Why Medical Workers Challenging Anti-Stay at Home Protesters Won the Internet

Photos: Alyson McClaran Caption: Health care workers stand in the street in counter-protest to hundreds of people who gathered at the State Capitol to demand the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver, Colo., on Sunday, April 19, 2020.

Why did Alyson McClaran’s photos of Denver healthcare workers standing up to anti-stay-at-home protesters win the internet?

In our increasingly visual culture, photographs like these gain more power by channeling familiar words and phrases, more famous images, and all kinds of popular symbols. On Twitter, for example, we leveraged the woman’s sign and the worker’s fearlessness with the simple comment: “…And the home of the brave.”

Worldwide praise for medical workers as heroes, even superheroes, take the Denver pix even further.

With “man versus car,” the pandemic power of the uniform, along with the muscles and the red-tinged glasses on the Clark Kent face, tell me that photo doesn’t say: “Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive.”

Superman is cool, but we would be nowhere in the global battle against the coronavirus without a legion of super women.

– Michael Shaw