ACTIVIST CAUGHT HANGING OFF TRAFFIC LIGHT
A 21-year-old woman was seen hanging off a traffic light near the US Capitol Building on the night President Biden and Vice president Kamala Harris were sworn in.
Karen Wangare Leonard, known to her friends and followers as Kae, was pictured suspended off a traffic light while holding a Black Lives Matter sign on the 20th January 2021 showing her support for the BLM movement, as well as celebrating the win of the President Elect.
Kae is an African- American writer, athlete, artist and ‘storyteller’ with over two thousand Instagram followers. She has written various poems about racial inequality throughout the USA, while actively protesting and fighting for change.
When questioned about the series of events that made her decide to dangle from a traffic light Kae said:
“So that picture was taken by some black girls, who I actually met that day; I could hear all the car horns honking outside and people were dancing on street corners”.
She said: “Everybody just got up and went to the White House; I was at Black Lives Matter Plaza and everybody was out there celebrating and there were three different traffic lights that people were climbing up and popping champagne bottles over the crowd.”
She continued: “And they (the girls that took the photo) looked at the people on top of the traffic lights and they said, “there are no black people up there, one of us has to get up there; you’re going to be the first one”.
Under her awe-inspiring image she captioned it: “Here because someone in a lifetime before me saw me as deserving of life and fought for this possible future”.
Through her poetry and her passion with trying to create positive change for Black lives she aims to do the same as the people before her for the generations to come.
Kae believes that art and activism “overlap more than we think”; therefore, she decides to express herself through her poetry as well as partaking in protests and rallies.
When being interviewed, Kae was referred to as an activist, which she dismissed.
She said: “I am a writer, I am a storyteller, but I think that so much of that can be translated to activism; I don’t see myself in that light because I feel like I should be doing more”.
She continued saying: “I did not start off anything thinking that I was an activist, thinking that I was radical or whatever; I started off saying I have a story to tell inside me, this is what I’m going to tell”.
“I don’t mind being called an activist, but I also feel like if people call me an activist then it also comes along with certain expectations of who I am, and what I do”.
She compared her experiences at other political rallies and protests to the night that President Biden won, she said:
“All of the things I was involved in and went to witness were very electrifying, but this night felt like we were all taking a collective breath “.