I Voted for Shirley
April 5th, 2011
“I Voted for Shirley”, temporary text installation with twine at Friends of Distinction/Dan Graham, 1842 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, December 2009 (photo credit: Audrey Chan)
Vincent invited us to think about the year 1969. He was putting together a show and performance event at our friend Aaron’s project space, Dan Graham, a call center-turned-gallery originally located where the 2 Freeway spits out onto a busy stretch of Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park. I consider the prompt. As an object and an idea, 1969 has been refracted to me through movies now available streaming online, via my mother’s memories of dancing to American pop as a Taiwanese co-ed, and through Wikipedia pages that chronicle nameable things as networks of linked crumbs to be followed on divergent paths through high-bandwidth woods. Time slips and stutters as it turns into histories.
Yes we can.
It was November 2009, the one-year anniversary of the historic day that changed the complexion of power in our proud nation. My thoughts turned to Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, representing New York’s 12th congressional district, which included parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Some of her legislative initiatives included: fighting for domestic workers’ right to a minimum wage, opposing the Vietnam War and the draft, improving opportunities in inner cities, and seeking reductions in military spending. Road pavers allow us to walk on the back of their labor. We have only to stop the bulldozers that nip at their heels.
Surely we must.
In 1972, Shirley ran for President of the United States. Her campaign slogan—Unbought and Unbossed—set forth principles that challenge the traditional narrative of political ethics. She was a black woman who did not believe that either of those simple facts precluded her from seeking high office. Her spirited campaign led her to the Democratic National Convention, where she won 152 votes from delegates. The National Organization of Women, then led by Gloria and Betty, initially backed Shirley but ultimately threw their support to Senator George McGovern. He was deemed to be a safer bet given her “hopeless odds” (Shirley’s own words).
No we can’t.
Republican Richard Nixon was the victor that year by a landslide. Call up the picture in your mind of Tricky Dick stepping out of a plane wagging V’s to the press corps and you can start to feel the crushing vacuum of the status quo. It is where we live now. Now picture Shirley stepping onto that same tarmac, her chin held high and her pursed lips bursting into a wide, satisfied grin. Close your eyes slowly and you will feel the mild breeze of a real future as it gently blows by your cheek. Open your eyes and blink back the fact that history is never so easy. Shirley survived three assassination attempts during the campaign.
Maybe we could.
In 2008, I voted for a Shirley in my own time. As history will tell from this point forward, Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States on November 4, 2008. Forty years after stately Shirley stepped into in her very own office on Capitol Hill in 1969, Barack was inaugurated and took his seat in the Oval Office. He rode into office on a wave of adulation, buoyed by a splintered opposition and a shell-shocked public. We voted for Barack, sick of the broken war, the Orwellian doublespeak and bullying talking heads, coldly rational torture documents, our self-financed bankruptcy…the bought and bossed bullshit of the Bush status quo. We’re still living in it, this house of cards that has been burning before and since our hero’s arrival.
Yes we will.
The photograph that accompanies this text is documentation of the artwork that I made for Vincent’s show. My mother, Susy, and I made the installation together using a box of twine that we bought from Home Depot. For the performance we stood on opposite sides of the grating as we “embroidered” the façade of the space with the crudely-scrawled message for passing motorists. She later remarked that while she waited for me to pass the twine back to her, she was observing all the “beautiful, smoking people”—artists and artists’ friends and art watchers—who were milling about, time traveling to a resurrected ghost of 1969 through objects and actions in an ordinary time called 2009.
Yes we did.
– Audrey Chan, Los Angeles, 2011
