Life Projections: On Swamp Creatures and Pedo Besties
Source: Common Dreams · Bias: Far Left
Summary
Bravo to VJayBombs, the ingenious street artists who emblazoned L.A. with projections of ICE hauling off Jesus just hit D.C. to plaster “Guardians of Pedophiles" on the Kennedy Center's "literal cover-up" and murky regime minions - bats, worms, turtles - on the besieged Reflecting Pool. Growing more ideological as the fascist stakes rise, they use peaceful but splashy projection bombing to "make our voices heard," sensibly arguing, "If you're gonna say something, say something."It seems only apt an anonymous collective of renegades chooses as weapons the visual tools of their oppressors, slathering multiple regime cover-ups - like the attempted removal from National Parks of information on slavery and other historical facts that “disparage Americans past or living” - with their own rowdy retorts. Large-scale, dissident projections are part of a relatively new protest tradition, "accessible, disruptive, but not violent," that evidently grew from the Occupy movement. In 2013, using an Illuminator- like projector that came out of a car roof like a turret, one Charles Lechner projected an image of a ballot box stuffed with dollar bills onto Michael Bloomberg’s New York apartment; the Mayor, unamused, had him arrested. VJayBombs began about ten years ago when three filmmakers and neighbors in a Koreatown apartment complex started projecting abstract visuals onto nearby buildings during house parties. That pastime evolved during the lead-up to the 2024 election into "Life's Projections," peaceful guerrilla protest that "sits right in the sweet spot of all our skill sets"; they now have over 300,000 online followers and merch - ICE guy with gun: "Our humanity" - to help raise funds. Moving through group chats, location-scouting, brainstorming - what will resonate, how to highlight absurdity and communicate clearly in seconds - they've progressed from "total novices" who blew a fuse by trying to run power through a car lighter to a large-venue projector.Their goal is to effectively merge message with architecture in a story that unfolds like a digital billboard or comic strip and gets "the longest legs online - as many eyes as possible." Their projections across L.A. have ranged from No Kings messages to Matt Gaetz as Butt-Head to a spoof of Trump's endless, babbling State of the Union speech, with Trump holding the Statue of Liberty hostage amidst flashing messages of "Immigrant Bad!" and “Forget the Files!” A Super Bowl parody, "Redacted Bowl," featured Trump and cronies as football players with their stats matching their references in the Epstein files. Last week's UFC cage match became Donald Trump vs. the Epstein Files celebrating "the pound-for-pound best cover-up in history."D.C.'s besieged Kennedy Center and besmirched Reflecting Pool were logical, tempting next stops. A week after a court ruling forced the removal of the vile Trump name from the Center, the tarp hung in the dark to hide a snowflake narcissist's shame and fury from a gleeful crowd is still there, obscuring not just the spot where the name allegedly came down but the entire facade. In a June 19 court filing, Center lackeys say it's to do maintenance on the marble. Lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty, who filed the lawsuit behind the ruling, say it's merely a lame move to soothe "broken egos,” one that both conceals whether officials have in fact complied with the court and that reduces a once-vaunted arts venue into a "lifeless husk."Frustrated visitors to the site have their own ideas: One suggested Trump is focused on "trying to deface America’s symbols before he finishes defacing the country," and another proposed using the tarp to cover the brackish debacle that is now the Reflecting Pool. Others have simply moved on to pay tribute to VJayBombs artists for giving Trump "a lesson in the law of unintended consequences" and projecting "what we all wanted" on the Kennedy Center: A "Guardians of Pedophiles" montage of Trump, Epstein, regime toadies - Bondi, Johnson, Patel - with, "No one bends the knee like the GOP,” and a guy climbing a ladder towards the name "Donald," its letters slowly cascading down to form the word "pedo."In their weekend art spree, VJayBombs also took to other D.C. landmarks. At the Lincoln Pool, they placed in that now-sorry site a fitting array of swamp creatures: McConnell as turtle, Hegseth as crocodile, Vance as worm, Rubio as fish, Stephen Goebbels Miller a bat hanging upside-down, bald head glinting. At the DOJ, Ted Cruz popped up as a grotesque sex worker in Trump underwear. Hard to unsee, but VJayBombs argue, these dark days, it's "more important than ever to use whatever skills we have to push back." Their art "gives people a new way to engage," they say. "We all have more power than we think...Real change doesn’t come from one big event - it comes from countless small acts that, together, move the needle."
Related Coverage
- Meet the patriotic ‘living historians’ who bring the American Revolution to life — one reenactment at a time (Right — New York Post)
- Millions expected at delayed Khamenei funeral as Iran seeks to project strength (Center Left — NBC News Politics)
- Donald Trump is the accidental hero of a real-life feelgood climate tale even as a creeping horror story plays alongside | Clear Air (Center Left — US news | The Guardian)
- James Talarico pals around with ‘PEDO PROTECTOR’ who brought a convicted sex offender to a school (Right — Blaze Media)
- Swamp Things (Center Right — The Dispatch)
- Trump hijacked US’s 250 anniversary to serve ‘political ideology and pet projects’, congressional report says (Center Left — US news | The Guardian)
- Mamdani Tells New Yorkers to Set Thermostats to 78 Degrees to Alleviate Stress on the Grid Amid Life-Threatening Heat Wave (VIDEO) (Far Right — The Gateway Pundit)
- How Trump’s America 250 'pet projects' left small towns out in the cold (Left — Alternet.org)
Daily Analysis
Read the full Parallax Pulse for June 22, 2026 — an AI-powered analysis of how Left and Right media covered the biggest stories this day.
More Headlines From June 22, 2026
- Starmer Resigns as UK Prime Minister, Paving Way For Burnham (Center)
- With oil flowing, the economy’s “Golden Years” are starting (Far Right)
- Trump Says Reflecting Pool Will Likely Need to Be Drained (Center Left)
- U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces resignation (Center)
- Starmer Resigns as UK Prime Minister (Center)








