What if the January 6 attack on the US Capitol had been successful? Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan explore just that in their graphic novel series, entitled 1/6: The Graphic Novel. They also discuss how the events of January 6, 2021, diverge from democratic principles, such as free speech and the right to protest. Alan Jenkins is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. His previous positions include President of The Opportunity Agenda (a social justice communication lab that he cofounded), Assistant to the Solicitor General at the Department of Justice, and Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation. Gan Golan is an artist, cultural strategist, and bestselling author. He has organized major protest movements, including Occupy Wall Street and the People’s Climate March, and is the cocreator of the Climate Clock in NYC. Links: https://onesixcomicsstore.com/ https://www.westernstatescenter.org/s/WSC-Action-Guide-1-6-single-pg.pdf
Gan Golan: Art is a really important way of setting an agenda for what we are trying to move towards as a society, but it's also a great organizing tool. It gets people excited. It brings people together. And so art can be strategic, just as our political strategy can be far more artistic. And so it's really bringing those two worlds together of art, activism, of culture and strategy where I think we really have grassroot social movements that tap into the dreams, the vision, the life force of our communities and help give them greater power and impact in our political conversations.
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Alex Lovit: Welcome to The Context, a podcast about the past, present, and future of democracy from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. I'm your host, Alex Lovit. We have two guests on today's episode. They are coauthors of a series of comic books called "1/6: The Graphic Novel." "1/6" is speculative fiction about a world in which the violent protests at the U. S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, succeeded in their goal of overthrowing the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
As you'll hear in this interview, it's also an attempt to use art, in this case, the graphic panel format of comics to address deep concerns about democracy. The two coauthors of "1/6" have impressive resumes, including a broad range of work and accomplishments. Alan Jenkins is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School. He's also been the cofounder and previous president of a social justice communications lab called Opportunity Agenda, Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, and Associate Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Gan Golan is an artist, cultural strategist, and best-selling author. He's organized for major protests, including Occupy Wall Street and the People's Climate March. And he's also the co-creator of the Climate Clock. To help introduce this conversation, I have a Kettering Foundation colleague joining me, Joni Doherty, the Senior Program Officer for Democracy and the Arts. Jodi has worked as a studio artist and as an American Studies professor. Since joining Kettering's staff in 2015, she's led a series of research projects with libraries, museums, and humanities councils.
And now at the head of the Foundation's focused area in democracy and the arts, she's exploring the power of artistic expression to affirm and advance democracy. Joni, thanks for joining me to help introduce this conversation.
Joni Doherty: I'm delighted.
Alex Lovit: So first of all, let me just ask about this focus area that you lead at Kettering called Democracy and the Arts. These are two ideas that might not be connected in a lot of listeners' minds. Can you just describe how the Foundation sees these connections? What's the relationship between arts and democracy?
Joni Doherty: Well, I agree with you that it does seem like an unusual pair. And especially because democracy is such a big idea, and it can seem so abstract or even totally irrelevant to our day-to-day lives, art is needed for democracy because art is so concrete. It's physical. It's tangible. It appeals to the senses. It includes ideas, but it brings to ideas emotion, that concreteness of everyday experience. So art that is understood in that way can really enhance our capacity to affirm and advanced democracy. It speaks to individual freedom, to fairness, belonging.
Democracy needs the arts to bring the human part of ourselves to what might be an abstract idea.
Alex Lovit: You're talking there about the power of art to influence understanding and behavior, and that's a power that can be used for democracy as well as for other purposes. Other forms of communication also influence understanding and behavior. For example, most people wouldn't consider a campaign speech to be art, but it's obviously an attempt to influence how people interact in a democracy. Is there something unique about art? Does art stand apart from other forms of communication?
Joni Doherty: It is true that the arts can embody reprehensible emotions and ideas as well as our aspirational democratic ideals. So art in and of itself is not intrinsically ethical. So I'm not saying that all art is democratic. There are certain forms of art, certain kinds of expression, certain content that would advance democracy. The other thing I would say is that the difference between straightforward communication with the aim of convincing or persuading is very different from the arts.
The arts are an expression of our imagination, of creativity. Rather than narrowing down to a particular position, art opens things up so that we can consider other points of view, think about things in a way that we might not have ever imagined until that experience with a particular artform. So a symbol can convey in some sense a fact -- this is how things are. But what artforms ask us to do is to enter into a relationship with a feeling or an idea in ways that cause us to ask questions or wonder about things.
So I see the kind of rhetorical example that you gave is very different from an art that has that kind of openness to it. Art sometimes can be used for propaganda, but I would not say that that is a democratic artform or even an ethical artform.
Alex Lovit: We've been using this word art. And that's a word that for a lot of people brings to mind paintings and museums, other kinds of high-culture forms of artistic expression. And on the other hand, there are popular culture genres -- popular movies, the subject of this episode a comic book. Is there a distinction in your mind between these categories? Is there a difference in the role that high art can play in supporting democracy as opposed to popular culture?
Joni Doherty: When I described the arts in the beginning, I was talking about a kind of language that appeals to the senses. I would like to challenge that boundary between high art and so-called folk art or low art or art that's done by everyday people. I think that we can be a lot more inclusive about what we mean by the arts. Art is an imaginative expression of an emotion or an idea in a way that opens us up to new ways of thinking and feeling. According to that definition, a comic book could very well be an artform. A movie could be an artform.
When I think of popular culture, it can be fun, and it's something I enjoy very much. But I think of popular culture as primarily entertainment motivated. And I think that using the senses to explore and express essential questions that humans engage with as we try to figure out how to live together, using the senses, that can be an art. That really expands the idea of art. And it's not something that only is done by professionals in exclusive places.
Alex Lovit: So the interview people are about to hear with Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan is about, as you said, a particular artform, a comic book, an exercise in speculative fiction. So can you describe a little bit about how you see this as a particular example of the arts supporting democracy?
Joni Doherty: Yes, I definitely think that "1/6" not only speaks to democracy but is essentially a democratic artform. And that's because it is something that you don't have to have specialized knowledge in order to engage with. So through images and through storytelling, ideas are explored, different perspectives are explored in a way that is accessible to a much wider group of people. The visual language that they use is easily understood by people. The images in the comic can be followed regardless of the text.
So I do think of it as not only addressing an important democratic challenge, but also essentially the form in and of itself is a democratic form.
Alex Lovit: Are there other examples or are there other types of art or other ways that art can support democracy that you've encountered?
Joni Doherty: There are two different generally types of art - art that is created by, let's say, professional or highly experience artists, and I put this comic book in that area. I mean, what they are putting together, Alan and Gan, is a very complex blend of fact, very well-researched facts, informed speculation, and a fictional story. So that's a very complex form of artmaking, even though it's highly accessible to most people.
Other forms of art might be participatory art. For example, I'm thinking of a theater piece that I'm involved with right now where the playwright is going out into the community and collecting stories from people about their experiences of belonging or not feeling as if they belong that will be eventually put into a play that is essentially the voices of people talking about their experiences in their communities, which essentially is a problem of democracy is how can we be sure that we create a society where everyone belongs.
Another very different example coming from the museum field would be an exhibition called ["Riveting"] at the Dayton Art Institute that brings to the institute the work of women, often women who have been marginalized historically, to a very formal setting of an art museum. Now those artists are being recognized as, quote, "worthy of a museum exhibition." There are a lot of different ways that democracy and the arts can interact in ways that can both advance the formal arts and also expand the idea of what we mean by the arts.
Alex Lovit: So you've had a chance to hear this interview that people are about to listen to with Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan. Is there anything that jumped out at you from that conversation or that you think people should be taking away from that conversation?
Joni Doherty: Well, the first thing that really jumped out at me from that is the complexity of the comic in the way that they're blending different forms of communication. So I briefly talked about that before, the idea that there is documented fact, informed speculation in a fictional story. I thought that that was really interesting because a lot of times people will think of the arts as appealing purely to the emotions. And yet here the emotions interact with ideas in ways that are very important for us to engage with. So they're breaking down this binary between the emotion and the intellect in some way and blending those together.
The second thing I was really struck by was their discussion of symbol, the idea that a symbol, in some ways, it is a statement of a fact or a message that is unambiguous to those who are the insiders. And oftentimes, symbols can appeal directly to the emotion. And they're not the same as art because I think that symbols simplify, and I think art makes our world more complex, more rich, and more interesting.
Alex Lovit: Thank you, Joni, for helping me introduce this conversation with Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan.
Joni Doherty: Thanks, Alex. It was a pleasure.
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Alex Lovit: Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan, welcome to the context.
Alan Jenkins: Thank you.
Gan Golan: Thanks for having us.
Alex Lovit: So the fundamental topic of this conversation is going to be this series of comic books that the two of you are writing, entitled "1/6". It's a dystopian alternative future of what the US might have looked at if the January 6th, 2021, protests had succeeded in overturning Joe Biden's legitimate election victory. And I want to have a broader conversation with you guys about cultural narratives and the role of art in political movements. But let's start with "1/6". And the obvious question, Alan, I'll start with you: Why did you decide to write a comic book on this topic? What audiences are you trying to reach, and what impact do you hope to have?
Alan Jenkins: The first point is democracy is the most important value that we share as a society, the idea that we all have a voice that counts and that is an equal voice, irrespective of wealth or race or other parts of who we are, and that we're a multicultural democracy. And so when I watched the events of January 6th, 2021, not just the physical attack on the capitol but the intimidation of election officials and threatening the life of the Vice President, the fake electors scheme, it really shook me to my core.
And even though it was unsuccessful on that day, it was clear to me that the forces that generated the insurrection, the authoritarianism, the disinformation, the bigotry, antisemitism and white supremacy that fueled a lot of the attack were very much still with us and that a lot of those forces were trying to retell the story, right, to promote false narratives around the insurrection, that it either didn't happen or it was perpetrated by other people rather than the insurrectionists themselves.
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And I knew that those forces were going to stick around and that we had to speak out and ring the alarm. And so I'm a law professor, and so I could've written a [law view] article that would've been read by tens of people, but it struck me that there were some other ways to tell that story that could reach a broader audience. And I've always been a comic book head since I was a kid, and I know the power of comic book storytelling to move hearts, minds, and sometimes policy. But I didn't know how to do it.
So I reached out to Gan with whom I've collaborated on other efforts, and he brought just a whole wealth of strategy and artistic talent to the enterprise, and we were off.
Alex Lovit: How'd you guys meet? How did you start working together?
Gan Golan: Well, actually, Alan has been involved in supporting artists coming together to have a greater voice in our political conversation for a number of years. And so when he was the head of the Opportunity Agenda along with Betsy Richards, he organized an event called Creative Change. I met him there, and I realized that not only was he the head of this significant nonprofit, he was also a comic book nerd himself, self-admitted. And so we really bonded over that and were looking for different projects we could work on together that brought all of these elements into one, the social justice concerns together with really great, fun storytelling for pop culture audiences.
So when Alan, fast forward many years later, came to me with this idea for a graphic novel with the premise that what would have happened had the insurrection succeeded, I immediately said yes. Despite how many other things were on my plate at the time, I knew that this was a really important story to tell and had a great narrative hook that we could make really exciting just as a comic book.
And so we were off to the races, and we immediately began to dig in to the key issue here, which is that the insurrection on January 6th is still happening. While they failed on that day, the forces that were organized on the National Mall supported by certain members of Congress as well as a number of -- a very large network of donors and institutions, that was simply a dress rehearsal for what might be to come.
And so in telling this story, which might be speculative fiction, we were able to actually preview what might have happened had they succeeded, but really talk about the vision of the future that many of these interests are trying to implement for the entire country and are still trying. And that is a combination of many different things from there are definitely white supremacist groups involved; there are groups that do not believe in democracy itself, and a whole set of other interests that are a genuine threat to our democratic institutions.
And so we're writing an adventure story, but we also wanted to ask the big questions about what country do we want to become and the fact that we're sitting at the crossroads right now.
Alex Lovit: So Gan, I want to ask you, a lot of your career before the "1/6" project -- including the "1/6" project kind of straddles the boundary between traditional organizing and artistic expression. So for example, you're helping to organize a climate march, and then you're also helping to produce art that symbolizes the concerns of the movement, and then, of course, the art helps with the organizing. How do you think about the role of art in political movements? What can art accomplish that a journalistic investigation or a campaign speech can't?
Gan Golan: That is a great question. And if we look back at all of the social movements throughout history that fought for greater equality, justice, dignity for all people, you can see that artists and art was very central to the movement itself and not just in terms of communicating to the public the concerns of these movements but in the actual internal organizing. And so for example, I -- one of my first activist experiences, I was working within the anti-Apartheid movement in the '80s and '90s and had a lot of interaction with the ANC who only later became the government but at that time was a government in exile; Nelson Mandela was in jail.
And they showed us how important it was that dances and singing and marches you see on the street were actually a way in which they were organizing people and then drawing more media to tell their story and getting the world to pay attention. So the art is a form of communication. It can point out what's wrong with the current system. It can also paint a vision of the system that we want to have, of the world that we're fighting for in a way that journalism can't or academics can't do as easily.
And so the art is a really important way of setting an agenda for what we are trying to move towards as a society, but it's also a great organizing tool. It gets people excited. It brings people together. And so since those early experiences, I've always seen that art can be strategic, just as our political strategy can be far more artistic. And so it's really bringing those two worlds together - art and activism, of culture and strategy where I think we really have grassroots social movements that tap into the dreams, the vision, the life force of our communities and help give them greater power and impact in our political conversations.
And so that's where I like to live. I also think it's a really effective part of how we create a world that brings greater justice and dignity to everyone.
Alan Jenkins: I would just add that in addition to the power and the history that Gan's discussed, culture and art and particularly pop culture are among the few vehicles we have left as a society for reaching a broad and diverse audience. And here I mean ideologically diverse, diverse in terms of partisan affiliation as well as demographics. If you're 80 years old in the United States, you grew up around comic books. If you are eight years old in the United States, you're growing up around comic books. And that's true whatever your party, whatever your ideology.
And there's a lot of research as well as experience showing that really good art and storytelling can help people to lower their ideological blinders and be transformed by the story, to get to know types of people who they didn't think they had in common with, to identify with struggles that they may not have identified with before or even maybe thought were foreign to them or alien. And so picking comic books as a pop culture vehicle spoke to our shared love of comic books but also was really a strategy for reaching new audiences.
Alex Lovit: Both of you are making a compelling argument that if you want to build a movement for political or social change, it helps to have some artists on the team. Alan, you've had a really varied career, and you've sought change through a range of different approaches, through litigation with NAACP Legal Defense Fund, grantmaking with the Ford Foundation. Then you were cofounder of the organization the Opportunity Agenda, which seeks to impact society through challenging and making narratives. Now of course, you're teaching and researching at Harvard.
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So I want to ask you what you've learned about these various approaches to social change, and how can artists work alongside these other approaches?
Alan Jenkins: Yeah. Well, first I would say we need all those approaches. So I've done a bunch of them, and there are some others like community organizing that I haven't been directly involved in. And I think they're all crucial, and they have to fit together. So one of the reasons I cofounded the Opportunity Agenda, which is a social justice communication lab, is because I saw that we as social justice movements were not taking communication seriously as a change strategy, at least at that point. This was about 18 years ago that we founded the organization.
And so for example, as a civil rights lawyer, which I had been in the past, we would win a lawsuit, and then it would be overturned by a ballot initiative -- thank you, California -- because the public were not with us, and we hadn't brought them along with us. Or at the Ford Foundation, I would sometimes fund cutting-edge research on problems and solutions, and it would gather dust on the shelf because we hadn't created or insisted upon a communication strategy, and often reports would be written and communicated in a language that only ten people could understand with the same degrees and the same ideology.
And so it seemed to me that we needed to complement those strategies with compelling storytelling. And to get, Alex, to your point about the role of artists, as Gan noted, one important realization for me as a lawyer was artists are social justice leaders, or at least many of them are. And so rather than thinking about them as I had, as well how can they help our movement, people like Gan are at the cutting edge of movements for social change. And historically, that's true.
So if we look back and think about Sidney Poitier or Marian Anderson or Marvin Gaye, so many of those artists -- or Mohammad Ali as a sports figure, inherently a cultural leader, those people were activists on their own, as was Nina Simone, for example, and they were entertainers. And if their entertainment had not been compelling, their impact would have been significantly muted or vitiated.
And so the other lesson is to step back and let artists be artists, not to have [laughs] lawyers and advocates telling them how to create art because that never goes well.
Alex Lovit: So a lot of the ideas that you've explored in your careers, both of you, are abstract concepts that can be difficult to understand. So Gan, you've done work about climate change, economic inequality. Alan, you've done work about human rights, racial justice. And obviously, in "1/6" you're writing about democracy. All of these are very important ideas. But they can be difficult for people to wrap their heads around and identify with on an emotional level. How do you think about art and narrative making as tools for getting people engaged in these kinds of issues?
Gan Golan: Well, you're absolutely right. When we talk about deep, systemic issues, the bigger, larger structures that our lives are dependent on, whether it's our energy system or our governmental system or our decision-making system, those things can seem very remote to people and very separate from our daily lives. And yet, they determine really the world in which we exist.
And so how to you bring that into people's view in a way that feels tangible and compelling so people understand what really is at stake and really calling people to be much more active participants in shaping those things so it's not just the usual suspects, the special interests, the wealthy and the powerful who get to make all these decisions. And art and culture and storytelling is a really great way to bring people deeper into that conversation that often seems so far away in all the ways that Alan said.
But what we did with "1/6" is we took this conversation over democracy and whether we should have one and whether we should fight for it and we turned it into a narrative story, a character-driven story so that it's not just a bunch of talking heads or a documentary. We're really showing how it impacts the everyday lives of people in the story as a way to talk about how it could impact the everyday lives of our fellow Americans.
And so we have a number of characters in the book that really are amalgams of different kinds of American experience, and they cross the political spectrum. We have a character who is an immigrant and a journalist. We have a character who is a working mom. We have another character who's a staffer on the Hill who's very much involved in politics. But we also have a MAGA character, someone who we wanted to really understand from a human perspective some of the things that might motivate them.
And so it was very important to us to have these characters going through these systems that we're talking about. They experienced January 6th in our story -- not to give too much away, but it changes each one of them personally and fundamentally. And so it's so important that we have stories that make those things real and tangible for people so they don't think, oh, it's just some abstract thing that doesn't affect me.
Alex Lovit: Alan, you've in your career thought and written a lot about representation of diversity in media. So as Gan was saying, the "1/6" comics I assume kind of intentionally have this diversity of racial diversity, diversity of experiences, diversity of perspectives included in the book. And I'm wondering what conversations went into that and also the decision to include the MAGA character -- why was it important to include that perspective as well?
Alan Jenkins: Gan and I spent a lot of time in the planning of "1/6" really charting out, number one, that this had to be a character-driven story, that if it was just relating the facts of January 6th or what would have happened, it would just be an illustrated version of the House Select Committee Report, which nobody would want to look at. Then we went to, okay, how can we represent different segments, not only different racial and ethnic groups and people with different relationships to America but also different perspectives, different walks of life.
In particular, very quickly we decided that one of our characters should be somebody who had voted for President Trump in 2016, who had come to the Capitol because he told them to but also to support his son who was also a lesser character in this story, and who experienced loss and questioning -- did I do the right thing, was it worth it. And that empathy for all of these characters had to be a part of our approach, that I tell my students no one ever convinced another person whom they did not first seek to understand and to put themselves in that person's shoes.
And it's been crucial, and I'll tell you a quick story, but it's my favorite story and I can't stop talking about, from our adventures with "1/6: The Graphic Novel." I was at a Baltimore Comic-Con, and this gentleman walked up to me with his son, and he said, "Hey, this looks really interesting, this book. Where'd you get the idea? Were you there? Who'd you talk to?" And I said, "Well, I wasn't there but talked to a lot of people."
He said, "Oh, I was there." And I said, "Really! What were you doing there?" He said, "Well, President Trump told us to come, so I came." And so Alex, at this point I'm kind of looking around for the emergency exits and what's going to happen. But we talked for a long time, like 20 minutes, and he took out his phone, and he showed me photos of himself at the insurrection on January 6th with mayhem behind him. And he kept saying, "I don't usually tell people."
And I'm thinking, you know, dude, we just met a few minutes ago, but he said that he went down the Q-Anon rabbit hole -- that's the way he described it. And he went to the Ellipse. President Trump said to go to the Capitol. He went to the Capitol. People started breaking into the Capitol. He was about to do so, and a woman who had come down with him on the bus said, "You've got a kid. I've got kids at home. I don't think we should go in there." And he said the fever broke in terms of breaking into the Capitol.
So we talked for a long time about Q-Anon and politics and politics and a lot of stuff. And then he bought a copy of the comic book and he left. And I thought, man, I hope he doesn't read this thing. I don't know if he fully understands the implications. And then he came back. And I thought, ruh-roh, what's going to happen, and he said, "Can you sign this?" And I signed it, and he was off.
And to me it's my favorite story because there's no other circumstance in which an insurrectionist and I would have had a 20-minute conversation that was civil, that was friendly, in which we talked about our shared interest. But we also talked about this fundamental question of January 6th and the election and who was right and who was wrong. And I don't know if I convinced him, but we convinced each other of our shared humanity, which I think is crucial. It's very hard to demonize someone whom you understand.
And to me that speaks to the power of pop culture generally and specifically of the "1/6" series.
Alex Lovit: Yeah, I think that's a great story of kind of a human connection that could only happen through art, that if you'd approached that guy with the Select Committee -- the 800-page Select Committee Report, presumably that interaction would not have gone the same way. You're saying that you wanted the comic book to be more than just a visual description of that report, and it is. But it's also evident how much work and research went into getting the facts right.
The second issue of the series has a system where the borders around the panels indicate whether what's depicted is documented fact, informed speculation, or part of the fictional story. Can you talk about some of the research that went into this book? And why was it important to get the facts right?
Alan Jenkins: Yeah. Well, I can start with the research, and Gan may have more to say about the why. So first of all, shoutout to my two research assistants, Emily Miller and Jennifer Jeong, who spent countless hours factchecking what happened on January 6th, what happened leading up to it. And they had to keep revising because, as we were writing Issue Two, things kept happening. There were convictions. There were guilty pleas. There were new legal documents.
And they kept up with all the facts so that we could be sure that when we were putting something forward as fact, it was actually factual and accurate and something that readers could check out, which goes to why we wanted to be clear about what was documented, meaning legal documents or testimony or journalistic reporting, what is speculative, meaning we know generally what happened but we might not know where it took place of precisely who said what, and what's purely fictional because part of the story of "1/6" is the harm of misinformation and disinformation.
And we wanted to make sure that we were separating documented incidents from fiction.
Gan Golan: I think part of the reason is that we wanted to have the combined power of what factual documentary storytelling can do and, at the same time, what speculative storytelling can do. And the documentary part was just so important because, literally since January 6th itself, there has been a concerted effort for us to forget, for us to not believe our own eyes what we all saw happen on that day, and to try to make us believe that it was in fact something totally different from what it was.
It was in fact an attempt to steal a US election through the combined use of violence on the Mall and a lot of backroom operations using the fake electors scheme and all of these pressure tactics on different states. And that is the heart of what was happening there. And now we've been told since then it was just a tourist outing that got sort of out of hand and everyone's making a big deal out of this, precisely so that we let down our guard so we don't really recognize the severity of the threat of what happened on that day and the ongoing threat.
And so it was very important just to get the facts right so that people could not forget. And it was Trump himself who said on that day, "Remember this day forever." Of course, he would like us to remember a false story of what happened, and we felt it was our job to really tell the true story of what happened in a compelling way, that people would be engaged and read, but really have the facts backing it up. And that's why we have that system where you can clearly differentiate between what moments are factual and what moments are speculative fiction.
And that's why the speculative fiction piece is also so important because it allows us to project into the future and really think about where this is all headed. I will say that in having this system where you can tell the difference between fact and fiction, we're providing a service that we hope our own media and many of the so-called fair and balanced news outlets would do themselves. And it's this blurring of fact and fiction that has done a great disservice to our public conversation and has allowed so much disinformation to basically pollute our public conversation.
And I think it's a sad statement if there's a comic book that is doing a better job of differentiating than major so-called news sources in our media sphere. And so we're really hoping that people can enjoy both the speculative and the factual but clearly understand that the two are very different.
Alex Lovit: Well, speaking of the amount of research that both of you have done into the events of January 6th and the machinations within the Trump White House before and after that date to retain hold on power in an illegitimate way, so you're a couple of guys that have looked at this harder and thought about this more than most Americans. How close do you think we came to a more serious disruption of American democracy on January 6th? How likely is the future that you imagine in the comic?
Alan Jenkins: We came very, very close to losing our democracy on January 6th. One of the pivotal moments in our series is when, unlike in the real world where Capitol Hill Police Officer Eugene Goodman heroically led the mob away from the Senate Chamber, in our universe the mob turns right instead of left. They enter the Senate Chamber, and they do everything they said they were going to do. And President Trump declares Martial Law as he reportedly was considering. And our democracy is lost.
Now there are a lot of other things that happened in our series that happened differently. But the point is January 6th is often kind of described as dodging a bullet, but actually there are a hundred bullets heading for us. And any one of those on January 6th could have landed its mark, and we would have had catastrophic consequences for our democracy. So we didn't have to change much from the real world in order to envision a dystopic reality.
Alex Lovit: Let's talk a little bit more about the January 6th protest or riot itself. Gan, I was interested, you in some of your past work have thought a lot about protest movements. I read your master's thesis on the topic, and you usually, I think, are sympathetic to protesters and opposed to police actions that might limit protest. But on January 6th, you find yourself on the other side of that, thinking that the January 6th riot went too far, went beyond protest, maybe was seeking illegitimate ends.
Can you help our audience think about what types of protests are legitimate and need to be permitted and what types like perhaps January 6th need to be prevented?
Gan Golan: Yeah, and thank you for reading my master's thesis. I think you're one of the few who have, so I deeply appreciate that. But legitimate protest is a cornerstone of our democracy. It is absolutely essential for the health of our public conversation, for the health of our institutions. But I think what we saw on January 6th was something very different. Let's keep in mind that there was a lot of conversation beforehand on the Internet. We now know about preparing to make this a violent event.
And we know that there was, in fact, a quick reaction force right across the river that was ready to jump into action, which was a hotel room filled with high-power weaponry in the event, as many insurrectionists hoped, that Trump would declare the Insurrection Act and [respectively] deputize many of these militia members that were present with the ability to use force. And so this was way beyond what we would see as nonviolent protest, which is really the tradition that I come from and that has brought so many social justice concerns into our institutions.
The plan for January 6th was quite different. And remember that Trump famously said to remove all the magnetrons and the security kinds of enforcement that you normally see at a protest in DC on the Mall so that we really don't know how many people in the insurrection itself were armed. And I think what this underscores is also the incredible double standard that we have. When there were Black Lives Matter protests that were planned for DC, we saw a total militarization of the Mall and surrounding areas where you had Capitol Police and other forces literally standing guard making sure that no one even got close.
And what we saw on January 6th was a lot of confusion among law enforcement, mixed signals internally about whether the National Guard should even show up or not. And I think we just have to name what's going on here, which is that a lot of these double standards around who faces the power of law enforcement or the power of the state surrounds not only the issues that they're fighting for but around issues of race and that there is a way in which white violence or threats that are coming from groups that are predominantly white are just not taken as seriously.
And so DC, the Capitol Police, many other law enforcement were really unprepared for what happened on January 6th, despite many of them being aware, having been given briefs from the FBI, that there was some serious violence that was being planned. So however people feel about protests or not protesting, the issue of is everyone equal before the law, does everyone get the same fair treatment, that was very present on January 6th when we saw a predominantly white crowd literally bypass and crash through so many security forces that were supposed to be there, enter into the Capitol, ransack the place, make death threats to elected representatives.
This is a far different kind of event that part of it might have been legitimate protest, and there were a lot of people outside I think with that in mind. But there were other groups within there that had a much different goal for that day.
Alex Lovit: So that's the most important critique to make of the January 6th insurrection is the way that it was violent and seeking to use violence to achieve political ends. I'd also like to invite you guys to make an aesthetic critique of the January 6th protest. Like any protest movement, there was a lot of imagery used in that movement. The so-called Q-Anon Shaman wasn't dressed like that for tactical reasons. Or to pick a darker example, the noose that was hung outside the Capitol building -- was that art, was that a weapon that was a threat to be used, was it both?
You guys have thought more about this, both because you're attuned to the power of imagery but also because in the "1/6" comic you had to kind of extend the aesthetic of January 6th and imagine what it would have looked like further into the future. For example, there's an image in that first issue of a Confederate flag being hung behind Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. What do you make of the way that imagery was used in the January 6th protest itself?
Alan Jenkins: Well, now that I know about Gan's master thesis, I want to hear what he has to say about this. But I'll just start briefly by saying that if you look at the imagery on January 6th at the Ellipse and then at the Capitol, it tells us a huge amount of what those antidemocratic and racist often forces are about. So the horrendous Camp Auschwitz t-shirt that we saw on one of the protesters, the use of a gallows, which from what we could tell is a working gallows, and it makes an appearance in our comic book, which is both a death threat and a throwback to America's lynching legacy which, of course, was a white supremacist legacy.
The use of the Confederate flag, which similarly is part of our nation's white supremacist and pro slavery past; the blending of Christian nationalism and white nationalism, and the threat to democracy; the equating on many signs of former President Trump and Jesus Christ, which is a remarkable statement to see from Christians but really from anyone. It tells us about the different layers of that movement, all of which are very much still with us and many of which have gathered steam since January 6th, 2021.
Gan Golan: And I would also add something important, which is that there were insignia, flags, and signs representing a number of armed militia groups that were very present on that day. So you had the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and literally dozens of other groups that have openly stated their willingness to use violence to achieve their aims. And so this was not just a demonstration of values or a perspective. It was also a real sign that there is a quite extensive network of groups that are armed and are willing to use violence to further those goals. So that was also very clear and present on January 6th.
Alan Jenkins: I would just also add that recently we learned that the family of Justice Alito has flown on January 6th an upside-down flag, American flag, which is the symbol -- a symbol of the Stop the Steal movement, and earlier, an Appeal to Heaven, the pine tree flag, which has been a symbol for that movement. And so Justice Alito has blamed it on his wife. But it's important not to get gaslit. This is one member of the highest court in the land, which has already ruled and will be ruling on multiple cases regarding the insurrection and the role of President Trump, not to mention the rule of law and democracy under our Constitution.
It's very, very troubling, and it speaks to the way in which symbolism is used to communicate within and across movements in a way that transcends words but has powerful impact.
Alex Lovit: Both of you have thought a lot about the use of symbols, the use of art, of imagery, and narrative to promote pro-social political reform. But as you're saying, Alan, these same tools can also be used for destructive ends, to rally people behind causes that aren't positive, rally people behind antidemocratic causes, for example. Is there a way that knowledge, thinking about the power of symbols and imagery can help us not just to build positive momentum for movements but also to think about how to resist movements that should be resisted?
Gan Golan: I think the general awareness is important. What we saw on January 6th was very much the tip of the iceberg of this larger movement. And I think part of the reason it failed, to get to your earlier question, was not because the intention wasn't there. It was because there was a great deal of disorganization happening internally within that movement. There wasn't a lot of centralized coordination. And for that reason, I think, much of it didn't materialize in the way that they'd hoped. But that has changed.
I think that there is a greater coordination happening amongst these groups. They saw January 6th as a learning moment. The question is, has it been a learning moment for the rest of America, that the symbolism that we saw across January 6th was really a sort of representation of something much deeper, that you can see across the country the presence again of these militia groups or Christian nationalist groups that don't hold democracy as something that they want to maintain.
Alan Jenkins: I think it's important for all of us to have some cultural and artistic fluency so that we recognize the values and the aims behind symbolism and art, both in terms of force for good and where it potentially represents a threat or antisemitism or racism or islamophobia. The burning cross is a cultural symbol used by the Ku Klux Klan. It was actually born in the film "The Birth of a Nation" by D. W. Griffith.
So the Klan had never used that symbol before it appeared in that at the time extremely popular film around the turn of the last century. And it's become a cultural tool, a weapon, a symbol of intimidation. As part of the comic book series, we've partnered with Western States Center, an amazing pro-democracy and anti-bigotry organization that's headquartered in Portland. And we've created together an education and action guide that goes along free with the comic book and that helps, for example, parents or parishioners, congregants and others in communities to recognize when the symbols of hate and white nationalism start to pop up in their communities and specific actions that they can take in response.
So that cultural fluency is really important. It's part of the vigilance that all of us need to employ to protect our democracy.
Alex Lovit: The comic medium has often been associated with the superhero genre. It's also shaped a lot of popular movies and television shows in recent years. Superheroes come in for some cultural criticism by folks who argue that this kind of individual power fantasy about supernatural abilities distracts us from the actual work of collective action that we need to address pressing issues like democratic backsliding, enduring prejudices, climate change -- Spiderman can't save us from those.
There're no superheroes in "1/6," although Gan, your earlier graphic novel, "The Adventures of Unemployed Man," does use the kind of superheroes as a metaphor to explore the causes and consequences of the 2008 economic crisis. You guys are both comics fans. What do you think of this cultural critique of superheroes? Can superheroes be a force for social justice in reality as well as in Metropolis and Gotham?
Gan Golan: I think they absolutely can be, and they don't necessarily have to be wearing capes and tights and everything else. I mean, I think a lot of those stories are about trying to find our power and fighting against tremendous odds. And I think a lot of that applies to the situation we find ourselves in and will find ourselves in perhaps, depending on the outcome of the election. So I think those are places where people might draw a sense of strength from.
But I would also not reduce all comic books to superheroes. That's often how they're known in popular culture. But in fact, you can tell any kind of story through this beautiful medium, as we've seen. And there are stories of not just individual heroism but stories of mass uprisings for greater equality and justice. The comic book about Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, was turned into comic book form and translated into 15 different languages.
And those found themselves into the hands of activists during the Arab Spring who used that very much as an influence for their own nonviolent civil resistance. And so our story is about individuals, but it's also about individuals coming together and building -- we don't want to give too much away -- but the kind of mass resistance to authoritarianism that hopefully we will not need, but we need to seriously consider because democracies are not always protected simply by the institutions they've created, especially when they're under a very strategically designed assault to undermine those institutions.
And once again, the greatest backup is always the people, and we all need to look to ourselves as being those superheroes, as being the people who need to come together and actually defend our democracy and not just rely on our institutions to do the job for us. And so our story isn't just a grim dystopian tale of what could go wrong. It's also a story of everyday people rising up and a story of hope and about what we might do if we are faced with some of these worst-case scenarios.
Alan Jenkins: Can I defend superheroes for a second [laughs]?
Alex Lovit: Please.
Alan Jenkins: So a couple of things. One is Spiderman, right? Spiderman's motto is, "With great power comes great responsibility." That's the fundament of the notion of human rights, that if you're powerful, that doesn't mean that you get to trample over and oppress other people. It means you have a greater responsibility to protect the vulnerable, to do the right thing, to act responsibly. And so I think for sure, may comic books, though not all, promote the idea of the individual who will save us.
But really, especially many of the Marvel comic books are about the responsibility we all have with whatever power we possess to do the right thing and to act responsibly. And in addition to the tradition that Gan has mentioned, there's a long tradition of superhero comic books upholding democracy and fighting bigotry. The first issue of Captain America, he's socking Adolf Hitler in the jaw. This is months before the US entered World War II, and in an era where there was much debate over whether Hitler was the hero of the story, as some like Charles Lindbergh at the time, the aviator, were arguing.
Superman fought the Ku Klux Klan. The Black Panther fought the Ku Klux Klan. Wonder Woman fought the patriarchy as well as the Nazis. And there's much, much more right up to the present day. So I think there're important lessons about social justice, about democracy, about equality to be derived from -- even from superhero stories. But they're not inherent, right? It has to do with what is done with the medium, and is it done well, because no one wants to read a bad superhero comic book or a bad comic book about any other topic.
Alex Lovit: Well, thank both of you for your work on this comic book. People should go check it out. And thank you for joining me on The Context.
Alan Jenkins: Thanks so much for having us.
Gan Golan: Great to be here.
[Music]
Alex Lovit: The Context is a production of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Thank you to the Kettering Foundation's Senior Program Officer for Democracy and the Arts, Joni Doherty, for joining me to help introduce this episode. For those of us within the Foundation, it's been a pleasure to watch Joni develop this new focus area for the Foundation's work. And as I think you can tell from the intro, she's been thinking deeply about the role of our art in democratic societies, and I appreciate her sharing some of her thoughts with us on the show.
If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating or review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, or tell a friend about us. I'm Alex Lovit. I'm a Senior Program Officer and Historian with the Foundation. Isabel Pergande's our Research Assistant. George Drake, Jr., is our Episode Producer. Melinda Gilmore is our Director of Communications. Visit Kettering.org to learn more about the Kettering Foundation or to subscribe to our newsletter.
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