Jennifer Vasquez - wife of Kilmar Garcia, who was deported to an El Salvador prison in error - arrives at the courthouse in Greenbelt MD for a hearing Tuesday, April 15 about her husband’s case.
Normally I consider myself a lapsed photojournalist but felt the urge to be there.
Washington DC
These are selects from the last few days (click to enlarge), looking for the smaller fragments of resistance following last Saturday’s big protest and before next Saturday’s followup.
It’s been eye-opening getting out there and walking around. On one hand, it’s good to know you can find the pulse of pushback. On the other, I have to say yes it’s a pulse but kind of a faint one. I’m having to look pretty hard.
It’s even some of the same people. At Saturday’s Tesla protest in Georgetown, a couple of the demonstrators recognized me from the Dance Against DOGE at the GSA a few days earlier. I’ve run into a Pulitzer prize-winning photographer more than once, so I guess we’re looking at the same list of events.
Passing cars were mostly in support of the anti-Tesla demo, which included a DJ (same guy from the GSA) blasting great songs. But honking your horn and going about your day is about the same personal investment as liking a post.
People walking by were harder to read, that’s something I couldn’t capture. I didn’t see any MAGA types, that wasn’t the problem. Some seemed mildly sympathetic or curious at the spectacle, at least enough to giggle and snap a photo or selfie. Some didn’t react at all. I heard one girl with her father say ‘at least they’re peaceful’. No one joined in or looked like they were getting too excited, other than the fact that something out of the norm was happening on the way to the cupcake shop or whatever.
Last weekend’s rally did feel like it was ordinary concerned people turning out en masse with some seriousness of purpose. There was energy there. I hope next weekend can match or surpass it. But I also hope we can find a way to keep a more consistent pressure on in between the biggies. It shouldn’t be that hard in DC at least.
The city should be a roiling cauldron. Right it feels like watching a pot slowly, maybe, starting to simmer.
I was thinking it was surprising not to see college students being visibly active (I did see them shopping), but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised given everything. Are they tuned out or feeling the chill, keeping their heads down and their dissent muted? Maybe I need to dig into that more, see what’s percolating at various campuses like GW and Georgetown.
Let me know if you hear of any interesting actions or signs of life.
[PS - I want to say something about Fetterman (image 5). Regardless what you feel about him, I think that guy is still struggling, you can see it in his body language and a grimness in his face. He came out to meet a constituent cohort from Pennsylvania (that I followed from a nearby rally) and while he managed to flicker to life for a few moments, he looked like he would rather be doing anything else. I shook his hand and tried to joke that he was great in the movie The Pale Blue Eye, he’s a blink-and-miss-it background extra in a bar scene. He was not amused.]
Washington DC
Dance Against DOGE, a DJ’d ‘slumber party’, was held outside the General Services Administration building this evening (Wed 4/9), where organizers said DOGE members are working and illegally sleeping.
Fighting insanity with irreverence, joy, and cheekiness.
Washington DC
Somewhere in Pennsylvania
Maybe it was the jet lag, as I just got back to DC a few days ago - I have to admit when I first got to the Mall I was not convinced. Would this be the day we showed up, proved we were serious?
As people trickled in and sort of stood around, it was tempting to be a little preemptively deflated. The speakers kicked off somewhere over a hill. Kind of hard to hear and impossible to see. I was really tired and still in ‘oh look, Americans’ mode after so long abroad.
I don’t even like shooting demonstrations. I don’t like crowds and protests are usually a hot mess photographically. But this is part of what I came back for, to at least be present and do what I can. I decided part of what I can do is sort of diagnostic. As I got a little more tuned in, it was clear there was deep emotion, even trauma, just under the surface. One man passed a priest, started to say something about how we’re all together, and began weeping after just a few words. I didn’t take a photo, just noticed.
Later, on one end of the monument grounds a walkway became a kind of gauntlet, with people lining the low walls on both sides forming a channel for those passing through. The energy built and built, with drums and chants. It wasn’t performative or self-conscious as these things can sometimes be, more of a genuine release of pent-up feelings.
Not just anger and a certain stoicism but joy and camaraderie. Solidarity.
I’m writing this at 5am (damn jet lag) so I can get my Sunday post out on time this morning. Trying to hit publish before I fade again. Hope you’ll think of it like checking the newspaper to see how the demo went. And, like me, you’ll feel a little better about where we are.
In the end I was convinced. I believed in these Americans.
New York City
Websterville, Vermont
Blink and the time has come to leave Nairobi, at least for the moment. Feels like only yesterday we were agonizing about whether or not to take the opportunity to move our lives abroad.
I'm leaving tomorrow for the US to take care of some things, M will stay on a bit longer as the VOA saga continues to unfold. There’s still a lot of uncertainty how all this will play out, and how long it will take. Totally unpredictable. Hope it’s not the last time I see this place, though it very well could be.
The way our time is being cut short was certainly not what we expected, just as we were digging in for another year. What’s the expression? Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Or maybe ‘shit happens’ is better.
I'm sad to leave but so grateful for the experience of a lifetime. Too much to even process, as much as I've tried to do so in this space from the beginning. I could go on and on but at the moment I need to shut up and just reflect. Some places you spend time in mark you, form you, shift your outlook. London and Prague were such places for younger me. Later, Minsk. Now Nairobi too.
I have my body of black-and-white photos but let me share a couple galleries below as a color scrapbook, to convey what the life here felt like. Last chance to bring you along for a moment.
Our plans are up in the air and the world precarious. But we're ok and ready to navigate transition with stubborn optimism. I’m excited to get back and reconnect. See you soon.
Washington DC
Scranton PA
U Street, Washington DC
Yesterday:
Today:
End of an era.
I have to say I’m really liking using RSS again. I’m using the Feeder app, which is free and not hard to figure out how to use. It’s great for following independent news/info voices in one place. For me that’s rock stars like Rebecca Solnit, Heather Cox Richardson, Anne Applebaum, Jessica Berlin, Marisa Kabas, Alt National Park Service, and many others.
What I’d love to move towards over time is using this blog as social media. I’m already doing a post-here-first strategy, at least for my writing and photos, but maybe need to consider more social-type posts (like this) as well.
That way if you want to follow Bill, you come here. And bye bye Meta.
I just started rolling out my new project, Postcards from America. Here’s the first batch of six. On Mon-Wed-Fri I add an image on my blog, and crosspost it to my homepage and the Prints gallery. Black-and-white but a bit of color as well. Over time there will be a lot of Washington DC-area shots since that’s where I’ve lived and dug into life the most.
I think of these as alt-postcards, obviously not the standard sugarcoated view but something more personal, authentic, and hopefully magical from inside the American lived landscape. My daughter’s third birthday is in there. Lovers in a New York City restaurant. The Christmas tree my mom’s late partner rigged up on a diving platform so his dying friend could see it from his bedroom window, then it became a yearly community tradition.
While it’s just starting it’s already gotten me thinking - not just about my work but my country. I’m living abroad but pretty fixated on America right now. I’m bracing to return soon to a home that has changed in my absence. I’m writing and posting to help me process, to work out how to go forward creatively while staying afloat and being helpful to others.
I can assure you I’m rested and ready to be helpful.
Unlike projects I’ve shot with a particular idea in mind, Postcards is a reimagined, retroactive compilation of older photos from my photographic life in the US, part of a recent deep dive into grappling with my archive. Outtakes from assignments, projects, personal walkabouts, dinners, weddings, etc. Everyday life.
Even when I was on a job, I usually looked for photos for myself, little vignettes that just felt right to me (even if the client wouldn’t necessarily agree). Now I’m going back and finding them again, to see what kind of vision or idea they add up to, if any.
Obviously part of that is asking myself if they are any ‘good’ as photos. Sometimes it takes quite a while to know. I’m discovering how your perspective changes with the times, and can alter the way you interpret your own work. To me, the best photos often can universalize beyond their original context. So in that way a photo from a wedding or Washington DC can also reflect America more broadly.
I see them as people, places, and things I was fond of, following my enchantments. But as we cross a kind of rubicon into a new American reality, they also serve as time capsules from the before-times.
I can’t help but feel like an anthropologist, or an archaeologist sifting through evidence:
This is who we were. This is who I was. How did it lead to where we are now? Are there clues? What do they mean?
Which makes me think of The White Ribbon, director Michael Haneke’s bleak but masterful 2009 black-and-white film. It drops us in a German village just prior to WWI, where strange, even disturbing things are happening. A barn burns. People are injured or even killed in freak incidents. People disappear. We get fleeting hints of cruelty and abuse under the seemingly stable surface of life in the village. While blame begins to fall on the local children, there is never a clear resolution.
Nothing ever really adds up. Like in life, especially these days.
I remember reading about how the film was meant in part as a way to look back at pre-war Germany and the seeds of what was about to arrive. How did Germans, these people we see going about their business in the film, become what they became? What caused their ‘break’, some contagion? What about us? What contagion has caused our ‘break’?
I don’t suggest that my photos have such dark foreboding. So far I think there’s love and beauty and even some humor in them, at least that’s how I see them now. Not nostalgia exactly, maybe a wistful affection for what was and can maybe be again.
Despite everything, I’m coming back still hopeful and a stubborn optimist. While I’m looking back with these photos, of course you can never go back, and I wouldn’t want to.
I’m fighting for what’s next.
Chesapeake Bay
Somewhere in Virginia
Stockholm. Sweden is one country pushing for encryption restrictions - or even bans - that would undermine apps like Signal. (Image available in the Prints gallery)
Important tech edition today for guarding your privacy. Two main things.
First, you need to know it appears that social media platforms are being monitored by the US government. That’s actually not new but it’s ramping up as part of the hunt for people to deport. Mostly related to Gaza/Hamas and foreign nationals for now but who knows where it stops.
My understanding is they are scraping *public* posts. But it’s interesting that WhatsApp is on the list. It doesn’t mean they can read your messages, which are encrypted, but does mean your data that WhatsApp collects (for example who you contacted and when) is also accessible via these tools.
Don’t make it easier. For example, if you post on FB please try to avoid posting with Public status. The value of FB is that you can post to your friends. Not sure if that’s foolproof but better than handing it to them.
Second, I came across an article on Wired that you really should read in full. It turned a lot of my assumptions about encryption, including Signal, upside-down.
Yes, Signal is safe and is considered the gold standard of mainstream encrypted messaging apps. I know that regime officials in the US like Mvsk use it to coordinate their plans and activities.
But the question is where things are heading. That gets convoluted quickly.
Ready for your head to swim?
In the US, law enforcement that used to oppose encryption (since criminals and bad actors can also hide) now suggests that people use it if at all possible. So far that hasn’t seemed to change under Trvmp.
In Europe, generally a bastion of digital privacy rights, many countries actively oppose encryption (because of criminals and bad actors) and would like to undermine it. There is a deep split between countries like Germany that believe the personal privacy afforded by encryption is sacrosanct, and others like Spain who would like to ban encryption altogether for the sake of law enforcement.
Most proposed European legislation revolves around whether to allow governments a ‘back door’ to your encrypted messages, or perhaps to create a way for authorities to access scanned copies of those messages if they so desire. The UK already tried to strong-arm Apple into creating a back door (iMessage is encrypted), unsuccessfully for now at least. Sweden of all places has been mulling similar laws that Signal has said would make them abandon the country.
At best I can determine, those EU countries on the side of encryption are winning, but not by much.
It’s easy to imagine the US deciding to target Signal - a US-based independent nonprofit - if it becomes a last sanctuary of free, private speech. They could decide to ban or block it, as Russia did recently during the Ukraine war. Or simply revoke their nonprofit status on dubious grounds.
What to do? Which basket to put your messaging eggs in, US or Europe? I have a recommendation as all this plays out:
Both.
1) Please get on Signal if you haven’t yet.
Signal is the new baseline, even for everyday communications. It’s considered by most people to be the best combination of top-notch security and good user experience. At the moment there is no threat to Signal that I’m aware of, only speculation of what the US government might decide to do in the future.
2) Get a Europe-based messaging app as a backup option.
In the same way that you should consider following non-US sources of news, you should consider where certain essential apps like messaging are based. The US is facing the unpredictability of what our authoritarian slide could bring. Europe is in better shape in that regard but there is future regulatory risk to encryption generally. [See update below or here]
There are several encrypted apps based in Europe that rival Signal. I would say few can match Signal’s combo of security, quality, features, and ease of use for those who don’t want to think too much about these things. But they’re all different and have their own pros and cons.
So which one to get? I did some extra research last night, digging into various reviews and comparisons where you get true geeks nerding out over this and that difference between apps. Spare yourself the aggravation.
I got it down to two, then one winner emerged.
Threema is the closest to what I would call the European equivalent to Signal, with strong security protocols and a nice UI. Like Signal (and unlike WhatsApp) it doesn’t collect your data in the first place. It’s Swiss-based, which is a real advantage based on their strong laws around internet privacy. The Swiss don’t mess around, I didn’t see Switzerland on the list of countries pushing to weaken encryption. It is highly unlikely they will throw you under the bus at the behest of other governments.
Security-wise they seem pretty comparable. While Signal’s encryption protocols are seen to be the best, the app is not perfect. Critics say requiring a phone number for signup is a fundamental privacy liability. With Threema you can signup anonymously. You can choose to associate your contact info with your Threema profile, or not.
One small feature I like compared to Signal is that Threema actually has a contacts list tab. With Signal you can’t browse your contacts until you start a new message.
Maybe the main real drawback to Threema is that it costs six bucks on the app store. Might be a dealbreaker for some people. I see it as a positive, as it locks in their funding source. Signal relies on donations.
I had been ready to recommend one or two other strong contenders, like Matrix/Element, but for various reasons they didn’t seem as promising for popular adoption. Also Threema seems more polished and ready for primetime than some competitors.
While it’s fairly popular in Europe - several million users, though I’ve seen different numbers - you likely won’t find any of your peeps there at the moment (I had one, a security-conscious European friend). That’s ok. I think the important thing is to have an option for at least your inner circle in case Signal falters.
And for as many people as possible to agree on which option so we can find each other. I vote for Threema. I’m there already, find me if you take the plunge.
Update March 21, 2025: Important news from EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
