Tough Messages Projected on Downtown Buildings Bash Trump, MAGA

A small group of activists staged a multi-media action Monday night, projecting videos and images on buildings in the area around downtown Milwaukee that they hope will stoke opposition to former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party on the first night of the Republican National Convention (RNC).

The action was led by Heather Perkins, executive director of Ignite Change, an advertising and communications firm with a focus on cause-driven campaigns. Perkins has been involved in a number of similar guerilla marketing campaigns, aimed at raising awareness for social issues.

She was joined Monday night by a Lisa Liddle, with the Democratic Messaging Project (DMP), which was supporting the the effort. The DMP is also sponsoring another effort trolling the RNC and Republican delegates with digital billboards opposing Trump and supporting President Joe Biden.

“So we’re trying to really be educational, but really motivational to mobilize voters and mobilize the independents, people who don’t think that they’re going to vote at all, that they understand the stakes,” Liddle told Urban Milwaukee.

The organizers of these actions believe that democracy in the United States is one of the primary issues in the 2024 election, along with women’s rights, and abortion rights. The goal is to convince others that this is a high-stakes election revolving around these issues.

“We want a lot of attention. We want the work to be shared,” Perkins said. “Most importantly, we want people to think more about how important this election is. You know, this isn’t one to sit out.”

Perkins also said, on a personal level, that she didn’t want to wake up in November wondering if there was something she could have done.

“America needs a wake up call. I think everybody thinks ‘oh, fascism can’t happen here.’ It can happen,” Perkins said. “There’s a playbook, and Trump is going play-by-play through the playbook.”

The first projection went up against the north wall of the Phoenix Building in the Historic Third Ward. Next they projected against a brick wall at the intersection of N. Water Street and E. St. Paul Avenue.

They showed a video cutting together a series of statements from Trump, which they say illustrate his authoritarian bent and the danger he poses to Democracy. It includes infamous Trump quotes, like the time he said it was “common sense” for his supporters to chant “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

“I love that ad, because it’s all his words,” Perkins said.

They showed other images, like an illustration of Trump in an orange jump suit behind prison bars and stating “Lock Him Up”; another imposing Trump’s face over Adolf Hitler and calling him a “wannabe dictator”; another that said the RNC was “nominating two dictators” with images of Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The video included many of Trump’s comments disparaging women and the messaging and other pieces urged women to support the Democratic ticket to fight for abortion rights.

The soggy evening dampened foot traffic in the Historic Third Ward. Under normal summer conditions, the projections would have had an audience of dozens, maybe hundreds of passersby. But the crew also projected against the Allied Insulation building, visible from Interstate 794 and against the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.

Just two days before the start of the convention, Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Since the attack, critics of Trump, especially those seeking to make comparisons between him and historical dictators like Adolf Hitler, have had to clarify that their opposition to Trump does not cross over into calls for violence.

“We recognize that that was a heinous act that happened, and there’s no room for any kind of political violence,” Liddle said. “But the fact that is, we believe it’s a symptom of politics that was created by Donald Trump himself. So it doesn’t make it right, but we’re still here. We decided not to sit this one out.”