NEW YORK (AFP) – A wall on a subway passage plastered with passengers’ PostIt notes carrying inspirational comments, poignant thoughts and uplifting ideas is many New Yorkers’ answer to the fear and anxiety provoked by the election.
“Be more kind”, “am I gonna get deported?”, “dump Trump” and “having a felon as our new president” read some of the brightly colored sticky notes, many of which addressed President-elect Donald Trump’s win on Tuesday.
Reviving a project created in the wake of Trump’s 2016 victory, Matt Chavez invites commuters at a busy Manhattan station to take time from their journey to jot a note and add it to others on the wall of a long passageway.
“This project started in early 2016, it was called ‘Subway Therapy’, but there were no notes yet,” Chavez, 36, said as passersby stopped to read notes, while others scrawled their own missives using small folding tables.
“It was just me talking to strangers in the subway. And that evolved after the 2016 election, when Trump was elected the first time. I just wanted to help people express themselves, to share ideas and to come together.”
Chavez resurrected the project, which he has taken on the road around the United States and as far afield as Brussels and Malmo, on the Saturday before the election.
Trump made gains across New York City, which has traditionally been a bastion of Vice President Kamala Harris’s Democrats, scoring 30 percent of votes to Harris’s 68 per cent, which was 16 points less than Biden’s 2020 tally.
“I noticed people writing more about their anxieties, their fears, and also about strength and resilience,” Chavez said.
Tourists, business people and parents with infants were among those stopping to read the wall and pen their own notes.
Esra Yalcin, a graphic designer originally from Turkey, stopped with her daughter, photographing her with a Polaroid camera after she attached her own note to the white tiles.
Yalcin, 50, had fixed a note onto an earlier iteration of the wall just after Trump was first elected in 2016.
“So today we put a note. And we’re telling people stay strong,” said Yalcin who had been pregnant with her daughter Lia at the time.
Her daughter’s message?
“Don’t lose your hope.”
