LETTER: Abdul El-Sayed earns praise at Midland town hall event [LTE (Midland Daily News)]

Thank you to the Midland Daily News for publishing my LTE!

Published in the Midland Daily News:

https://www.ourmidland.com/opinion/letters/article/abdul-el-sayed-earns-praise-midland-town-hall-22486854.php

October 21, 2026 | Midland Daily News (MI)

Author/Byline: Staff Writer | Section: Opinion

339 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1090, grade level(s): 8 9

TO THE EDITOR:

On Saturday afternoon I had the opportunity to hear U.S. Senate Candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed at the "Shouldn't Be This Hard Town Hall" in Midland at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland.

I was uplifted by the energy in the room.

El-Sayed's message was hopeful. One thing that struck me was that in response to an audience question from a parent concerned about college affordability, El-Sayed talked about building a world together where young people would be excited about their futures. This is a stark contrast from ICE raids and wars that are costly to our mental energy and the governmental budgets, not to mention the individuals directly affected by these policies.

Instead of costly policies to preserve a flawed past remembered in nostalgic terms, El-Sayed is looking toward the future and taking action to improve people's lives. This shift from past to future is energizing. It makes me feel like in America, anything is possible again.

I think this is largely due to Abdul's promise not to accept money from corporations or PACs like AIPAC. By getting money out of politics, El-Sayed is freed up to do what is good for Michiganders rather than campaign donors. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida said that there is no such thing as a gift. According to Derrida, a gift is a paradox because it is expected to be reciprocated. I think this is true.

When politicians take money from special interests they might say that they think independently, but human nature makes them beholden to them. I'm excited to think about a future not of funding weapons in the Middle East but investing in schools and hospitals right here in Michigan. Abdul's support of Medicare would be both good for the economy and the ethical thing to do.

Working together to solve problems and investing in infrastructure for the future are American values. I would like to see this championed by politicians more often, so it was refreshing to hear Abdul speak in Midland.

Let's vote on Nov. 3 to invest in Michigan's future.

EMMA JOHNSON

Midland

Neoliberal Loops [the art show at the A-Space Gallery at MTU]

 Pictures taken at the show "Neoliberal Loops" at the Rozsa A-Space Gallery at MTU.

Neoliberal Loops uses multimedia to explore economics and culture (The Lode)

Thank you to writer Max Meyer and The Lode for the wonderful article covering my solo art show "Neoliberal Loops"!

https://mtulode.com/13848/news/neoliberal-loops-uses-multimedia-to-explore-economics-and-culture/

"Neoliberal Loops: Art exhibit at Rozsa" (The Daily Mining Gazette)

Thank you to staff reporter Chelsea Bossert and to The Daily Mining Gazette for the lovely article covering the art show "Neoliberal Loops"!

https://www.mininggazette.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/2026/09/neoliberal-loops/

Neoliberal Loops Dance Party

I made a 16-minute music composition from the 2008 Recession data and remixed it with 100+ pop artists ranging from Bach in 1704 to Lana Del Rey in 2021 for a solo art show titled "Neoliberal Loops" at MTU. I arrived late but filmed myself dancing to the 1hr.-20-min. track in the gallery and posted it on YouTube. 2 formats because the battery ran out.

https://youtu.be/mZfA6r5Wj30

Neoliberal Loops - THANK YOUs

I had a great time visiting Houghton and attending the opening of “Neoliberal Loops” at the Roza A-Space Gallery at the Rozsa Center for Performing Arts at Michigan Technological University! The show is up until November 6th if you are in the Houghton area and have a chance to see it:)

I also want to say ‘THANK YOU’ to the people and institutions that made this show a reality:

MTU faculty Dr. Robert Schneider and Michael G. Maxwell, the co-founders of the MTU Math and Music Lab (MML), gave encouragement and advice. Thank you for starting MML! Michael also set up the technology to loop the sound and videos and have different tracks come on and turn off at certain times of day.

Rozsa Gallery Director Terri Frew gave encouragement and support and a conversation with her was the catalyst for the “Neoliberal Truisms.”

MTU faculty Ian Raymond helped me print the Cherry Blossoms and Sleeping Jutta photographs and troubleshoot video editing for the three videos in the 3-video installation of Neoliberal Loops.

Daniel Schneider, who teaches letterpress classes at the Copper Country Community Arts Center (CCCAC) in Hancock, Michigan, taught me how to use the press and advised on the “Neoliberal Truisms” letterpress project.

A couple of students from MTU IT helped me when I ran into technical issues programming the LED signs.

Thank you to the MTU student gallery assistants for helping to install the show.

Faculty, students, and staff from the MTU Humanities/RTC (Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture) and the MTU Graduate School supported my study of theorists that influenced the art.

The MTU Humanities Digital Media Zone (HDMZ) provided a space to work with sound and video software programs to create the art.

Then graduate student Ana W. Miigwan (Lindgren) at the MTU Writing Center read a draft of the wall text and gave suggestions.

Dr. M. René Johnson, my mom, has always been supportive of my creativity and pursuit of knowledge. Because she has an MFA in poetry, I asked her to write a couple of the Neoliberal Truisms and she obliged. 

Thank you again to Terri Frew and also to Lisa Gordillo for inviting me to visit your art classes.

Thank you to MTU Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) for sponsoring the event.

Thank you to the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts for hosting the show.

Thank you to The Daily Mining Gazette and The Michigan Tech Lode for covering the event.

Thank you to everyone who came to the opening in person or in spirit.

It was wonderful to see the show come together in the gallery. Thank you for making it happen!

Gallery Talk Notes 09_18_26

Hello and thank you for coming to the art opening of Neoliberal Loops. I’m Emma Johnson and I’ve been working on Neoliberal Loops all year.

I was interested in exploring narratives about neoliberalism and how media, aesthetics, and history shape how we understand the world around us and our place in it.

I will briefly talk about each group of works:

Neoliberal Loops 

Sleeping Jutta

Cherry Blossoms

The Cherry Blossom Cycle

Neoliberal Truisms

Recession Goods

Neoliberal Loops is a soundtrack and a 3-video installation that looks at the stock market crash using music and video. I took stock market data from 2007 through 2009 and created a 16-minute sound piece. The three videos correspond to visuality scholar Mirzoeff’s theories of Visuality 1 and 2 that he writes about in his 2011 book The Right To Look: A counterhistory of visuality. This includes the hegemonic state, neutral media, and media that resists or counters the narrative of the hegemonic state. By looking at things differently and defamiliarizing the familiar, the viewer is invited to re-evaluate the world around them. This project started from joining MTU’s Math and Music Lab working group.

I also recommend coming to the gallery because the last 80 minutes is the remix where I mixed the Neoliberal Loops soundtrack with samples of music from Bach to the present, including pop music and hip hop throughout the years as another way to relate moving through time, including the economic cycles.

Sleeping Jutta is a reaction to filmmaker Sofia Coppola and painter John Kacere’s image of a woman sleeping. Challenging what Laura Mulvey coined as the male gaze, I made a film where the composition is the same except that the woman is confronting the viewer rather than being a passive recipient of the gaze. Postfeminism, which argues that women should capitalize on their bodies to get ahead, tacitly supports neoliberalism, which can place focus on transactions over relationships.

Cherry Blossoms explores the ethereal nature of life. It’s part of historical cycles, visualized through the seasons. I was inspired to explore cherry blossoms because of Sophia Coppola’s use of them in Lost In Translation, where Charlet places paper cherry blossoms in her hotel room to help her adjust to a new space that seems foreign to her, a space she cannot connect with. 

The Cherry Blossom Cycle is a continuation of the cherry blossom theme but paired with French historian Braudel’s idea that history happens in cycles, or durées, which he writes about in his 1949 book The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Like Mirzoeff looks at visual messages as conveying information differently, temporal differences also make us think differently about phenomena. 

Neoliberal Truisms are 99 phrases written by me, my poet mother, and ChatGPT. They are inspired by work by Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, and German artist Birgit Brenner’s 2021 LED sign “Stay Rich.” Some people have read them and then after awhile said, “Oh, you’re being sarcastic.” I want the statements to be plausible but not quite right. By making the statements off balance, the viewer is invited to interrogate what is usually overlooked in the background as something normalized. It was exciting to use an LED sign for the first time and use a letterpress for the first time. I enjoyed working at CCCAC.

Recession Goods is a series of drawings of items that economists have identified as indicators that a recession is coming. These objects are a way into understanding a bigger phenomenon such as economic precarity through small stories.

Thank you to everyone who made this show possible and again, you for attending it and helping to make it a success.

“Enjoy” the show!