This is the year 2020 in the USA. 2020 is the year that the president was impeached by the House of Representatives, acquitted by the Senate. The stock market crashed. COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, shutting down the world and revealing the dramatic social inequalities in its wake. In the land where we once poetically spoke the words “give me your tired, your poor,” the zero-tolerance policy of this administration reverberated from one detention center to another. ICE detained and deported record numbers of people without fair hearings while separating children from their parents. When legal immigration was reduced by 49%, H-1B petitions were cut dramatically, refugees and asylum seekers were denied, and immigration rights dissipated. The irony was lost by the descendants of colonizers. 2020 spun out of control with a record number of hurricanes, wildfires, police brutality, and racial violence. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Manuel Ellis, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd symbolized a recursive error in a system that threatens to crash if not corrected. Nor was the systemic brutality and racial violence were not exclusive to African American men. Latinx men like Sean Monterrosa, Carlos Ingram-Lopez, and Andres Guardado were part of the 2nd-highest demographic killed by police in the US.

It was on the streets of this America that people, risking their lives during a pandemic, gathered as part of the Black Lives Matter movement to express their First Amendment rights. They peacefully protested and spoke out against the systemic police brutality. Their protests were in front of heavily militarized police, federal officers wearing unmarked military fatigues, and domestic terrorist organizations (aka militias).

These were the same groups, provoked by the vitriol of the president, that confronted the protestors.

It was also a battleground between capitalism & democracy in what appears to be a zero-sum game.

¡¿XO?! (translation: Where is the love?) explores and reflects upon the tension & violence between two opposing sides, from the point-of-view of a drone, as they come together at a crossroads on an abstract street somewhere in America.

Regardless of our political views, we have to do better than this. #vote