Amanda Rivkin

Obamaland: The New Era

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Democrat Barack Obama waves to his supporters in Grant Park, Chicago through bullet proof glass after winning the U.S. presidential election, defeating Republican John McCain, to become the 44th U.S. president on November 4, 2008. Obama gave his victory speech to a crowd of just over 200,000 supporters.
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Owner Mike Elsheikh styles Angela Brumfield's hair at Obama's Hair Design at 430 S. Dearborn in downtown Chicago on January 9, 2009. Obama's Hair Design was formerly a very established local salon named Osama's Hair Design before a change of ownership forced the new name on Nov. 3, 2008, the day before Barack Obama's historic election victory. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Agence France Presse - Getty Images)
   
WASHINGTON, D.C. A young boy spins around with an American flag on the mall on January 19, 2009, a day ahead of Barack Obama's historic inauguration as the 44th U.S. President.
     
  
DENVER, COLORADO. Demonstrators march through Civic Center Park in downtown ahead of the Democratic National Convention on August 24, 2008. The Democratic National Convention officially gets underway Monday August 25.
   
WASHINGTON, D.C. Obama souvenirs, including one of his visage refashioned like the iconic Che Guevara poster on the mall before the "We Are One" concert at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009, in celebration of Barack Obama's inauguration as president of the United States.
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Former Weather Underground member and 60s radical William Ayers poses for a portrait near the University of Illinois Chicago campus where he is a professor of education after voting for Barack Obama on election day, November 4, 2008. As part of the 2008 general election campaign narrative, the McCain campaign made repeated reference to a tenuous Obama-Ayers link when the two men sat on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago and Ayers held a fundraiser for Obama early in the 44th president's political career; Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," an indirect reference to Ayers in an often cited campaign stump speech. In part, Ayers himself attributes the attention to the McCain campaign's desire to create a narrative about the Vietnam War that favors McCain's image of heroic former POW.
     
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Friends and fellow activists pay their respect at the funeral of housing activist Beauty Turner, 51, a one-time resident of the Robert Taylor Homes who led the Beauty Turner Ghetto Bus Tour and received national recognition in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, at the Greater Harvest Missionary Baptist Church on South State Street on December 26, 2008. Turner died of an aneurysm on December 18.
  
BERWYN, ILLINOIS. World's Largest Laundromat, July 7, 2008. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for Swindle Magazine)
   
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN. A child with a wooden rifle walks between lawn ornaments made of household items ranging from scissors and spoons to bullets and bolts at the crafts market and outdoor bazaar in downtown during the annual Tulip Festival, the town's largest, on May 2, 2009. Holland is the hometown of polemical defense contractor and CIA operative Erik Prince, owner and operator of Xe Services, formerly Blackwater, who fell out of favor and came under increased political scrutiny with the turning political tides in the transition from the Bush to Obama administrations.
     
  
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA. Arlington National Cemetery, America's national cemetery for fallen soldiers, outside the nation's capitol on January 21, 2009, a day after Barack Obama was sworn in as 44th U.S. President, becoming America's first black president. In his inaugural address, Obama referenced Arlington National Cemetery, "just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages."
  
ELKHART, INDIANA. Burgers on the griddle in the kitchen at the Faith Mission, a homeless shelter, in Elkhart, Indiana on April 8, 2009. Elkhart has seen a surge in unemployment in the last year from 4.5% in 2008 to 20% this year and Obama has visited the town three times, including his first stop after arriving in Washington as the U.S. President to promote "bail out" and stimulus spending during the current global recession. The main building of the Faith Mission is located in the former site of the RV Manufacturing Museum and Library; Elkhart's most important industry is RV manufacturing and sales. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for ProPublica)
   
JANESVILLE, WISCONSIN. The shuttered GM plant where 2,300 workers were laid off on Christmas, December 24, 2008, in a sign of the collapsing American auto industry and the study progression of American consumers to foreign-made cars.
     
  
DETROIT, MICHIGAN. A mother and child before the Ford press previews at the Detroit Auto Show on January 11, 2009.
   
WICHITA, KANSAS. Pro-choice counter-demonstrators shouting the pledge of allegiance in support of Dr. Tiller and at members of controversial preacher Fred Phelps family as Phelps' family protests across the street against abortion and homosexuality a few blocks outside the College Hill United Methodist Church before the funeral for assassinated abortion doctor George Tiller on June 6, 2009. Tiller was gunned down while serving as an usher at his church last Sunday by Scott Roeder, who is now in custody, in a political crime with reverberations across the region and the country; Tiller's Wichita clinic had previously served as a culture wars flashpoint in the 1990s.
   
DAVENPORT, IOWA. Witness Connie Fuller, 39, takes a picture of Rock Island, Ill. couple Curtis Harris, 50, and Daren Adkisson, 39, after they picked up their marriage license first thing in the morning at the Scott County Recorder's Office on April 27, 2009, the first day same sex weddings are legal across Iowa. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for The New York Times)
     
  
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. A Code Pink antiwar activists storms the floor of the Republican National Convention at the XCel Center as Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin addresses the convention, September 3, 2008.