‘Don't forget': mural brings attention to the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump
These are just three of the stories told on the Wall of Shame, a public installation by artist Phil Buehler that launched on 4 July in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. The giant red, white and blue mural aims to document and highlight the stories and alleged crimes of more than 1,575 people involved in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol who were pardoned by Donald Trump.
The project is the third in what might be called Buehler's art against autocracy trilogy, a series of collaborations with the non-profit Radio Free Brooklyn. It began in 2020 with the Wall of Lies, a 50ft mural displaying more than 20,000 lies told by Trump during his first term in office. The second installation, the Wall of Liars and Deniers, was a mural displaying the 381 Republican politicians running in the 2022 midterm elections who denied Democrat Joe Biden's legitimacy as president.
'Artists can have more power than Fox News to turn this around,' Buehler says in a Zoom interview from his Brooklyn studio, reflecting on the struggle for truth in the Trump era. 'Boy, would Magaland hate it if culture, music and art [pushed back]. You've got to double down the other way and start flooding this zone with art as Trump tries to erase it.'
The Wall of Shame is a 50ft-long, 10ft-tall outdoor mural featuring the pardoned Trump supporters, colour-coded to distinguish their actions: violent rioters appear in red, those who damaged property are shown in blue, and the remaining individuals are depicted in white. The combined effect resembles a Star and Stripes that has imploded.
Buehler spent about 100 hours gathering the rioters' stories, charges and sentences from research by National Public Radio (NPR) and formatting them to be printed on waterproof vinyl and hung outdoors on a fence. NPR had about a thousand photos of the rioters, so Buehler enlisted a friend to track down a further 500 pictures; only about 10 are now missing.
He adds: 'Artists can do it in a different way. I'm just presenting facts. It's almost seducing people with a visual that they then approach and go, that's pretty cool, what is that? Then you can read these things and we're benefiting from NPR's reputation having factchecked this.'
The rioters are easy to dismiss as an amorphous mob; the mural is a reminder that each is a person with their own career, family and personal demons. Guy Reffitt, 48, from Wylie, Texas, allegedly told his family that he had taken his gun to the US Capitol on January 6 and said to his child: 'If you turn me in, you're a traitor. And you know what happens to traitors. Traitors get shot.' But Pamela Hemphill, 68, from Boise, Idaho, refused Trump's pardon and expressed remorse, describing the police as 'heroes' and the rioters as 'very dangerous people'.
Buehler reflects: 'I could see patterns. It's very tribal. Trump was successful in almost stealing red, white and blue as their symbol. They all call themselves patriots on this wall. They all bought into the big lie that the election was stolen.
'Their social media posts and messages that were part of the record when they were indicted show that they believed a lot of the other lies like Pizzagate – we've got to stop the pedophiles taking over. They're in a media bubble. They believe it and they're in it together and they did see themselves as patriots.'
The project aims to foster solidarity and courage among those who oppose authoritarianism. Buehler recounts how the defacement of the Wall of Lies by the far-right group Proud Boys galvanised the community, leading them to cut out the Proud Boys graffiti and spraypainted hearts all over it and raise money for a bigger mural.
'How are we going to survive the next four years? This runs through your head. Then what can I do? Community gives you courage. Marching in those parades gives you courage to fight against this. We're using this symbolic art piece to rally around a different flag.'
The Wall of Shame – installed at the same location as the Wall of Lies – was provoked by Trump's decision on his first day back in office to grant clemency to about 1,500 individuals charged or convicted in connection with the January 6 insurrection, including people found guilty of assaulting police officers. Democrats called the move an affront to justice and democracy.
Yet the controversy has been almost forgotten in the fast-paced news cycle, overwhelmed by a deluge of Trump drama from Elon Musk to Signalgate to tariffs to protests in Los Angeles to military strikes on Iran. But Buehler insists: 'We look at that as the first of his steps in his march toward authoritarianism. 'OK, let's pardon all the people that rioted.'
'It's interesting what we've seen since. He sent thousands of national guard and marines to LA for mostly peaceful protests. I don't know if it's ironic or telling that, during the January 6 riots, he watched them on television on the other side of DC and didn't do anything and then pardoned them. A hundred and forty cops got hurt and now this year [FBI director] Kash Patel is saying, 'Touch a cop, go to jail.' I guess the unsaid part is, 'Touch a cop, go to jail unless it's for Trump and what Trump wants.''
The artist adds: 'He's since followed it up with some illegal deportations. He disobeys the courts constantly. He's turned the White House into a car dealership showroom with Tesla. And now he's starting a war [against Iran] without the authorisation of Congress. I guess we're trying to highlight that was the first thing. Don't forget that one: the pardon of the rioters. That was his first act of trying to emulate Putin and become an authoritarian leader.'
Trump has been waging war on reality for a decade, conjuring a mirror world in which up is down and black is white. He has described the January 6 rioters as patriots and martyrs while dismissing those who protested against immigration enforcement raids in LA as 'insurrectionists'. When he faced criminal investigations he blamed the 'weaponisation' of the justice department, while any negative media coverage is routinely branded 'fake news'.
Rob Prichard of Radio Free Brooklyn, who initially suggested that Buehler tackle the January 6 pardons, finds something Orwellian in Trump's attempts to rewrite history and dominate the cultural space. The president has seized control of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and ordered the removal of so-called 'improper, divisive or anti-American ideology' from Smithsonian Institution museums, forcing the resignation of the director of its National Portrait Gallery.
Speaking from Park Slope, Brooklyn, Prichard, 69, says via Zoom: 'As a nation we are as close to autocracy as we've ever been. It seems like fascism is basically a war on consensus reality and we need to put a pin in those points where it's so obvious that it's not true.
'Trump's entire political career is predicated on a demonstrable lie, saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and because we never called him out on it properly in the first place, it just continues. If you can get away with it you play the hand again. Steve Bannon [a rightwing podcast and former Trump adviser] is flooding the zone. We need to flood the zone too but with the truth.'
The colour-coding of the mural is intentional, designed to reclaim a national symbol from what the creators perceive as its co-option by Trump supporters. Prichard adds: 'We're not ceding the red, white and blue. We claim it and we claim the true meaning of representative democracy.
'I have hope because for one thing, autocracy and fascism is predicated on violence and the threat of violence. Both violence and the threat of violence are untenable. They can't be. You just can't maintain them forever and it has to break. The fever has to break eventually and either there's complete submission or we liberate ourselves. I don't see complete submission. That's part of our DNA.'
Prichard does not use words such as fascist lightly. His 91-year-old mother is German and was forced to join Hitler's youth movement when she was seven years old. 'She remembers it. She is deathly afraid of Trump. If she were 10 years younger, she would probably move to Germany permanently.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
As Texas cleans up, ex-staffers say Fema has ‘eroded capacity' for multiple disasters
As the cleanup continues from this month's torrential rain storms and flooding in Texas that left more than 120 dead, recently departed officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say the organization is dangerously underresourced and overstretched in the event of further natural catastrophes. A mass staff exodus, plunging morale and a loss of key leaders has left the main US disaster-relief organization ill-equipped to cope with an anticipated deadly spate of storms in the current hurricane season, former agency insiders say. Fema's weakness, exacerbated by grant cuts imposed by the Trump administration and the loss of institutional knowledge in strategic leadership positions, will be exposed if the nation is faced with more than one disaster simultaneously, according to Michael Coen, the agency's former chief of staff. In an interview, Coen – who left his post in January after Donald Trump took office – said the officials at Fema had been preparing contingency plans that would enable the agency to meet the demands of hurricane season, which generally runs from early June until the end of November, with fewer resources. 'They understand that they don't have the resources they've had in past years, whether it's funding or even some contracts have lapsed,' he said. 'They are trying to make decisions so that they can handle multiple events at one time.' But since Trump's inauguration, the agency has seen an estimated 2,000 departures through resignations or retirements, which may have rendered it incapable of coping with the widespread carnage likely to be wreaked by a succession of tropical storms. 'I'm concerned that Fema is going to be at a disadvantage because they don't have the resources to respond to the disasters we know could happen, which could be two or three concurrent disasters at the same time,' said Coen. 'Fema has eroded capacity since President Trump became president. Staff have departed. There have been cuts to grant programs and they are going to be running into a financial challenge with the disaster relief fund, because the president hasn't requested supplemental funding from Congress.' Coen – a disaster relief career official who was also Fema's chief of staff during Barack Obama's presidency – said the cuts could mean the agency running out of funds to respond to disasters by the end of this month. 'Fema is currently supporting the state of Texas with the flooding and the urban search and rescue. But if in a week or two they also have to respond to a hurricane in the Gulf coast or an earthquake on the west coast, Fema is not going to be able to meet the expectations of the American people.' The concerns over Fema's state of readiness come amid signs that Trump may have had a change of heart about the agency's future after months of signaling that he favored its abolition. Last month, he said the administration planned to 'phase out' Fema after the current hurricane season to put more responsibility on individual states to respond to disasters. He previously described the agency – established in 1979 by Jimmy Carter with the goal of coordinating the US government's response to disasters – as 'not good' and said he would 'recommend that Fema go away'. But ahead of Trump's Friday visit to the worst-hit Texas flood areas, White House officials indicated that eliminating Fema entirely was no longer under consideration, the Washington Post reported. The newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying changes would probably amount to 'rebranding' the agency while stressing the leadership role of the states in disaster response. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary – who has overall responsibility for Fema and has chaired a review council looking into the agency's future – said in the wake of the Texas floods that Fema would be 'eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency', a hardline stance that nonetheless stopped short of abolition. Coen said the Texas floods had proved Fema's worth: 'This flood is a defining moment and brings clarity for the necessity of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fema is an essential agency for the federal government to support states and support the American people in their greatest time of need.' But he said grant cuts had rendered it less effective and may have caused 'an unnecessary loss of life' in the Guadalupe River area of the Texas Hill Country, the worst-hit flood region. 'One of the grant programs they cut was the Building Resilient Infrastructure Communities, which was a program that would have funded things like the siren system to line a river like the [Guadalupe] in Kerr county,' he said. 'Not that many people needed to lose their lives if more mitigation measures had been put in place. With the president cutting a grant program that provides federal funding to increase mitigation in the country, it only is foreboding for the future on what could happen to other communities if they don't mitigate and they don't have access to federal funds.' The picture of an agency undermined by the Trump administration's hostility was corroborated by a former mid-level Fema official, who told the Guardian that staff had left because they felt disrespected. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 'It's no secret that a lot of high-level leaders have left the agency,' the ex-official said. 'It's clear that Fema has lost a lot of leadership capability.' Among those who have left are Tony Robinson, who was Fema's head administrator for the region that includes Texas, as well as his deputy. Also recently departing was Robert Samaan, the administrator for the region that covers Florida and several other states in the hurricane-prone south-east. 'Those are two of the three most critical regional administrators for hurricane season, and for them to leave at this time leaves people shaken for sure,' the former staffer said. 'The lack of experienced leadership is certainly going to hamstring efforts. It's not to say that there aren't other good leaders who will step up. But LinkedIn is littered with people whose names I knew who have left.' The departure of 16 senior executives was announced on a single day in May. Compounding the problem is the damage to the morale of those remaining from what insiders say is the scornful attitude of Noem and Fema's acting administrator, David Richardson, a former marine artillery officer with no previous experience in disaster management. Richardson, who has been in the post since May, caused a stir among senior staff when he said during a briefing that he did not know there was a hurricane season. It was unclear if the comments were meant as a joke. Richardson was installed after Noem ousted his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, after he told a congressional hearing that he did not favor Fema's abolition. The new administrator also threatened to 'run right over' any staff members who resisted reforms. 'I, and I alone in Fema, speak for Fema. I'm here to carry out the president's intent for Fema,' he reportedly said. Coen affirmed the picture of staff leaving due to fears for Fema's future. 'The reason many employees have departed since January 20 is because they had a fear that they were going to lose their job,' he said. 'Also, they didn't feel respected by the current administration. The current employees still there are supporting each other, but if they feel they are not getting support and understanding of how much they sacrifice when they go to disasters, it does have an impact on their mental health and wellbeing.' Noem, meanwhile, has drawn criticism for issuing a decree requiring that any expenditures or contracts worth $100,000 or more are submitted to her for prior approval – a requirement that critics say could impede rapid disaster response. 'Typically, pre-Trump, a decision like that would come at a much lower level than the secretary of homeland security so you could get out and mobilize,' the former official said. 'It's just unconscionable that you would centralize a decision like that, [which] truly, on reflection, would have led to the loss of life, or at least the loss of the ability to find the remains of the victims.' The Department of Homeland Security has publicly defended the directive as necessary to root out 'waste, fraud and abuse' and deliver 'accountability' to US taxpayers.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Judge blocks 'unlawful' ICE detentions in California
A federal judge delivered a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration on Friday, halting what she described as racially driven, unconstitutional immigration raids that have upended lives, shuttered businesses, and thrown entire communities into chaos across Southern California. The blistering ruling stunned government attorneys and sent shockwaves through the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong granted a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using race, language, or vocation as justification for immigration stops. She also ordered immediate access to legal counsel for detainees held at the notorious downtown Los Angeles facility known as 'B-18.' The ruling marks a major legal victory for immigrant rights groups and a sharp blow to the Trump administration's hardline immigration tactics in liberal California—tactics critics have called draconian, dangerous, and politically motivated. Mayor Karen Bass praised the decision in a scathing statement Friday afternoon, saying Angelenos were living in fear as 'masked men grab people off the street, chase working people through parking lots, and march through children's summer camps. The court order halts ICE and CBP agents from detaining individuals based on race, Spanish-language use, or presence at sites like car washes, tow yards, bus stops, and Home Depot parking lots—locations where hundreds were swept up in recent weeks. The lawsuit, Vasquez Perdomo et al. v. Noem et al., was filed last week on behalf of several advocacy organizations, three undocumented immigrants, and two U.S. citizens, including Latino tow truck worker Brian Gavidia, who was allegedly detained despite showing valid identification. The case was sparked by a wave of arrests across seven California counties—including Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Pasadena—that immigrant rights groups described as indiscriminate and terrorizing. Since June 6, more than 2,800 people have been detained in a massive escalation of ICE operations. A Los Angeles Times analysis found that nearly 70 percent of those arrested had no criminal record, and more than half had never been charged with a crime. Inside B-18, detainees were allegedly held in squalid conditions, denied food and water, and stripped of their constitutional right to an attorney. Judge Frimpong not only ordered 24-hour legal access and confidential phone lines for those in custody, she also blasted the administration's apparent lack of evidence to justify the raids. California Governor Gavin Newsom weighed in, delivering one of the strongest rebukes yet of the Trump administration's tactics. 'Justice prevailed today—the court's decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people's rights and racial profiling,' Newsom said in a statement. 'Stephen Miller's immigration agenda is one of chaos, cruelty, and fear. Instead of targeting the most dangerous people, federal officials have been arbitrarily detaining Americans and hardworking people, ripping families apart, and disappearing people into cruel detention to meet outrageous arrest quotas without regard to due process and constitutional rights. That should stop now. California stands with the law and the foundation upon which our founding fathers built this country. I call on the Trump administration to do the same.' California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the ruling a 'critical victory' and condemned what he called the Trump administration's campaign of 'fear and division.' In court, Bonta led a multi-state coalition backing the plaintiffs and argued that the raids were not about enforcement, but about punishing Los Angeles for its political opposition to Trump—citing the president's social media vow to conduct 'the single largest Mass Deportation Program in history.' Government lawyers struggled to defend the crackdown, with DOJ attorney Sean Skedzielewski insisting ICE agents acted 'aboveboard,' though Judge Frimpong was openly skeptical and dismissed DHS declarations as too vague. Cities that joined the suit, including Los Angeles and West Hollywood, framed the raids as political retaliation. The Trump administration is expected to appeal, but for now, the restraining order remains in effect—a rare and stinging legal defeat for a White House that has largely succeeded in hardening immigration enforcement.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Superman is super woke? How politics play into the new man of steel
Superman Woke! Variations on that headline splashed across all manner of non-Daily Planet websites this week in advance of a new Superman movie reboot, specifically the comments of writer-director James Gunn, who casually characterized the character as an immigrant and, as such, telling the 'story of America' in an interview. This rankled rightwingers including the former TV Superman Dean Cain, who acknowledged Superman as an immigrant but blanched at the idea of actively associating that as an American value, noting that 'there have to be limits'. Meanwhile, the former Trump lackey Kellyanne Conway, now a Fox News host, characterized the movie she hasn't seen as an ideological lecture, and added her supposed anger that the movie's star, David Corenswet, elided the old 'truth, justice and the American way' Superman slogan in another interview (referring to 'truth, justice, all that good stuff'). For those attempting to keep track: people involved with a Superman movie shouldn't attempt to evoke America, except when they should. Actually, for those keeping even closer track, the 'American way' bit was a phrase added to the radio version of Superman during the second world war, and further popularized by the 1950s TV show. It lived on primarily in reruns of that show, didn't appear in the comics until 1991, and has never been particularly central to the character in his original medium (or any of the movies, even). This is all to say that the reading of Superman as an immigrant is so commonplace, so arguably a part of the plain old surface text of the character, that it's even harder to buy any ginned-up outrage than usual. At best, it's a byproduct of suppressed guilt over the cruel and unusual immigration policies favored by anyone dumb enough to complain that this a 'woke' version of a 90-year-old superhero. In fact, the phoney outrage and predictions of boycott from people who don't go to the movies anyway could be a gag straight from the movie itself. It's one of plenty of real-world parallels in Gunn's movie. Most of them fall into the blockbuster realm of vagueness that makes it hard to tell if it was inspired by real events or just unsuccessfully sidestepping from evoking one international crisis straight into evoking another. (More on that in a moment.) But the most obviously first-hand quasi-political experiences Gunn draws upon all have to do with social media: this is a Superman whose weaknesses include Kryptonite, Lex Luthor-engineered software that anticipates his every punch, and … reading the comments. During one argument, Lois Lane needles her superpowered boyfriend by telling him she's seen him looking through certain hashtags guaranteed to frustrate and enrage even the virtuous child of Kansas farms who still says 'golly!' on the regular. This makes sense: James Gunn does not have experience in geopolitics, but he sure has experience online. The film-maker was semi-canceled over edgelord-y tweets (unearthed, in perfect discourse fashion, by rightwingers infuriated by his left-leaning politics); fired from the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie; and eventually rehired when Disney realized that maybe cast and fan loyalty was worth more than manufactured outrage. But in his between-Guardians downtime, Gunn made a Suicide Squad sequel for the previous DC regime, essentially auditioning for his current job. In some ways, he owes his stewardship of Superman and DC in general to the vexations of life online. So if it's a little cringe-y to hear about Superman glancing through social media, or for Gunn to go out of his way to show Lex Luthor training an army of monkeys to flood the zone with mean tweets, it's also a funny, oddly whimsical way of acknowledging our contemporary world. (Plus, remember that Clark Kent works in media, even if his newspaper still publishes a print edition.) It's certainly more surefooted than the movie's actual politics, which go further than the likes of Captain America: Brave New World but still fall short of anything more complicated than the actual thrust of Gunn's interview. (Which was that kindness is, in fact, good.) The immigrant stuff, first of all, is in the movie but not especially prominent. A plot turn involving Superman's parents could even be read as accidentally xenophobic; after all, if you're trading on the message that it doesn't matter where an immigrant comes from once assimilated into our culture, doesn't that by definition cast aspersions on other countries (or in this case, planets) and elevate whatever 'our' culture is? That's obviously not Gunn's intent in positioning Superman as an immigrant figure; he wants to elicit the empathy for outsiders that we've all felt at one time or another. The logical stumble is more a sign of a metaphor that isn't fit for front-to-back, one-to-one interpretation; that's not a problem on its own. More interesting is the story's offscreen inciting incident, where Superman intervenes in the affairs of two fictional countries. When the movie begins, Superman has recently stopped Boravia, which is led by a blustery despot who comes across like an eastern European Trump, from invading neighboring Jarhanpur. The latter has struck some viewers as coded Middle Eastern, implying parallels between Israel and Palestine, though in the comic books (and based on the leader's accent, here too) the countries are actually somewhere in Europe. That is to say, it looks more akin to Russia invading Ukraine, though Gunn has said he didn't have any specific real-life turmoil in mind when he concocted the scenario. The issue is really more interventionism: should Superman have acted unilaterally in stopping Boravia (and, indeed, threatening its leader with reprisal if he tries it again)? Lois Lane isn't so sure, bringing up the repressive nature of past Jarhanpur governments (and in turn bringing to mind Israel's attacks on Iran, though that particular conflict was in the news well after this movie was written, shot and probably almost or entirely finished). One of the most heartening things about Superman is that Lois's objections inspire a full conversation between her and Superman, in the guise of an 'interview' to make up for the fact that most of Superman's press is self-directed through Clark Kent. For a little while, the movie seems ready to dig into the genuine strife faced by a mega-powerful being who therefore has the ability to shape the world. Stopping people in another country from dying seems ethical. But what about issuing de facto press releases disguised as a real journalism? Of course, all of these questions are in the realm of hypothetical, so the movie mostly just invents hypothetical solutions that turn on the fact that Superman is, in fact, inherently trustworthy and moral. Lucky for everyone, huh? Then again, getting too far into the issue of whether Superman 'should' help people starts to look a bit too much like the Zack Snyder version that audiences and critics had such mixed-at-best feelings toward. Gunn wants Superman to be a bigger-tent affair than that, and it's an understandable impulse. He's not the first superhero character, but he's arguably the first one to achieve something resembling global ubiquity. That's going to lead to some varying interpretations. Limiting him to specific politics makes no more sense than keeping a world-saving god within Metropolis city limits. Yet in a weird way, the buffoonish outrage over Superman's immigration status has only served to highlight a void in the movie's broader emotional resonance. It's a sweet-natured movie that ends on a genuinely emotional note – it might particularly resonate for those with adoptive parents, another Superman mainstay – but misses the opportunity to make a more explicit parallel in the way Superman has emigrated both to the United States in particular, but to Earth in general. His global citizenship is more of a feelgood given than a powerful duality, and a Superman that truly grappled with our ability to see beyond national boundaries might have felt like a true update of the character for a new century, rather than another tacit plea for kindness. We have Paddington for that. Shouldn't Superman be able to lift something a little heavier?
