now being preferentially escalated as acts of domestic terrorism.
So when Turner depicts the worst people you know passing the president around like a toy, it really isn’t that far from reality. The only part of Turner’s cartoon which can truly be considered hyperbole is that Putin is technically fisting the doll-president. Which, to the best of our knowledge, has not happened yet.
Turner’s other signs included a dig at cybertruck owners, and objection to the continued assault on women’s bodily autonomy outlined in Project 2025.
The former is especially relevant at a local level; it has been an absolute pleasure to watch the fam humiliate owners, sabotage dealerships, and just generally putting the “proud” in Proudhon.
Speaking of the Cyberstuck…
Anonymous
At Trump’s post-inauguration party on January 20th, Musk concluded his speech with two extremely deliberate and energetic Nazi salutes. Networks tied themselves in pretzels to avoid calling it that, despite the billionaire’s years-long rap sheet flirting with– and then openly embracing— Neo-Nazi ideology.
And look, I know you know all this already. You’ve seen it a hundred times. But I’m not spelling this out for your benefit. There’s a chance that readers in the future don’t know what he did, or that they have forgotten, and we can’t have that now, can we?
No no no. Here at Haste Makes Waste, we play by Inglorious Basterd rules; you don’t get to take the uniform off.
By the way, a cool detail about the Kool-Aid one which my photos didn’t capture: the pitcher that Juicey-Trump is holding on the left-hand side extends beyond the border of the sign, as if bursting out of frame. I thought that was a nice touch. Very on-brand.
Grow Up Art
This series of signs is from all the way across the pond. It was first spotted by The London Economic a few weeks ago, as an pop-up street installation. The Grow Up Art website says they’re two people, father and son. The person carrying it in this particular instance mentioned they were a friend of the original artist. And I shall be making no attempt to verify that claim, because I’d very much like for everyone involved to continue getting away with such mischief. 🙂
Anonymous
This protestor made a shadowbox-style variation of the “This is Fine” meme, a single panel from the webcomic Gunshow, by artist KC Green. Despite concluding in 2014, the image saw a resurgence in popularity during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, perfectly capturing the inner scream of millions of folks sheltering in place while the world seemingly burned around them.
The “tariffic” pun is in reference to the misnamed “reciprocal tariffs” briefly implemented via executive order earlier this month. Economists have been warning since before the election that this plan would be disastrous for Americans, and it was. Unfortunately, this sign has only become more accurate.
In the days immediately after this protest, the stock market continued to crater in anticipation of these tariffs, which finally went into effect at midnight on April 9th. At 6am GMT that same morning, Trump posted to his followers on Truth Social (which he also owns) that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY“. Exactly three hours and forty one minutes after that post, Trump announced he had changed his mind.
Members of Trump’s inner circle appear to have indulged in a bit of insider trading. For example, The New York Times reports that Marjorie Taylor Greene made tens of thousands of dollars of suspiciously timed trades just before and during the tariff switcheroo. I know, I’m shocked, too! Not Marge! Not our bastion of righteousness!
But by far the biggest gains were seen by the very same billionaires who were given front-row seats at Trump’s inauguration; Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos. It’s probably just a coincidence that Musk’s net worth has been in free-fall recently, as a result of the wildly successful Tesla boycotts. Or that Musk is infamous for using an similar trick.
There still aren’t too many outlets willing to call all this what it is; naked securities fraud. Business Insider frames it as Trump “flinching” due to “pressure”. CNN only mentions his social media posts in passing, affording more space to Trump’s preferred account (people were “getting a little yippy yappy”). The Associated Press has come the closest, with Bernard Condon writing:
It was a prescient call by the president. Maybe too prescient.
Anyway, my favorite thing about this sign is the illusion of depth. The shadows it cast in the sun really stood out in the crowd. My second favorite thing, of course, is the googly eyes. They make everything better.
Anonymous
There’s going to be quite a bit of monarch imagery in this piece, and it’s a comparison that Trump invited himself. In March, the official White House Twitter page posted an AI-generated Time Magazine cover of Trump wearing a monarch’s crown, along with the text “LONG LIVE THE KING”. Here’s the original, for as long as that remains up.
Asked to describe his process, the artist that made these signs said they struggled to find the right crown for their depiction of Donald Trump, because quote: “he doesn’t deserve a real one”. Eventually, they said, they settled on the logo of Crown Royal whiskey. Which, incidentally, is a Canadian brand. I wonder if that was on purpose?
The second sign, depicting a milk carton, is really interesting to me, too. Its referencing the federal oath of office, which in theory applies not only to judges, but congress, the senate, and even the president himself. It is entirely incompatible with both the January 6th insurrection, or the ongoing one; the slapdash deconstruction of our government agencies and rule of law.
The carton is emblazoned with an elephant; the symbol of the Republican party, and it is accompanied by text which reads, “Did you forget your oath?”. At first, such an appeal might seem out of place at an ostensibly leftist protest. But I don’t think so. Conservatives are getting sick of this shit, too, and their representatives are watching.
Before we parted, the artist quoted James 2:14. They paraphrased the lesson they’d taken from it: You show me your faith by what you believe, and I’ll show you my faith by what I do. It’s maybe the only time I’ve ever had the bible quoted at me at a protest that I agreed with, and which wasn’t accompanied by a slew of slurs. What a refreshing change of pace!
I didn’t pry into this particular human’s political affiliation (Democrats can be Christian, too, after all), but it gave me hope that there were some conservative folks in that crowd that also find our current predicament untenable.
Anonymous
The second sign requires a bit of context if you aren’t plugged into Twitter.3
Earlier, we talked about the tariff plan that Trump published on April 2nd. Economists were puzzled how one would derive the tax obligations of foreign penguins, as several of the countries listed are in fact uninhabited islands. Where did any of these numbers come from? James Surowiecki (former financial columnist for the New Yorker) reverse-engineered the answer within a couple of hours. Apparently, it wasn’t hard. From the original Twitter thread:
They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.
Surowiecki describes this as “extraordinary nonsense”.
White House Press Secretary Kush Desai refuted Surowiecki’s work, providing what he says is the correct formula (depicted on the above sign). There was just one little problem: that’s the same formula, you great big dingus!4 Presumably, he saw it expressed algebraically and was unable to read it. I can’t fault him for that– I wouldn’t have been able to, either– but I’m also not confidently misrepresenting foreign policy on behalf of the US government.
To make matters worse, there’s compelling evidence to suggest this formula was AI generated to begin with. Here’s an experiment by economist Rohit Krishnan, who prompted five different models and received the same (bad) advice from each one. One of those models, Grok, is also owned by our favorite friend Elon Musk, who had indicated months earlier that he fully intended to automate government analysis and decision-making tasks.
All of this happened just a few days before the protest, so it was hot-off-the-press. This artist was fucking on it.
E. Hunter
Here’s some more Trump-as-king commentary. My photo unfortunately won’t do this one justice:
Towering over the crowd, this butterfly puppet– or is it a float?– had a six-foot wingspan, maybe more. From what I could tell, the head was fashioned from a bicycle helmet and a pair of spaghetti strainers. Technically, that makes this the only sign which is also a hat.
The wings looked hand-painted, and they apparently worked better than expected because the wind kept threatening to blow the whole thing out of frame. The artists said they’ve been working on this contraption for a while, and weren’t quite able to finish it in time. They’re planning to mount it a bit differently for any future protests, so that its wings can move independently.
Nice job, fam! I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.
Anonymous
The artist behind this double-sided protest sign said it was the first one they’ve ever made. I think they did a great job! The butterfly clips were made of a reflective plastic or metal, which really made it stand out. Honestly, it kind of looks like a book cover.
There are apparently two references going on here. The main text is a quote from a book called The Cemetery of Untold Stories, written by Julia Alvarez. It was apparently featured on NPR’s “Here and Now Any Time” last April.
Meanwhile, the alternate acronym for DOGE, “Department of Greed and Evil”, is a quote from Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who may very well have been speaking at the time the photo was taken. That’s pretty cool!
Stephen Troxel
In February, 1,000 National Park Services employees were suddenly terminated as part of DOGE’s crusade against so-called “government waste and fraud”. This had immediate and unambiguously negative consequences, straining an already understaffed (yet highly rated) agency.
A week later, Musk justified the layoffs decision on Fox News, claiming that a single survey had somehow cost 1 billion dollars. This was immediately and trivially fact-checked by CBS.
You should know that this happened after journalists had already found enormous accounting errors and/or bald lies in DOGE’s online “wall of receipts”. At the time, it was inflated by billions of dollars. DOGE began obfuscating the data to frustrate future reporting, to mixed success. At any rate, it was already known Musk’s accounting simply was not credible.
The NPS layoffs have since been challenged, paused, and unpaused again. Another wave is scheduled this month.5 A voluntary resignation window had just opened in anticipation; it began April 4th, so this topic was quite fresh in attendees minds.
Smokey imagery was surprisingly popular at HandsOff, by the way. I saw him in a couple of different contexts throughout the day, from advocating for federal worker’s rights to variations of his “only you can do X” catchphrase (with the X usually being “fight fascism”). Based on my research of what went down in other cities, this was not just a local thing either; for example, here he is in Bucks County Pennsylvania.
Andrea Butler
Andrea was actually the first artist I encountered Saturday, painting on the lawn of Neototems Children’s Garden. She said that she typically only painted indoors, but felt compelled to capture the moment as folks passed by on the way to Seattle Center that day.
Generous with her knowledge, Andrea was happy to share some painting and composition tips, which is also why this is the only photo in the series to even attempt the latter. She also said she didn’t really think of what she was doing as protest art, although she conceded it was both art, and at a protest.
Although come to think of it, chatting with her is what gave me the idea for this article in the first place. So I guess she ended up making some anyway, technically?
I’m unsure whether she was ever able to finish her piece, what with me bothering her all afternoon, but if you’re curious how it turned out you can keep an eye on her Instagram.
Anonymous
In this one, the White House is depicted behind a “for sale” sign. The number printed on it is in reference to the total donations made by Musk in the leadup to the 2024 election. It effectively bought him access to every arm of government.
I like this design a lot. It’s simple, poignant, and impactful. Sums this whole shitshow up quite nicely. Well done!
Anonymous
As of March 31st, the ongoing Tesla protests have cost Elon Musk approximately 121 billion dollars. And this appears to be having an effect on him. In an interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business, Musk says he has been running his businesses “with great difficulty”. He is visibly distressed as he does so. It’s honestly kind of hard to watch.
I also mean that literally; the original interview is mysteriously missing from Fox’s Youtube presence! They do have more flattering edits up, though, isn’t that so weird? Unfortunately for Fox, I am very stubborn, so here is the full episode as it originally aired. The interview begins at 7:34pm.
(I really like phrase “the people’s scissors”, too. I’m gonna start using that.)
Bill Whipple
Whipple’s piece was by far the most popular. Once you see it animated, I’m sure you’ll understand why.
In the event the video is unavailable in the future, I’ll describe it; Whipple has constructed a 2D puppet of Trump out of wood. Trump is squatting, pants down, as if sitting on a toilet. His bare ass is hanging out, and he’s making the “okay” hand signal (a dogwhistle appropriated by white supremacists) with his hands. When Whipple adjusts the puppet’s mechanism, Trump’s neck appears to elongate, snaking between his legs and up his own ass. At the end, Trump munches enthusiastically. omnonmnomnom
At the time I was just really impressed with the craftsmanship; it wasn’t until researching at home that I learned Whipple is something of a local celebrity, although I suspect he would object to me saying so. Whipple’s sculptures can be found throughout the city, incorporated into public infrastructure, schools, homes, and hotels. He even had an installation in the Seattle Art Museum, although it seems they never got around to adding a photo of it.
Another interesting thing that I noticed was this statement on his website, dated 2019:
Recently I got an urge to try out a new way of working. The style of art I had been doing for more than forty years was beginning to feel restrictive, and sometimes even tedious. So I set aside (temporarily at least) the fastidious jigsaw cutting, the mechanical problems, and the specific messages – elements that made for an overly deliberate, work method – and laid out an array of accumulated stuff, mostly various pieces of wood and worthless found objects.
Whipple’s new puppet shares several of those characteristics that he only recently felt restricted by– it’s carefully cut, has a specific message, and is literally a machine. So If I could do our interview over today, I think I’d ask whether that feeling changed, or if the current state of the world compelled him to return to that style anyway.
In any case, you always knew where Whipple was at HandsOff! Seattle. Just follow the sound of laughter.
Anonymous
This piece is a parody of Musk’s surprise appearance at a Trump Rally in Butner, Pennsylvania. That location held additional significance at that time, as the site of Trump’s first assassination attempt.
Musk’s face is exaggerated in this painting, but only a little, really? His little jumps did genuinely have that energy.
One of my favorite things about photographing this protest was my phone’s constant attempt to Face-ID any picture of Elon Musk. This is not unexpected behavior when dealing with photographs, but it also triggered for drawings like this, and I found that delightful.
It’s also a testament to the talent of these artists, who– in limited space– managed to capture enough of his distinguishing features for Apple to go wait a minute, this asshole looks familiar…
MalevolentMolly
The MAGA movement’s proximity to historical examples of fascism, particularly Trump’s proximity to Adolf Hitler, is actually a really fascinating (if depressing) research topic that I could fill an entire article with. And in fact, I am doing so, in my Fascist Transcript series.
If you would like a brisk but reasonably authoritative primer on times Trump has directly or indirectly emulated Nazi Germany in recent memory, I would recommend this piece from the Forward, and this one from PBS.
If you would like a deeper, academic take on the topic, this article from the Cambridge journal Central European History is especially interesting to re-read today– not only because it attempts to neutrally chronicle arguments both for and against the comparison– but also because it was published in 2019, before the January 6th insurrection. A lot has changed since then, and I’m so curious what impact current events would have on the author’s conclusion.
Ward Sutton
I don’t really have anything to add about this one, other than that the artist captured his likeness quite faithfully. You can almost hear him torturing the word “CHINA” in his mouth.
Anonymous
Here’s another Musk-as-Nazi design, which substitutes the letters S and T for the Tesla logo and the SS lightning bolts.
There are two interesting historical parallels between Tesla and fascism we haven’t talked about already. The first and most significant is that it’s not the first American automaker to be sympathetic to Nazi ideology, or even the second. Ford and General Motors both pre-date Tesla in that respect.
The other is that Nikola Tesla, the inventor for which the company was named, was also a eugenicist. Musk bought his way into the company after it was founded, so he’s not responsible for that one.
It’s funny how these things keep happening, though, isn’t it? Not like, ha-ha funny, but definitely screaming-inside funny.
Anonymous
The Trump administration has shuttered a staggering number of federal agencies, in a very short amount of time; many of them provided crucial services to the public and were traditionally considered nonpartisan. The remaining ones are actively being reshaped into loci of executive control.
Understand that when things start to break down, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Trump and Musk are deliberately sabotaging the efficacy of the federal government with the intent of replacing them with private businesses– that’s not my speculation, they’ve said so on record.
Anonymous
Trump has also done substantial damage to US climate policy and medical science. He has forbidden states from regulating fossil fuel companies, installed a eugenicist vaccine skeptic as director of the Department of Health and Human Services, and ordered the mass destruction6 of valuable data (particularly on global warming, and the bodies of people of color and queer folks).
The artist says they originally made the sign on the right in 2016, in response to Trump’s first election. It’s depressing how evergreen “Klansman in a suit and red tie” has been this past decade. Or century.
Anonymous
Another candidate for the people’s scissors, if you know what I mean.
B.W
The transgender community has been the target of relentless attacks since literally a few hours after inauguration. According to Erin Reed, over 850 pieces of anti-trans legislation has been proposed in 2025 so far, and the president essentially gave them his blessing.
All of the recent legislation surrounding those executive orders is the focus of another article I’ve been working on, so I’m going to force myself to move along for now.
But I do have a message to the kid that drew this; you are immensely talented and, in my opinion, rad as hell. Keep drawing forever, okay?
Anonymous
The Gadsden flag originated in the Revolutionary War, and like its predecessor the “Join or Die” woodcut (which we talke`d about in A History of American Journalism), it has been used in a variety of contradictory contexts since. Most of them are unpleasant. Today, it’s generally associated with three things; libertarianism, the Tea Party movement, and Confederacy-coded racism.
In this case, the inclusion of the (very good) tagline “Oligargle My Balls” suggests that it is pointed more specifically toward Musk’s brand of libertarianism, but honestly all of them are applicable. Especially the racism.
The image on the right is in reference to a story by Jeffrey Goldberg, published by The Atlantic: “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans“. In a once-in-a-lifetime, star-aligning bit of cosmic fuckery, Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group of high-ranking government officials, who were all nonchalantly gossiping– again, on an unsecured consumer phone app– about the building they were about to bomb in Yemen.
Their disregard for civilian casualties, disdain harbored for American allies, and the very idea that people these incompetent are in charge now are all extremely chilling to think about. To this day, it is still unclear whether the president actually authorized this bombing, or whether the “trust me bro” vibe-check of participant “SM” was sufficient. Goldberg speculates this may have been homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, and unfortunately this is probably the best case scenario.7
The way Goldberg and the Atlantic handled the disclosure is really cool, too. Publishing sensitive government information is dangerous for any reporter, but because the White House continued to repeat the lie that the thread contained no sensitive information, they tacitly approved its public release.
There’s just so much going on in this story. We’ll be teaching it in J-schools for as long as J-schools continued to exist.
Anonymous
This sign, in the shape of a flaming book labeled “Project 2025, is another one that my photos unfortunately won’t do justice. It was a 3D construction; the book physically opened. If I had to nitpick, the document is technically called Mandate for Leadership, but calling it the thing people actually recognize was probably a better move.
By now you know all about the project’s influence on the campaign trail; have you wondered what’s been happening with it since? The unfortunate answer is, it’s in full swing. Volunteers are maintaining a Project 2025 tracker. As of writing, they estimate that approximately 42% of its policy goals have been implemented (or made redundant in the case of USAID being closed entirely).
Anonymous
Musk appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February, and waved a chainsaw around like a maniac. That chainsaw was apparently a gift from Argentine President Javier Milei– a detail which escaped my attention when it was originally reported. It makes sense that they’d get along. Milei is a right-wing populist who publicly praises Trump, mirrors his foreign and economic policies, and is actively working to undermine researchers and universities.
But you know who doesn’t suck? The person who made this suit! It looked pretty roomy in there, and the pun was excellent. I’d also like to appreciate how difficult it is to craft what is ostensibly a weapon, while remaining non-threatening at a public event. Most of all, I love that he’s given Musk a biblically-accurate hairline.
The Backbone Campaign
This banner of the preamble to the United States Constitution might look familiar; you’re not imagining that! Originally constructed by the Backbone Campaign in 2007, the banner was also raised during the 2011 Occupy Wallstreet movement, as well as the Women’s March in 2017. But as it turns out, Washington state is its home.
Backbone is a local network of self-described “artful” activists in Vashon; they were responsible for the “kayaktivism” protests here in Seattle, which successfully dissuaded fossil fuel behemoth Shell from expanding their oil drilling operations in 2015. Here’s an interview with the group’s executive director Bill Moyer about that very topic. It originally aired on the Weather Channel in 2016.
Moyer was at HandsOff! Seattle, too, and was happy to answer to answer a few questions about the banners they had brought. The “We the People” one above is split into detachable segments so that it’s easier to transport and sign. According to Moyer, these extensions currently add up to about 210 feet of signatures when fully deployed (it looks like their website is out of date in this regard.)
Staff were urging folks to sign below the main artwork rather than directly onto the preamble, because they periodically have to repaint it to keep it fresh. As you can see in the photo, not everyone followed that recommendation. I can’t really hold it against them, though; attendance was just that high. There wasn’t much room left at my feet.8
Backbone brought a couple of others with them, too, which decorated the perimeter of the main protest area. The banner pictured above, which reads “ICE IS THE GESTAPO”, was deployed over the highway during rush hour just a few days after the protest. These orange-lettered banner drops seem to be one of their trademark patterns; they showed up a lot while I was researching their prior actions for this piece.
Anonymous
This scarecrow-turned sign was taller than the appointees. The level of definition on the face and head was quite impressive. I only noticed the heterochromatic eyes just now, and now I’m curious about that detail.
Meanwhile, the partially-inflated surgical gloves give me Everything Everywhere All at Once vibes. I really wanted to high-five him and they probably would have let me if I asked, but I had to at least pretend to be a professional.
Anonymous
Sometimes you can just tell from someone’s artwork whether they’re safe to be around; this was one such human!
The first piece– which is my favorite, personally– depicts a spider being stabbed and squashed. The spider represents neo-Nazi’s; we know this because in place of a black-widow style hourglass, it is emblazoned with the “sonnenrad” or “black sun” hate symbol. The pink triangle, here doing the stab/squashing, was initially used by Nazi’s in World War II to brand the uniforms of gay and transgender people in concentration camps, and has since been re-appropriated by LGBTQIA+ organizations. There’s actually another reference to the queer community, that I didn’t notice on first viewing; the double-sided axe behind the word “QUEERS” is a labrys, a symbol for lesbian and sapphic communities. The sickle, I confess I’m not so sure about. Maybe it’s a word-association hammer-and-sickle sort of thing? Pro-labor movements are also common sources of resistance to the alt-right.
The third and fourth images are in support of Palestine, or what’s left of it. On May 15th, 1948, approximately 12.4 million Palestinians were violently purged from their homeland by the newly established State of Israel. This crime is memorialized as the “Nakba”– meaning “catastrope”. The Palestinian people have remained in exile as refugees ever since, and the present war on Gaza is an extension of this ethnic cleansing which never truly ended.
The United States is also culpable for this ongoing genocide, as we supplied (and continue to supply) Israel with the munitions it is using to carry it out. To be clear, this is true of both parties.
On February 5th, Donald Trump suggested that the U.S should “own” the Gaza strip, and that all Palestinians would be “relocated” somewhere else. From an NPR article at the time:
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” Trump said as Netanyahu looked on. “Level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out, create an economic development.”
He framed this as if he would be doing the Palestinian people a favor, neglecting to mention whose bombs they were to begin with. A few weeks later, he shared an absolutely grotesque AI-generated video mockup of what that “economic development” might look like. In it, Trump and Netanyahu enjoy drinks by a luxury hotel as a synthesized voice sings, Trump’s Gaza is shining bright. There are solid-gold statues of Trump’s likeness, with miniatures lining store shelves, and Elon Musk can be seen showering children with money on the beach. Although there is no conclusive evidence that the White House produced it, wherever he got it, Trump saw fit to post it directly to his Truth Social account. And at a certain point I fail to find that distinction meaningful.
Finally, I concur with the artist’s sentiment in the last piece; they can’t erase all of us.
Rochelle Walden
The context behind this painting are probably obvious, but just in case: immediately after taking office, Trump ordered a government-wide purge of any program, grant, webpage or person he deemed to represent “DEI”. The result is the mass-erasure of Blackness and queerness from history and the government.
These deletion efforts have been equal parts comprehensive and petty. This database, published by the Associated Press in March, tracks over 26,000 deleted files– and keep in mind, this is just the stuff we know about.
Meanwhile, the administration is terminating any employee that they even perceive as having participated in a DEI initiative. This has included folks who took government mandated training, regardless of whether they were actually involved in its development or had any power over the decision.
Returning to the painting; isn’t it gorgeous? Genuinely, I think I’d frame this one. I really like the justice scales as earrings, and it’s so goddamn vibrant. You can find more of her work here!
Learning from HandsOff! Seattle
There’s a tendency, I think, to view protests as a blur. An amalgamation of cardboard signs and vague sentiment, read through smudged glasses. We report on protests all the time, but usually stop at evaluating how big the crowd was, or the primary demand. And I think that would be a mistake here.
Because I’ve been to a lot of protests. I’ve even organized a few. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen creative consensus, education, and effort at this scale.
Every single one of the participants I spoke to was highly informed– not just about their pet topic or the subject of their illustrations, but about the issues that were impacting each other. It was actually really difficult to interview just one person on their own, because as soon as one person would explain what was important to them, everyone around them would join to yes-and. Like: I’m so upset about that, too! And hey, did you see… “Seattle Freeze” be damned.
What I saw that day was a community of people who were motivated by more than just the impact to their own families. They seemed like advocates in the truest sense, neighbors that had truly taken the time to learn about how others were struggling under the same administration, before the protest had started.
And that’s really exciting to me, because getting folks talking to each other is the most important thing a mass protest like this can do. Community ties and solidarity increase the odds and efficacy of future action.
Struggling to make my way through the crowd, I couldn’t help but think how tragic it would be for all of this work to disappear into closets, garages, and recycling bins, when it was so obviously meant for history books.
The art of HandsOff! was intricate, heartfelt, and shockingly intersectional. It had me questioning my responsibility when covering protests. Best practice says you get the article out the door while it’s topical; this requires no more than a couple of wide crowd shots, a description from organizers, and a handful of perimeter interviews. And look, fine, I’ll do that, too. Here, happy?
But within minutes, it was clear that leaving it there would mean flattening something beautiful and complex. What will people learn from that article years later, other than that a protest occurred? It creates a record that the event happened, sure, but fails to preserve the moment or its meaning. Do you remember any protest coverage you’ve ever read? Do you remember any of those signs? Do you remember what they meant, or know anything about the needs of the people who made them?
I just don’t think this kind of effort, this kind of humanity, should be so disposable, so fleeting.
About twenty feet from the spot where I took that crowd photograph, one of the protestors that I was interviewing made an observation that really stuck with me. They said there were way, way fewer AI-generated signs than they expected. They said that signaled something to them about the attendees, and about how much they cared.
It was always true that the signs in the crowd had to be made by someone, but it wasn’t until it was pointed out to me that I really started to consider what that would have cost each person in terms of time, resources, or energy. The shortcuts that were available to them, that they didn’t take.
After that conversation, I started asking folks how long they had worked on their painting; or their puppet; or that banner. The most common answers I heard were four, eight, or twelve hours. Some folks had lost count completely. I talked to families; parents and spouses who built things together. They set aside time to do this in the midst of all of this chaos and uncertainty, while the world threatened to crumble around them. More than one described either making their signs together, or the act of sharing them, as cathartic– or even healing.
Why make something so personal when a simple quip on cardboard would do? This is me speaking, but I think our communities are grieving. The loss of their homes; their futures; the prospect of loved ones being unpersoned, or disappeared. And that demands a different response. When I tell someone I’m hurting, I don’t just want to be acknowledged. I want to be understood.
I figure that the least we can offer them in return is our sustained attention and serious consideration.
So, that’s why I wanted to try out this format.
You’ll have to be the judge of whether it worked, or provided any kind of lasting value in the end. But my hope is that I’ve matched the investment of these people, by chiseling in stone the legitimate grievances that moved them to donate their time to this cause in the first place. That you might see a piece of your own struggle represented here, and find strength in the fact that you are not alone.
Did you attend HandsOff! 2025 in your city?
I’m curious what protestors in other areas got up to. If you made something that you’re proud of, I’d love to see it!
Send it my way, and if I get enough of them I’ll do a followup article.
And by that I mean like, email me a scan. Please don’t ship a bunch of physical signs to my house. lol
- A quick note on protest and reporting hygiene before we get started: you should know that I asked each artist for consent before taking any of these photos. We talked about the risk of alt-right doxing, and I gave them control over whether their art was attributed, and to what level of specificity. Whenever the artist was a minor, I sought consent from their parents. And I gave each of them the opportunity to look at the photo I had taken to make sure there was no funny business.
Since most people aren’t ankle-deep in this stuff for a living, I erred on the side of removing identifying details whenever subjects didn’t have a strong opinion. I have also taken care to scrub metadata, hands, faces, and tattoos from these photos, to the extent that I know how to do so.
In a small number of cases, it was not possible to control the angle of recording or limit folks from passing through. One of them was far enough from the protest site that it felt reasonable to record anyway; for the other, taken in the thick of things, I bent a professional best-practice and edited the photo to obscure their faces with cute little emoji. Sorry, it was the lesser of two evils.
Hegseth might look at all this prep work and say, we’re clean on OpSec. I know better than to claim this. The difference is I actually made an attempt. 🤡
For folks who might feel inspired to document protest art like this in the future, please think very carefully about how you can protect attendees first. And remember, the safest photo to take is no photo at all. ↩︎ - “Hey Val,” I hear you saying, “Why are you embedding these directly into the page like an amateur? Why don’t you set up a nice carousel to make this article easier to read?” Great question, disembodied voice. It’s because I am bad at computer and allergic to reason. ↩︎
- Which you shouldn’t be, because it is a Nazi bar. ↩︎
- Desai’s tweet marks the first recorded man-to-man transmission of mansplaining; scientists are scrambling for a cure. ↩︎
- This past Friday, in fact. It takes me such a long time to write these! ↩︎
- (Sorry, I had to.) ↩︎
- Miller is literally a Neo-Nazi by the way. Here’s his entry with the Southern Poverty Law Center, and here’s an NPR article about his white-nationalist contributions to VDARE. This was known in 2019, and Trump still picked him. I’m in no way surprised, just exhausted. ↩︎
- For some reason it didn’t occur to me to sign it myself, but I now that I think of it I’d have liked to. I guess I was too focused on work. ↩︎
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