PHOTOPAPER 55/56 - Silence will not protect me

Title: PHOTOPAPER 55/56- Silence will not protect me

Photographer(s): Ken Schles

Writer(s): Audre Lorde, Ken Schles, Frederick Douglass

Designer(s): Ken Schles, Steffen Kalauch

Publisher(s): PHOTOPAPER, Kassel, Germany

Year: 2020

Print run:

Language(s): English

Pages: 32

Size: 21 x 29 cm

Binding: Softcover

Edition:

Print: Druckerei Kettler, Bönen, Germany

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: U.S.A., 2020

ISBN:

The Administration in Washington has weaponized our divisions. Faced with threat multiplying crises simultaneously, Trump offers not much more than contempt and self aggrandizement while running his criminal enterprise from the Oval Office. Hundreds of thousands have died unnecessarily in this country, millions sickened. Fires burn from the Arctic to the equator. Some believe the system is working as intended. If true, the system was made to inflict unacceptable levels pain and suffering. A government that refuses to protect its own people is illegitimate. A government using chemical weapons banned in war against its own people peacefully protesting the horror of a system that summarily executes citizens on the street or in their bedrooms is illegitimate. Silence will not protect you. These last years I‘ve been in the streets and in the halls of power advocating for change, fighting to protect what is right and, what I believe, is good. I choose life, I choose to speak, even though I know I‘m going to die. John Lewis, the venerated American civil rights activist and legislator who recently passed, tweeted, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Well, I‘ve been getting into good trouble these last few years. I‘ve been arrested nearly a dozen times for non-violent acts of civil disobedience. What follows is some of what I‘ve witnessed along the way. And you know what? I believe that we will win.

— Ken SCHLES, August 2020