For many years, I have been translating and making artwork based on a 1984 Ethiopian novel, Oromaye by Baalu Girma. Girma wrote the novel while working for the communist regime at the time and was assassinated for having published it. For a decade, I have been fascinated by the novel and the broad impact it has had in Ethiopian culture and politics.

Ethiopian politics have changed dramatically since I first heard of Oromaye. A new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has risen to power in the wake of mass protests and made vast political reforms, including peace with Eritrea (which won him the Nobel Peace Prize). However, in the face of opposition to those reforms, the government has reverted to previous regimes’ tactics of suppressing dissent, arresting journalists and opposition leaders. Fractures have deepened along ethno-political lines even while an economic-driven nationalism has grown, bolstered by the building of the taxpayer-funded Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will provide much needed water and electric power to Ethiopia, even while it causes conflict with the downstream countries of Sudan and Egypt. Ethiopia faces both the specter of its political history and vast economic potential. The past and the future face each other in the present.

In my billboards in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, the text reads “Who Am I To Tell The Story?” This is the first question to appear in Oromaye. In the story, the question signifies an identity crisis for the novel’s protagonist, and also a through-line in Ethiopian history: identity determines perspective. Girma’s fiction destabilizes this notion, and offer a more complex view of the human heart.

Behind this question is a photograph I made with actors playing a scene from the novel in which a military strongman looks in the mirror and sees his arch-enemy. These billboards also appear in the Ethiopian languages of Amharic and Oromifa to invite members of different Ethiopian diaspora communities to consider who they are to tell the story. In the Oromifa billboard, I made a slight linguistic shift to reflect a more relevant question for the Oromo people, disenfranchised for generations: “Who are you to tell the story?”

We all must confront our own reflections in the mirror and have the power to shift our perspective. We can look at those with whom we disagree, even our sworn enemies, and find new ways to see ourselves in them. This is true in the Ethiopian political context as much as in the American political landscape that feels so urgent.

Over the weekend, the U.S. President suggested that perhaps Egypt should blow up the Ethiopian Dam, now a symbol of the economic future for many Ethiopians. Minnesota Public Radio estimates there are 40,000 Oromo-speaking Ethiopian-Americans alone in Minneapolis, mostly in Cedar-Riverside where the billboards are. The 2016 election was decided in Minnesota by 45,000 votes. These billboards are a beacon to those Ethiopian-Americans, to other Americans in the African diaspora and New Americans from all over the world, to encourage them to share their own stories in every way, including through their vote.

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