The Hope for Georgia Bus makes its debut in the Atlanta Pride Parade.
Credit / Jesse McNulty
Sometimes social activism sounds like a march, with chanted slogans and the like. And sometimes it sounds like a spray gun and an air compressor.
The woman wielding the paint, her face half-hidden under a respirator, is Angela Bortone. She explains that she’s applying a coat of primer, one of three colors that are going on this school bus sitting in the yard outside The Bakery in southwest Atlanta.
Bortone is a member of Living Melody Collective along with Atlanta artists Jessica Caldas, Danielle Deadwyler, Haylee Anne, and Angela Davis Johnson, who all together are painting this bus for Liliana Bakhtiari for use in the midterm elections.
They’re calling it the Hope for Georgia Bus, and the bit that Angela is painting will go on to become an image of the iconic peach “I’m A Georgia Voter” sticker. The slogan “VOTING IS PEOPLE POWER” is emblazoned next to it.
Living Melody Collective member Angela Bortone paints the bus. (Myke Johns/WABE)
Using a bus for political action is a time-honored tradition. Recall the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. More recently, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams made headlines with his “deportation bus,” which hit the road during the run up to the primaries in May. Bakhtiari ran for Atlanta City Council in 2017. As a queer Muslim woman, her campaign embodied a lot of firsts. And when Williams rolled out his bus, she was paying attention.
“I saw that the Republican that created the deportation bus was selling [it] after he lost the nomination,” Bakhtiari says. “Someone said ‘Oh my God, you should buy his bus,’ and I said no way in hell would I give that man my money, and also that bus is a piece of crap. As we all know, it broke down. But I was sitting there looking at it, like ‘Oh my God, what if I made my version of the ‘anti-deportation bus?’ Something that’s more centered around hope and unity, showing that hate is a far weaker tool than hope.”
And so instead of the gray prison transport aesthetic of Williams’ bus, Living Melody has painted a pair of murals.
One side shows a progression of Georgia landscapes, from the coast to the mountains.
“[It] was meant to highlight to diversity of Georgia,” Bakhtiari explains. “So rather than showing the people, Angela had the brilliant idea of doing that through terrain, because Georgia is beautiful and very diverse.”
The other side is a sequence of images meant to show the evolution of the voting system in the state, from the paper ballot through today’s electronic machines.
The Hope for Georgia Bus makes a stop in Macon. (Haylee Anne)
“I thought it was beautiful that we made sure to incorporate hands of color in that evolution,” she says, “the entire message being: Vote.”
“This was not meant to be inflammatory,” Bakhtiari continues, “it was not meant to evoke emotions of hate or fear. It was meant to be a conversation starter. So it’s not outright taking a political side, because I don’t want people to be shut off.”
So in early fall, with the idea still percolating, Bakhtiari researched buses, found one she liked, and snapped it up.
“It’s my habit very much to leap before I look,” she says, “so I was like, ‘I’ll just get the bus and get out there and the rest will come to me, kinda like how I ran for office.”
“It was basically like ‘Hey I’m going to buy a bus,’” Angela Bortone recalls, “and a few weeks later, it was ‘Hi, I bought the bus, we need to paint it in a month.’”
The bus was painted, and made its public debut in the Atlanta Pride Parade. And with Election Day around the corner, Bakhtiari has been hitting the road to help (please pardon the pun) drive the vote. When we spoke in late September, she told me she was even planning on getting a special license to be able to use the bus to transport people to the polls. And after the election, she hopes to continue the crisis relief and outreach she’s been doing for years.
This was not meant to be inflammatory; it was not meant to evoke emotions of hate or fear. It was meant to be a conversation starter. So it’s not outright taking a political side, because I don’t want people to be shut off.
Liliana Bakhtiari
“I’d had this idea of connecting with people in impoverished parts of the country,” she says, bringing up the opioid crisis which has swept rural and formerly industrial areas. “With the minimization of health care and the shutting down of rural hospitals, it’s only gotten worse. So really what I wanted to do was humanize poverty and see what resources were needed in these areas, and not just leave people with a story, but leave people with a way of actually helping.”
Helping people is a noble cause. But one could argue it doesn’t require artwork. Bakhtiari and Living Melody Collective, however, share the same altruistic ideals. Living Melody has previously partnered with the Center for Civil and Human Rights to create a mural of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And for Bakhtiari, the art is part of the message.
“I know that something that Living Melody deeply believes is that there is a cross section between politics, art and social activism,” she says. “The work that they do is extraordinary.
“The thing is, art is not apolitical, no matter what people try to tell you, and art is meant to evoke emotion. Without art, there’s no individuality, there’s no creative expression, there isn’t dissent from things that are unjust. Art creates all of that, it’s a haven for all that, it’s meant to be accessible to everybody.”
The words “GEORGIA FOR ALL GEORGIANS” stretch over the long row of bus windows. If art is meant to be accessible to everybody, the connection that Bakhtiari and Living Melody seem to be making is that so too is the right to vote.
Bakhtiari and the Hope for Georgia Bus are on the road through Election Day and beyond. Election Day is November 6. Early voting is open through November 2nd.
