New street art in New York City celebrates Kamala Harris.
A portrait of the vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee — amid lightning bolts and the American flag — appears above the word “Forward” in illustrator and street artist Jacob Thomas’ image that was wheat pasted around Brooklyn and lower Manhattan at the weekend.
“I was imagining the jolt of energy Harris brought to the Democratic party when she took over,” Thomas told HuffPost. “In my mind I was seeing lightning strike the flag and causing the stripes to vibrate with energy.”
Harris’ recent campaign rally cry that “We’re not going back” was an inspiration for the “Forward” caption, he explained.
“This reflects the belief that under (former president and GOP nominee) Donald Trump’s leadership, the country’s progress would regress, while under Harris’s leadership, our nation would continue to advance forward, leveraging the strength of diverse perspectives,” he said.
“We strive to move beyond the leadership of an individual embodying toxic masculinity, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and immorality, towards a new energy and inclusive leadership,” Thomas added.
“I’m driven by simply wanting her to win the election and my effort to contribute to that outcome,” said Thomas, whose crowd-fundraising initiative on GoFundMe to distribute his art to activists nationwide has to date raised more than $6,000.
Fellow street artist Shepard Fairey’s iconic “Hope” portrait of then-Democratic hopeful Barack Obama in the 2008 election was an influence, Thomas said.
“Amidst the energy surrounding Harris’s transition within the Democratic Party, I wanted to sustain that momentum with my work, much like the ‘Hope’ poster did for Obama’s campaign,” he told HuffPost. “I’m driven by simply wanting her to win the election and my effort to contribute to that outcome.”
David S. Holloway via Getty Images
Thomas last month pasted a series of anti-Trump prints around Brooklyn featuring Trump as former Chinese Communist Chair Mao Zedong underneath the word “Dictator.”
“The message is simple: we cannot live in a country led by a dictator,” Thomas told HuffPost at the time. Last weekend, he added these images of Trump as Donald Duck to the city’s street scene.
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