A protest photo resonates across the world

Images of Point Lookout family rallying against Trump's travel ban go international

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Photographer Spencer Platt captured this image of Point Lookout resident Chris Connolly, far left, with his wife, Joy, and son, Oliver, at a protest in Battery Park on Jan. 29. The image was used by major news media organizations such as The New York Times.
Photographer Spencer Platt captured this image of Point Lookout resident Chris Connolly, far left, with his wife, Joy, and son, Oliver, at a protest in Battery Park on Jan. 29. The image was used by major news media organizations such as The New York Times.
Spencer Platt/Getty

Sometimes knowing how to set up a picture is worth a thousand words.

Point Lookout resident Chris Connolly and his family joined the throngs of people protesting President Trump’s immigration ban at New York City’s Battery Park on Jan. 29, and ended up being the subjects of photos that were seen around the world.

Toting signs that read “The life you save may be your own” and “We have a chance to be heroes — we cannot be cowards,” Connolly, his wife, Joy, and their two children, Oliver, 11, and Max, 9, navigated through the crowd as they made their way past the American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial at the park’s north end and toward the main stage, where the news media had gathered.

"My wife is a proud black woman and I look like an underserved returned United States veteran,” said Connolly, 43, a writer and former Herald editor. “And our kids look vaguely Middle Eastern. I thought we were in a good position to make a big visual impact.”

The Connollys were among 10,000 people, including U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who gathered to protest Trump’s executive order that barred immigration from seven majority Muslim countries and prohibited Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. It was among more than 40 protests that erupted across the country.

Late last Friday, a federal judge in Seattle issued a nationwide temporary restraining order that lifted the travel ban. On Thursday, a three-judge federal appeals panel, after reviewing a Justice Department appeal of the ruling, refused to reinstate the ban and unanimously rejected the administration's claim of presidential authority.

Connolly, who was born in Greenwich Village and who often writes about politics, said he hadn’t attended a protest since 1982, when his parents brought him to a rally in Central Park to protest nuclear weapons. He said he felt spurred to action by Trump’s executive order excluding refugees.

“I was particularly appalled by the refusal to let fully vetted asylum seekers into our country,” Connolly said. “To me, that was like sitting in a lifeboat and refusing to save drowning strangers because of what they might do if they survived. I felt that was cowardice, and even if it was a distraction tactic, I wanted to stand up and say no.”

Joy Connolly, 40, has been an activist for decades, and attended the Women’s March on Washington last month.

Because the family is biracial, the Connollys believed they could send a message of inclusion to the world, counteracting the hate that people in predominantly Muslim countries may have felt following Trump’s executive order.

“We wanted to go down there and be a part of the visual,” Connolly said. “I believe that those images that go out around the world are the best way we can communicate with the people on the other side. The protests, to me, are partly about our anger at a racist, un-American policy, but they’re also about supporting the people those policies injure. To me, that expression of positivity is more valuable than the expression of rage.”

The Connollys’ trip downtown paid off: A photographer from Getty Images, Spencer Platt, snapped a photo of the family holding their signs, and the image was picked up by The New York Times, National Public Radio, NBC, New York magazine, ABC, the New Yorker and others. But it wasn’t a complete coincidence: Connolly acknowledged he had deliberately gathered his family near the press to make a statement.

“Because I’m a journalist, I’ve navigated those scenes a lot,” Connolly said. “We got right next to the stage because that’s where the credentialed photographers are. I saw [Platt] and I thought, he’s with Getty; if he gets a good picture of us, it could get picked up everywhere — and it did! We basically took a full-court shot and somehow drained it. It’s rewarding, because we really thought about how to most constructively channel our outrage, and it worked.”

Connolly also pointed out that media photos aren’t the only ones being taken at protests and rallies.

“There are people from the struggle at these events,” he said. “Their photos go directly to the areas of unrest. People might read about our law in Syria and say, ‘They’ve locked us out, they hate us.’ But then they see their niece’s Instagram and 30,000 New Yorkers are in the street disagreeing. They know if 10,000 people showed up downtown, tens of millions agree with them. The value of being a pixel in that image is as great as it’s ever been.”