pedestrians (and voting)

T

Atypically, I drove to USC this morning down Vermont - having dropped Alice and her voting papers off on Hillhurst - and, stationery at the lights, saw this billboard: IN 2022, MORE PEDESTRIANS DIED ON VERMONT AVE  THAN IN THE STATE OF VERMONT. Vote YES on HLA for Safe Streets.  [The HLA measure, for those of you who don't live in LA, is to approve (or not) the construction of hundreds of more miles of bus lanes and bike lanes - when I last checked, it looks as though it's easily passing].

I took the photo to use when opening our American Art class today in the "Picturing Democracy" course, which was - with deliberate timing - on Elections, and on the importance of visual culture in relation to them - starting, as one student pointed out, to the little white figure, which is what one looks for if one wants to cross; but quickly moving to the significance of yellow and black; the prevalence of unhoused people on Vermont, not to mention windshield washers and jugglers; the increase of pedestrians in 2022 as a result of Covid (well, maybe); and the likelihood of running over someone while distracted by a billboard ... it was one way into unpacking Thomas Nast cartoons; Thomas Waterman Wood's American Citizens painting and, (via Ellery Foutch's brilliant article on the topic), the visual semiotics of glass ballot bowls.  It was a fun class ... (and I even had a student emailing me later to reassure me that she'd gone a dropped off her ballot paper straight afterwards).