CASSANDRA KUNERT
Cassandra Kunert (she/her) is a Contributing Editor for the Weaving the Streets project and has contributed several articles to the project in the past. She graduated from St. Lawrence University in 2021, majoring in Global Studies and Government and minoring in Arabic Studies. Cassandra’s recent work stands in fervent opposition to contemporary fascism, especially the far-right coalitions growing in rural America.
Over Thanksgiving weekend I was making the trek from northern Virginia to New York State’s Capital Region and back. I took two different routes, mainly to avoid tolls on the return trip. On the way back to Virginia, I came across a number of stickers and billboards featuring several unsettling far-right symbols. My investigation into each of them was disturbingly easy; a simple Google search resulted in pages of far-right online content. Although the movement is increasingly based online, the lived consequences are severe. Each of the symbols I witnessed is a tiny signal of the movement’s very serious threat to democracy.