Today is Election Day, so naturally I want to talk about ghosts.
But first:
By the time you see this piece we will be at the start, in the middle, or on the other side of Election Day. We might know the direction our country is heading, we might still be in limbo, or be staring into a world that is unrecognizable. I write this, on some level, to quell my own anxiety. My own fear. My own gnawing worry that even with a win, we will still have lost some essential promise of a more perfect union. That even if the outcome I prefer occurs, we are still facing a host of challenges that won’t just be wiped away with one day.
As I so often do, when facing uncertainty I turn to words, in this case pages and pages of notes that I took on two warm summer days this past July at the Monument Lab Summit (MLS), a gathering of individuals dedicated to expanding the vision of what commemoration looks like in this country. A summit where ghosts lurked around every corner (Note: Ghosts is also the theme of Monument Lab’s journal Bulletin, and is an inspiration for this post)
The MLS took place in Philadelphia, within and around Independence National Historical Park. Steps away from the place where a group of men made choices that rippled out to our current circumstances. By hosting the summit on that particular piece of land we were actively engaging in a commemorative conversation that was in relationship to and a reflection of that particular set of historical circumstances.
We heard from oral historians and artists, community organizers, and advocates as they shared the ways in which monuments and memorials can disrupt, heal, and shift perspectives toward a more empathetic future.
I am, in some respects, haunted by the session Courage & Healing: What Do We Do With the Ghosts? Featuring Michelle Browder (founder/creator Mothers of Gynecology monument), Indigenous artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Patrick Weems (executive director of Emmett Till Interpretive Center), we heard about the role these ancestors play in holding us accountable. Weems described how Emmett Till’s presence remains central to all the work they do, “He speaks from the grave, and we listen.” Luger reminded us that, “a ghost is something we can’t touch, but they are touching you all the time,” while Browder spoke to the three women whose bodies were used as experiments for medical practice. All three remind us that ghosts of our past are all around us, even when others try to exorcize them from a particular national narrative.
Ghosts literally peered out at us from the windows of Sonya Clark’s The Descendants of Monticello—an installation that examines the Declaration House where Thomas Jefferson and Robert Hemmings spent time as the Declaration of Independence was drafted. This piece of public art featured the blinking eyes of Hemmings “collateral descendants and others who are related to the over 400 people enslaved at Monticello, including descendants biologically related to Jefferson.” A block away from Independence Hall these eyes are ever watchful, because they show as Clark described in the MLS panel, how “time is a spiral where we see things again and again, but they change and evolve.”
“Artists can tell the truth in dance, in song, in a poem, we can tell it by just saying mmmhmmm. Keep telling the truth by every means possible.” – Sonya Clark
At this moment, we are within that spiral, in an election that feels at times like a series of hauntings. Where we are caught between the spirits of an America that pull us back to a status quo versus the spirits of the nation we aspire to be.
On day two of the MLS I carried those ghosts on a walking tour with ConsenSIS (co-founder Trapeta B. Mayson and team member Julie Rainbow) a project that looks to “count, gather, and memorialize Black Women and Femme poets in the Philadelphia area.” For our tour we talked about literary icons Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Nellie Rathbone Bright, and Pinky Gordon Lane in specific places around the National Park. After hearing each poet’s words, we were encouraged to gather the echoes and prompted to write our own poems, channeling Harper, Bright, and Lane’s spirits through our own bodies creating reflections of the present day realities we currently face.
At the end of the tour we stood in a courtyard filled with flowers and read Lane’s “Quiet Poem.” Then standing in a single line we read our referential poems in a cascade connecting Lane’s words to our own, and our words to each other. It was a powerful illustration about how the past, present, and future can come together.
I will write a defiant poem
Because I am often cautious
Afraid to step away from the middle
Yet determined to move
Knowing I need a little push, a little shove
(With Love)
To walk forward.
-Priya Chhaya, July 2024
I know we do not know what the future holds. I know we are haunted by so many dead and that what happens next is in our hands. However, what the MLS reminded me is that there is so much more work that needs to be done even after a ballot is cast. That our only way forward is to abide by the mantra vote AND…
So. As we wait with bated breath for what our fate as a country might be, I embrace the words of the closing plenary speaker Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, who said, “What is possible right now, was not possible then. There are more of us than there are of them.” She continued by quoting the poet June Jordan whose Poem for South African Women ends with the words “‘We are the ones we have been waiting for,’ so act like it.”
This election day, I will take the ghosts and our future, whatever that may be, and fight for the world I want, the world I need to be real.
Please. Join me.
*All quotes are based on my notes from the live sessions from the Monument Lab Summit which took place July 18, 2024. I have tried to be accurate in my transcription but they may not be verbatim.
...this is what comes next 