An event that spotlighted the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Buffalo History Museum was postponed this week following mounting public backlash, including alleged death threats, over a recent illustration commenting on the Texas flood.
The Buffalo Newspaper Guild announced yesterday, July 10, that it was postponing the free happy hour event “Drawing Support for Local Journalism” at the museum due to “serious concerns about public safety” and a slew of death threats directed at cartoonist Adam Zyglis over an illustration published in The Buffalo News about the July 4 flood in central Texas.
Titled “Swept Away,” Zyglis’s cartoon depicts a man in a red MAGA hat nearly fully submerged in flood waters while holding a sign above his head reading “HELP.” Not far behind him, a speech bubble belonging to a seemingly submerged person cites the Republican refrain”Gov’t is the problem, not the solution.”
Buffalo police confirmed to Hyperallergic that the department’s Threat Management Unit is investigating the situation.
Local officials in Kerr County, Texas, have so far reported that the devastating flood surge along the Guadalupe River killed 120 people, while another 161 remain missing. The catastrophe has been scrutinized for inadequate flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS) amid President Donald Trump’s staffing cuts to the government agency. Questions have also been raised about the coordination and communication between the NWS and local officials, as well as the fate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security that Trump has been seeking to abolish.
The event at the museum, which was organized with the Buffalo Newspaper Guild, was meant to celebrate the closing of a two-decade retrospective at the museum that centered on dozens of visual commentary works by Zyglis. In a statement, the museum said that the decision to cancel the event “comes in a moment of tension that underscores, rather than undermines, the very purpose of this exhibit.”
The event was also supposed to serve as the launch for the guild’s Protect Local Journalism community campaign.
“The free, public and nonpartisan event was intended to promote a message about the need to protect this community by safeguarding a strong, local free press amid pressures being faced by news organizations across the country and here in Western New York,” the guild said in its statement.
“We wholly condemn the individuals who have chosen to twist a positive, public event into an attempt to terrorize and silence Zyglis, spread fear among journalists and their supporters, and distort the mission of a free press,” the guild added.
The guild and the museum stated that they plan to reschedule the event.
Zyglis and The Buffalo News have not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s requests for comment.
The guild encouraged the public to speak out against the “hateful” intimidation tactics directed at Zyglis and to support its campaign to protect local journalism.
“The spiteful campaign to attack and harm Zyglis represents only one more example of the challenges we face as a community and the need to better communicate and support our vital, public role.”