It’s been a couple of days since I flew home after attending the Democratic National Convention. And at the risk of sounding corny, I think I could have done it without the plane. To attend that convention was to experience a sense of joy so powerful that it made you feel like you had wings.
My organization, People for the American Way, was very excited to bring to the convention posters designed especially for us by the artist Victoria Cassinova, which we felt represented the pride and hopefulness of this campaign.
The posters featured a portrait of Harris with the single word: “Freedom.”
We had fun posting them all over the city. We were thrilled to see lots of residents and convention-goers admiring them and taking pictures and selfies. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) shared hers on Instagram.
Then, on the third night of the convention, something sad happened. A group calling itself Artists for Kennedy and Trump defaced a wall of these Harris portraits.
Capturing themselves on video, the vandals spray-painted crimson streaks across the images, focusing on the portrait’s face and eyes. They used words like “war” to describe what they were doing.
It was an ugly but galvanizing reminder of what we’re up against in this race.
So here’s what I want to say: Anyone can destroy. It takes artists to create.
I — we — have had enough of creepy authoritarians trying to censor art, ban books and steal our joy.
Because while art does give joy, it also gives strength. It has always been a tool to challenge injustice and enforced conformity, to resist oppression and authoritarianism. That’s why dictators down through history have suppressed and banned art and even murdered artists.
It’s why artists and creators face an enormous threat today, not just from vandals roaming the streets of Chicago but from the deadly serious, powerful operatives behind Project 2025, who are intent on stigmatizing and suppressing vast numbers of artworks by calling them “pornography.”
It’s why far-right groups like Moms for Liberty have it in for writers from Toni Morrison to Judy Blume. It’s why the far right wants to ban minors from drag shows, which represent a cheerfully subversive form of entertainment.
To paraphrase a piece of conventional wisdom: For the censors, it’s not about taste, it’s about power.
The vandalism in Chicago was also a reminder of just how much of the MAGA agenda is about destroying rather than building. It’s about banning rather than creating, rewinding rather than moving forward. Eliminating rights rather than expanding them.
It’s all about wanting to live in the past. (Hey, when your whole campaign slogan is about doing something “again,” it literally means going backward.)
Some voters are sold on that idea, and importantly, wealthy power players are very invested in it. So even while Democrats are basking in the afterglow of a convention, we can’t afford to forget it.
This election is going to be close. It’s going to be a tough fight. We can’t afford to get complacent even for a minute, because even if Harris’s momentum in the polls has been extraordinary, many voters are only just starting to pay attention.
That means that if we’re serious about defeating Donald Trump and Project 2025, and electing the forward-looking Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket, we have to work hard and organize, organize, organize from now until election day.
As Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) advised the Harris campaign: “Talk to everybody.”
That includes reaching out to disenchanted or former Republicans, many of whom we saw on the DNC stage.
Victoria Cassinova got it right when she posted on Instagram after her artwork was defaced: “It’s disappointing to see how far the right will go to try and stop momentum, but I’ve survived worse than a bit of vandalism. Dialogue, not destruction, leads to progress.”
Dialogue. If I see those folks with the red spray paint again, I’m more than happy to try it.
Svante Myrick is president of People for the American Way.