Although Frisly Soberanis is set on becoming a filmmaker, he is in no hurry to major in film. The 19-year-old just finished his first year of college and is still undeclared.

His approach to film is similarly understated. To him, it’s not about filmmaking itself but about storytelling–his own, and that of others. And his most recent film, Madurando, shows that he can use his own familiar story to tell an amazing cinematic story. He pieces together take bits and pieces of his own experiences and made his family was a character in it; he cast his own mother and younger brother in his film.

Soberanis’s experience growing up as an undocumented youth has inspired his passion as a filmmaker. His main character in Madurando is a young man in a struggling immigrant family, trying to get a job to pay for his disconnected cellphone, who eventually connects to something greater in his life.

Recently, Soberanis has teamed up with the New York State Youth Leadership Council, a group that campaigns for the rights of undocumented youth, to create a PSA to push for the New York Dream Act.

I spoke with Soberanis last week as he finished up his freshman year at Brooklyn College to talk about his new short and other things undocumented.

 –Julio Salgado

Frisly Soberanis (Image: Yvonne Centeno)

JS: Talk to me about your obvious passion.

FS: I’ve been attracted to visual mediums for a long time. Everything that is visual is attractive and it draws people. You’re seeing something happening. Filmmaking is a wonderful tool and art. You get to create and share stories that unite people and start conversation. You have control, to some degree, of whatever you’re filming. When I came to the U.S. [from Guatemala] in 2001 we settled in Williamsburg, before it was gentrified. I’ve been in queens for a long time now. Big Latino community. There was an afterschool program called El Puente. We did a couple of green screen projects [a film format that involves using color schemes to layer images] that were really cool. It was mostly fooling around with cameras!

The moment I grabbed a camera it sparked something in me. When you grab a camera, people get to see what you’re seeing. You’re bringing people into your own body. When I started high school I did a documentary about a military program I was in. It was about hazing.

Please do tell me more about this documentary about hazing in the military program.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I did it on hazing, or if I had a clear position on it. I was in the program and it helped me out with discipline and commitment as well as confidence and motivation. I just happened to film a “motivation time”. You decide.

It was a [student] cadet program. It was definitely something that I was thinking about. Thinking if the DREAM Act passed, I could join the army. I liked the discipline. I stayed in the program. It wasn’t intended to do a documentary on hazing. It didn’t portray the program as bad or good. But it opened a bit of conversation. That’s what got me into the Tribeca Film Institute. In order to apply to the Tribeca Film Fellows program or any of their programs you had to submit a film you had done. I submitted my short doc, and they loved it. After speaking to them and participating in one of their programs I applied to the fellowship and got in.

Was it hard to get the Tribeca Fellowship because of your status?

I actually just graduated the Tribeca fellowship. I didn’t really tell them about my situation. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I had to tell them because they wanted to help me with my college application…. Thankfully they didn’t push me to the side. They shared my story and shared my [college] funding campaign. They embraced me and gave me more tools to tell my story.

So back to your short film, Madurando. It was amazing! What was the inspiration behind it?

It’s the first short that I direct. I was writing a script during the fellowship. A month before we shot, I felt that i wanted to do something that I could relate to. Something that my mom can relate to. I needed some type of personal relationship to it. I was thinking about stories and I thought about my brother and how he used to be a delivery boy and struggles in my family.

How did you decide on the cast?

Someone told me that I should cast someone who is the character in real life. The main actor is my younger brother. The mother is my own mom. We had a couple of days of rehearsal. They helped me with the story. I just called friends and see who wanted to help out. There were no professional actors.

What did your mom say when she saw the finished product?

My mom loved it. I edited in my house so she was there all the time. I was constantly showing her the rough cuts and any updates. I showed it to one of my friend’s mom who is undocumented and she started crying. She was very happy because that was our truth. She was happy that people were sharing stories that she could relate to.

Frisly Soberanis/PlayFrisly

The NY Dream Act hasn’t passed. What has it been like to be an undocumented college student?

It’s hard knowing that you go to school, and you’re there four times a week, and your family is at home going through financial problems. Knowing that i have to sacrifice some things in order to go to school. The same reasons that you are trying to go to school are holding you back. Being undocumented you appreciate things that others take for granted. You know you are there for a reason. You know a lot of your undocumented friends cannot go to school. You definitely feel humbled. So my first year was definitely a sweet and sour experience.

How much of your life do you put into your films? I remember working on DreamersAdrift pieces and not having enough time because I had to work. Was it tough working on this piece because of your circumstances?

It definitely was not easy. What I love about filmmaking, and what people don’t know about it [is that you can’t] do this all by yourself. Filmmaking is a collaborative thing. One of the main things that I learned is that the way to do something is [to get] support from people who are equally passionate. I found the best crew I could possibly find and they helped do it. I got DACA [the new temporary legalization program for undocumented youth] before I did the film so thankfully I got a job, and it wasn’t as hard. …  We probably spent $900 on the film, which is nothing, but I was able to get a scholarship from Tribeca. What I’ve been doing so far–[my undocumented status] hasn’t really held me back so much. If anything it has motivated me and made me want to be better.

Any upcoming projects?

We have have a lot of projects coming up. I partnered up with some of my filmmaking friends and created PlayFrisly. We’re actually going to try to launch a Kickstarter for a feature film about a Mexican and Dominican couple. It’s a comedy about two different cultures.

Read more about Frisly at Undocumenting.com.

CultureStrike artist and undocuqueer pioneer Julio Salgado makes his billboard debut in the heart of San Francisco, with blown-up images of young activists. In honor of Pride month, the work is supported by Galería de la Raza’s Digital Mural Project. Galería is also hosting a Migration is Beautiful art workshop on June 15.

Galería de la Raza

Coming soon: the defiance of undocumented youth is coloring every corner of the city and bringing the “gentefy” movement to your neighborhood.  By emblazoning these faces and stories on the wall, Julio is adding a new dimension to the way social movements see intersectionality: “Within the immigrant community,” the artist states, “we must acknowledge that our queer voices should not be left out of the immigration debate, and we cannot let politicians tell us otherwise. Likewise, the LGBTQ community must be aware that being queer goes beyond marriage and trying to join the military. Let’s continue the dialogue and keep intersecting our communities and struggles.”

See more of Julio’s work at DreamersAdrift.com.

–Michelle Chen

Ernesto Yerena / Strong Families

This week, the media brought us somber images of a group of immigrant youth at the Nogales border “visiting” their parents at the dividing line between the U.S. and Mexico. They hugged and sobbed, but their embraces were ruptured by ugly wooden slats that stood between them — the wall that has separated families, symbolically and now, physically. The encounter, organized by United We Dream, aimed to show the devastating impact of immigration barriers on families and communities, and to push for reforms to help reunify families and protect them from deportation. But on a personal level, the tender, and tragic, scene at the border should remind us of how family is defined, how we express bonds of affection, and how the meaning of family endures across the political fissures that constantly threaten to break parents and children apart.

For Fathers’ Day, Strong Families, a social media campaign that links graphic art and political consciousness, is depicting and extending the public’s idea of  family. CultureStrike asked two of the participating artists, Amaryllis De Jesus Moleski and Robert “Tres” Trujillo, to share some thoughts on the images they designed to celebrate fatherhood, how they tie their creative craft into the relationships that have created their lives.

To participate in the Strong Families campaign and create your own Papas’ Day Card, go to strongfamiliesmovement.org.

–Michelle Chen

Robert Trujillo / Strong Families

ROBERT “TRES” TRUJILLO

Define fatherhood.

Being a father is being there in your child’s life and being present. Plain and simple. There are times when I could think of a very theoretical or historical perspective, which is no doubt valid. But usually it is the quality time with them, making mistakes, the golden moments, discoveries,  challenges, and moments of insight and love that define it. And you know, it’s hella different for everyone. I know, ever since I found out that I was going to be a father I started to ask other fathers for advice. Like, seriously: what the hell am i doing?! What do you think about this or that? It felt funny at first, but I think we as parents, especially men, need to swallow our pride and ask for help from each other. And although I am a young father who by no means has it all business handled, I offer advice too when I come across a cat who needs guidance.

I also feel that being a dad means being disciplined. It means remembering things that they need like their glasses, their favorite new book, or the last time you took their temperature when they have a fever. It is also showing your child who you are. That means sharing what or who makes you happy. Showing them that you work hard, or that you are kind, that you can whistle, make ILL grilled cheese sandwiches, enjoy cooking or reading. You know? Anything that makes you, you is like a mental tool for them to use. It means saying “I’m sorry,” or “I apologize”, admitting when you make mistakes, because you will. It means encouraging your child, letting them know that you are paying attention, that you care, and that above all that you love them. Lastly, it means confronting the pain or frustration you as a boy or a man went through with or without your dad. If things were great, cool. Passing it on. If not, it means acknowledging that and breaking hurtful or unhealthy cycles.

What inspired you to make a Fathers’ Day card for Strong Families?

(Favianna Rodriguez / Strong Families)

For as long as I can remember I made my own Mothers’ or Fathers’ day cards for my Mom, my Dad, and my Stepfather. Why? I’m an artist for sure, but the cards I would see at the grocery or book store were wack. Straight up! They didn’t show someone with my skin color. They didn’t acknowledge the fact that my parents were separated or remarried. They did not have any art, wisdom, or knowledge that culturally reflected my life or my heritage either you know? I was blessed to meet women and men at an early age who were openly gay, too. Where were the cards the reflected those friends or family I have?

As an artist and activist, how are you helping to explore the idea of family in the immigration debate? 

Both my father and my grandmother were born outside of the country in Korea. My dad actually grew up in a household where the languages they spoke (Spanish, Korean, and Japanese) were not taught to the kids for fear of “otherness”. Of being different. What I have come to see as a huge weapon in the fight to increase understanding, knowledge about the “other”, is the power of the story. In books, TV, radio, and even the Internet, there is a very racist, homophobic, and sick distorted archetype of what an “American” is or should be.

AMARYLLIS DE JESUS MOLESKI

Define fatherhood.

Fatherhood is an honor that exists beyond the experience of gender, blood relations, geographies, and material wealth.  In its highest form, I believe the act of healthy fatherhood to be a healing gift in the world.  Fathers — however they have arrived at that identity and title — really have the opportunity to transform poison into medicine, and impart an embodiment of healthy masculinity and love for us all.

Why did you contribute your art to this project?

(Joy Liu / Strong Families)

I see this project as a salve for those of us who, not only are not celebrated by mass image production, but are actively denigrated or erased by it. As Strong Families has pointed out, statistically, the majority of families in this country fall outside the nuclear family model.

Images — especially ones that are intended to reflect us — have as much destructive potential as they have creative power.  We consume images of ourselves at such a rapid rate, and we internalize messages about our lives that weren’t even created with the intention to honor how we live.  I see this campaign and art movements like this as an active source of healing for everyone that finds themselves reduced, misrepresented, or underrepresented by the mainstream.  We need more images of ourselves that dignify and elevate our love, our lives, and our families.

My hope is to create images that actively combat a society dependent on xenophobic systems just by saying “I see you.  I see your love.  And it matters so much.  Your life matters so much.”

What do you see as the connection between your art and the struggles of immigrants?

The immigration policies in this country that separate families and demean basic human rights are supported by a constant streaming of images that denigrate someones humanness in order to justify monstrous institutionalized behavior.

When we do not receive the full truth, we become psychologically malnourished.  I see the work that I do as a part of the larger creative movement to defend, evolve, and preserve our truths — not only so that we do not starve, but so that our children, and our children’s children can grow up with a whole picture of who they are — allowing them to reach their fullest potential, and in turn, heal this world.

Micah Brazant / Strong Families

The emotional experience of living as an immigrant is one of the hardest things to put into words, but sometimes easier to depict through art. Alberto Ledesma, an educator, activist and former undocumented student, uses graphic storytelling as a teaching tool to document the fears and hopes of the undocumented.

As a “practitioner of the doodle,” Ledesma’s Diary of a Dreamer tells immigrant stories with a style that bounces between loose-leaf sketches of awkward cultural clashes, and cerebral explorations of  the social fissures of identity, youth and liminality.

–Michelle Chen

Diary of a Dreamer

Alberto Ledesma

It was in the midst of a midterm I was administering at University of California at Berkeley two summers ago that I came up with the idea of writing and drawing my Diary of a Dreamer. The term was almost over and I still wanted to lecture about the emergent immigrant student movement and their pursuit of the Dream Act, especially given that I, too, had been an undocumented undergrad in the late 1980s. I considered sharing some of the stories, essays, and poems I had published about my experience. But there was so little time left left in the term and there was still so much else to cover. How could I get the students interested in what was happening without asking them to read so much? As the students finished their exams I scribbled on the back of my notebook a quick sketch about my dilemma. And then it hit me, why not use visual vignettes to convey the teachable points I was trying to make? Thus was born Diary of a Dreamer.

As an artist, I have long been a practitioner of the doodle. Comic books were the main tools with which I learned American culture when I was a an undocumented immigrant kid living in East Oakland. Now, they are what influence my art. That, and a compulsion to dig deeply into what the undocumented immigrant student story has entailed for me over all these years.

You can read more about Ledesma’s own experience as an immigrant father at New America Media. 

Claiming Our Voice is a documentary project by Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel/Fine Grain Films.  The story centers on a group of South Asian immigrant domestic workers who have become community activists with Andolan, a Queens-based workers center, as they create their first original theater performance.   Here, the filmmaker discusses how she approached the subjects of immigration and activism as both an observer and participant, and how her own views of culture and diaspora were complicated in the creative process.  

As a child of Sri Lankan Tamil parents with family spread around the world, a consequence of both internecine violence and limited economic opportunity, I have always been drawn to stories and images of diaspora and ways immigrants create “home” in new countries, what they take with them and what they leave behind.

For the past six years, through my multimedia project Home Away from Home, I have documented South Asian diaspora communities in New York as well as Kenya, South Africa, and Trinidad. I was looking for subjects in New York when Chitra Aiyar, a friend and immigration lawyer, told me about Andolan, an organization with which she volunteered. The Queens-based workers center was founded and led by female South Asian immigrant domestic workers as a means to support each other and collectively organize against exploitative work conditions. The members were embarking on a theater project, “”Sukh aur Dukh ki Kahani (Stories of Joy and Sorrow),” featuring the their stories and were collaborating with interdisciplinary artist, YaliniDream, a poet, performer, singer and dancer committed to bringing under-represented voices to center stage. Having grown disenchanted with the media’s portrayal of domestic workers as victims, Andolan members wanted to share stories from their lives, not only as low-wage workers but as multidimensional women engaged in a broader movement for social change.

I came to this project without a strong sense of what the final product would be. I knew there was the natural arc of refining the theater production but beyond that, similar to the theater project itself, I had to let the process unfold naturally.

(Fine Grain Films)

Upon meeting members of Andolan for the first time at a rehearsal in Jackson Heights, I was immediately drawn to their compelling stories — solo journeys to the United States, exploitative work conditions in New York (often at the homes of South Asian employers), escaping from abusive homes and taking legal action against employers with support from their peers. The Andolan members were a diasporic family bound by members’ shared experiences and activist mission. These women were fighters.

The women of Andolan challenged my cultural and gender stereotypes of South Asian women. Based on my own experiences, my image of a South Asian woman was someone who was docile and always did what was expected of her; reliable, loving, even-tempered and powerful in her role, but never so strong as to upset the conventional dynamics of her household or workplace.

As I heard Andolan members’ stories, I was blown away by their bravery. As they describe in the film, the Founder and Director of Andolan, Nahar Alam, was escaping a domestic violence situation when she emigrated to the United States and began babysitting. Shaku, another member and character, married when she was a teenager in Bangladesh and, forced to support herself and her children, decided to accept the offer of work from diplomat family moving to the United States. They had each emigrated alone and then, in an unfamiliar country, managed to organize to demand their rights, even as new immigrants, often with no family or community support beyond their fellow Andolan members.

The stories I had grown up around were stories of a different class, era and immigration policy — South Asian men with advanced degrees emigrating alone to pursue education and jobs, and then eventually marrying or bringing their families over to meet them. Even the stories I had heard in Trinidad, Kenya and South Africa involved men traveling alone to pursue work opportunities — as indentured servants or as merchants — their children and grandchildren eventually identifying culturally more as South African (or Trinidadian or Kenyan) than as South Asian.

(Fine Grain Films)

While they defied stereotypes, Andolan members did share one typical experience of living in the diaspora — they were both South Asian enough, and yet also “American” enough, that their romanticized notions about each place had been sullied.

Getting to know these independent women made me realize how frequently I had superimposed my own interpretations of being South Asian on others. I also discovered how completely inadequate the term “South Asian diaspora” was to accommodate such vastly different journeys spanning centuries.

The nature of the project and the footage did not lend itself to the issue-driven model of documentaries I had previously worked on for public television. Instead, the driving force of the film was the theater project where domestic workers would create and perform their stories on the stage in hopes of educating their communities and preventing further injustice. I wanted to develop the main characters further so I wove character sketches of them within the overarching storyline of the theater production. It was important for me to interview and show them in their own homes since so often, as domestic workers, their primary association is their role in the homes of others.

As a storyteller, I didn’t want the final product to feel like a didactic piece or a public relations video for the organization. Throughout the editing process, I consulted frequently with YaliniDream who had facilitated the theater project and Chitra who was interested in how Andolan would be represented on film. One of my first decisions was to highlight a few characters rather than include all the Andolan members who had participated in the theater project. In some ways this was counter to the collective ethos espoused by Andolan, but I knew some of the characters were inherently more compelling on camera and the decision would make the film stronger.

By far the most painful decision I made was to cut one of our strongest characters because she no longer wished to be included in the film. She had married someone in the United States and his family didn’t know about her past as domestic worker or an activist. It wasn’t about having a signed release. The women that make up Andolan understand how their stories can impact and inspire others. But ultimately it is their lives on stage and on camera, and I respected that her personal choice took priority over the film. None of the Andolan members were not surprised by her choice; despite their advocacy, the stigma of being a domestic worker remains strong. It was common for members who had transitioned to other kinds of work to no longer want to be associated with the domestic worker movement.

Overall, I feel proud of Claiming Our Voice and grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with these artists and organizers. The project was a vehicle for me to develop my own voice as a filmmaker, and hopefully the film will amplify the voices of the women so viewers can connect with their stories as well.

Learn more about the film and their fundraising campaign at claimingourvoice.com.

There were butterflies, bullhorns and bold displays of defiance. Here’s a compilation of some choice images of May Day 2013, drawn from all of our friends and allies who participated in our #art4 campaign calling for pro-migrant art. Special thanks to DeportHate.org for the video.

Audio from the New York City rally at Union Square:

From New York:

From Los Angeles:

From National Radio Project’s Making Contact:

The struggles of undocumented youth in the US often fly under the radar of the mainstream media. But with the tools of creative expression and the power of social media, a new generation of young immigrants is making sure their voices are heard. On this edition, young undocumented artists speak their truth, as the world listens.

Special thanks to the Left Tilt Fund and the Berwick-Degel Family Foundation.

Featuring:
Homero Rosas, Deanne Palaganas, Marsh Youth Theater performers; Maija Arriaga, high school student; Gary Soto, playwright; Emily Klion, Marsh Youth Theater theater director; Laura Chavez, college counselor; Julio Salgado, visual artist; Jesus Iñiguez, musican and writer; Yosimar Reyes, poet.

Julio Salgado

Music:
The Melodians, “Swing and Dine”
J Dilla, “So Far to Go”
West and the Neptunes, “Gotta Have It”

For More Information:
“Undocumented & Awkward”
“Legalities of Being”
Jesus Iñiguez/ESL
Dreamers Adrift 
Dream Activist 
Culture Strike
The Niya
Aspired Dreamers
Things I’ll Never Say
Yosimar Reyes
Gary Soto
Marsh Youth Theater
Undocunation
Undocu Queers
Julio Salgado

Standout Articles:
Undocumented youth pay tribute to the original dreamers
Queer undocumented youth set the record straight
Undocumented youth infiltrates another immigrant detention center

Check out the #art4 Instagram feed below or click here.

** Click here for a PDF of the LGBTQ poster.**

Pro-migrant art is everywhere. At an April 22nd rally for immigrant families, coordinated by National People’s Action in partnership with CultureStrike, our butterflies, the work of co-founder Favianna Rodriguez, were out in force:

Are you planning an action of your own for May Day? CultureStrike is collecting artwork and images from May Day events nationwide to document the movement for immigrants’ rights. Add your work to our digital art party by posting an image to Instagram with the hashtag #art4, and follow us @culturestrike. For a list of May Day events around the country, go to this round-up from Reform Immigration for America.

Cristina Cardenas, "El Desierto"

Artists in Tucson are breaking the ice on immigrants’ rights by portraying life the shadows of the detention system. At Industria Studios, the exhibit, a benefit for the legal advocacy group Florence Project, captures the emotional and social traumas of the federal ICE agency’s regime of terror: police crackdowns, mass deportations, family separation, and the everyday struggle of the undocumented to maintain their dignity in the face of discrimination and poverty. It doesn’t always fit neatly onto a canvas, but the artists of the Painting by Numbers Project–representing Tucson, Oakland and New York City–document these experiences in a variety of media and cultural vernaculars.

Here are works by some of the featured artists, along with personal statements explaining how they seek to depict the sense of isolation imposed by the immigration regime, and the pain of systematic humiliation and maltreatment.

(Amy Hagemeier, "The Shame")

Amy Hagemeier on the experience of women caught up in the immigration dragnet:

“The Shame” explores the unique space women occupy in immigration and incarceration. Not only do immigrant women deal with racial and economic inequality, they must also confront gender violence. This compounds the amount of abuses to their bodies and their spirits- to be separated from children, to be sexually assaulted.

“The Shame,” through the hands in the background, also acknowledges that incarceration could be extended to include the economic system that has determined what roles we are to play (ie. economic refugee), leaving us with no viable alternatives.”

(Pancho Medina, "Detainee Memorial 2")

(Simon Arizpe)

Tucson-born, Brooklyn based artist Simon Arizpe examines the physicality of imprisonment:

For many detainees the first right that is stripped away from them is control of their bodily fluids.  A common practice for interrogators is to deny the person water for long periods of time or conversely, to give them water and then restrict their ability to urinate.

To illustrate how politics can overshadow the basic human right of having a working, healthy body I will look to a practice used by illegal border crossers in the Sonoran dessert.  These travelers are able to thwart dehydration by filtering their own urine through a simple process of two cup evaporation.  I will use this same technique, which is talked about but rarely seen on this side of the border, to put into perspective the humility and isolation people go through when detained. 

I will build a large-scale two-cup evaporative system 3′ x 3′ x 2′, mounting it in such a way that it appears as a beautiful design object and a working evaporator, instilling it with the weight and magnitude that the object has when it makes a life or death difference for detainees and refugees.

(Wesley Creigh, Painting by Numbers Project)

Wesley Creigh looks  at the challenges facing immigrants trapped in the detention system:

There is a desperate case for reforming the way ICE conducts their detention of migrants. Women migrants in particular make up a large, unseen population on the outskirts of our communities whose specific medical, emotional and familial needs are not being met. As women continue to be subjected to these indefinite and non-criminal incarcerations families will continue to be separated and children will continue to be caught up in the equally bureaucratic and convoluted  CPS (Child Protective Services) system. The trauma that occurs from these separations and imprisonment is long lasting and severely damaging. Yet this is something that we are ignorant about because we do not have to face it at all. ICE has made sure this population is virtually invisible to us. The more we can inform ourselves the more we can begin to struggle for reform.

Shloka M. Ettna, "Women in Detention"

Julio Salgado, "No Papers, No Fear"

Erik Ruin, "Walls"

Art has always been a tool for me to claim space, build power and speak out about the injustices that have shaped my social experience in the United States. Growing up in the age of “free trade,” amid an expansion of anti-immigrant policies, led me to develop art about these issues. For nearly a decade, most of my art directly served the immediate, short-term needs of social movement work. Separately, I would spend time developing my own body of work in my studio or collaborating with other artists. For years, these two worlds remained separate. Neither the art-and-culture sector nor the social-justice sector was effectively building models for creative collaboration.

Now, through my creative practice and my coordination of the immigrant rights organization Culture Strike, I aim to bring together these once-separate worlds through what we call “cultural strategy” or “cultural organizing.” I presented my vision for the convergence of art and social justice at a strategy session called “Creative Change: Art, Culture and Immigrant Justice,” hosted by Opportunity Agenda in Los Angeles in March 2013. The text below is an adaptation of my talk.

To think about how art shapes politics, we need to look far beyond the next political event to consider how we build up a cultural space. Jeff Chang, a brilliant hip-hop critic and journalist, and one of my collaborators in co-founding Culture Strike, has encouraged us to imagine a wave when we think about political change. Normally, when we envision a wave, we think about a climactic event, but in order to reach the peak, all kinds of forces—many of which you cannot see—need to come together.

In the political world, we experience the wave’s peak moments through events like elections or policy wins, but we don’t always recognize the undercurrents and conditions that lead us there. In the world of art and culture, many of us help construct the conditions that lead to this climax. Culture is a space where we can introduce ideas, attach emotions to concrete change and win enthusiasm for our values. Art is where we can change the narrative, because it’s where people can imagine what change looks and feels like.

Artists are central, not peripheral, to social change.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” It is essential for us to think about these words in the context of the wave, because artists shift and frame public sentiment as they create the cultural ocean we live in every day. You may attend a rally or vote, but you also read books, listen to music, engage with visual art, turn on the radio and create your identity through culture. Artists are central, not peripheral, to social change. To have the movements that make the wave, you need cultural workers.

The environmental and human rights activist Van Jones has made an excellent graph mapping the political ecosystem. On the left you have action, and on the right, ideas; elites are at the top, and the masses are below. There’s an inside game and an outside game. On the inside, there’s big money: elites are throwing millions of dollars into political lobbying. The inside game is the force that creates policy. On the outside, we apply tremendous pressure so that our elected officials pass laws that give us power. The Occupy and immigrant rights movements are forceful players in this outside game, making sure that the inside is moving.

The left side, “action,” often means quantifiable policy changes: a bit more funding here, a higher age limit there. The right side, “ideas,” can be harder to see. We are not necessarily talking about concrete things here, but rather, a “head space.” Academic institutions and think tanks, which are not always involved in the immediate policy wins, are significant in creating a culture of thought.

Artists are represented here on the side of ideas, in the “heart space.” Art is uniquely positioned to move people—inspiring them, inciting new questions and provoking curiosity or outrage. Normally, and especially when we are in campaign mode, we tend to think about what artists can contribute to the action space. We think about how artists can strengthen the will and push people to act. But we should also ask ourselves, “What are the valuable contributions artists can make in the idea space?” Artists don’t think like policy folks. They don’t think like organizers. And this is a good thing. They think big, visionary ideas. We can’t necessarily claim that reading a novel or watching a sci-fi movie—say, Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer (2008), a dystopian film about migrant labor—will move people to action, but the experience expands our imaginations and creates a climate where we can be visionary.

For the last 20 years, because funding for both the arts and social services has been cut, artists who wish to contribute to social change have often been tasked with holding community workshops. While this is important, it also means we move further away from giving artists the space, time and resources to create a body of work. Artists are immediately channeled into an action space because their contributions are viewed in transactional ways. We want artists to be able to work across the spectrum of “action” and “ideas,” because they have the ability to inspire masses of people through their fan bases.

As artists, we need to communicate more than what we stand against or why particular policies affect us negatively, because limiting our commentary to such reactions would confine the social imaginary to existing political frameworks and systems that we do not control. We should also present our vision for who we are, and show why that vision is a positive one. Working in the realm of ideas does not take energy away from the action space. Cultural strategies are as necessary as political strategies.

When people claim that “cultural strategy” is just the communication strategy for a political campaign, I disagree wholeheartedly. With communication strategy you are still in the action space, meeting the needs of the campaign or reacting to dominant messages in the media. The idea space presents more complex messages. It allows us to deal with contradictions and gray areas. Take the new concept I have been working on, the idea that “migration is beautiful.” It’s very different to say “No on SB 1070” than to say “migration is beautiful,” because the latter message opens up a positive way of seeing migrants, whereas the former statement simply reacts to an immoral law. So when we talk about tomorrow’s cultural policies, we should think about the whole spectrum of activity, from immediate actions to campaigns to ideas, because we need to give artists the space to develop their bodies of work over years.

Think about culture as rain readying the crops.

To give you a sense of the time frame in which cultural shifts happen, and how that eventually translates into policy, look at LGBTQ culture, which finally made its way onto mainstream TV in the 1990s. Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997, and Will & Grace started broadcasting the following year. Soon after came the Laramie Project, a play about the life of gay college student Matthew Shepard—who was tortured and murdered in 1998—that was performed in high schools across the country. Just this past week, TIME magazine published its April edition with a title claiming “Gay Marriage Already Won.” The cover storychronicles how the American public moved from considering marriage equality unthinkable to inevitable in less than 20 years. The injection of gay-friendly content into all aspects of our culture, from TV to high-school curricula and even sports, clearly spoke to our collective imagination. It took decades, but we’ve had major policy wins in the LGBTQ sector: hate crimes legislation in the form of the Matthew Shepard Act, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the legalization of gay marriage (in a minority of states, for now, with more progress on the horizon).

Imagine what it would be like if we could have a Laramie Project for immigrant rights, a play about undocumented youth, become popular in high schools. How long would it take us to get to a place where migration was viewed as normal and natural, and where we respected the human rights of people who have crossed national borders?

Timing is important. When is the right moment to inject culture into a political movement? Think about culture as rain readying the crops. You go to the theater, watch sports or listen to music, and culture just happens to you. You’re not expecting to debate the merits of a political message when you listen to music or read a book. You’re more open to how culture is going to transform you, so you walk into it with an open heart. Culture creates a ripe environment for issue-based organizing or “get out the vote” efforts. This is why it’s so important for us to work in unity. We need to understand timing politically to know when it makes sense for cultural interventions to happen.

How can we conceive of artists’ roles in a more expansive way—not just making posters, but also contributing visionary ideas for social change?

It’s especially critical for us to work together in the wake of the dismantling of support for the arts since the 1980s. Upon taking office, Ronald Reagan aimed to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) entirely. He didn’t get there, but when Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress in the mid-1990s, right-wing groups like the American Family Association pushed them to decimate NEA funding. From a budget hovering between $160 million and $180 million from 1984–1995 (a period during which funding already lagged behind the rate of inflation), Congress brought NEA funding below $100 million in 1996. Since then, we haven’t recuperated. The arts in this country have been devastated.

More specifically, we don’t have a robust infrastructure for art committed to social justice, and social-justice organizations are not hiring artists the way they’re hiring organizers. Artists who are interested in social justice are left without a pathway, even at art schools or music schools. We have to think about how to change this for the long term.

The field of cultural strategy is young. Collaborations between artists and political organizers have definitely happened throughout history, as we saw so clearly with liberation movements like “Black is Beautiful” or the Chicano arts movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and with the anti-apartheid struggles that peaked in the 1980s with widespread cultural boycotts of South Africa. But we have inherited very few cultural institutions dedicated to social justice. Venues like the Los Angeles-based Self Help Graphics & Art, a Latino art center that has united and strengthened a community in need since 1973, are exceptions.

There have been tensions between social-justice spaces and art spaces, too, and that’s understandable; but I think it is important for us to be comfortable with such tensions and take them on in a revolutionary way. This is how we will build the infrastructure and networks needed to help socially engaged artists thrive. Not just 10 or 20 artists, but hundreds, and while they’re young and excited to shape the world around them.

A real cultural strategy is going to require solidarity. A vibrant cultural space is going to require risk-taking. Many of us haven’t figured out how to measure the impact we’re having on the world of ideas because we stay in the action space. We’re not thinking about the kind of transformation that will happen five years from now in someone who, for example, looks at the art of Ramiro Gomez Jr. or Julio Salgado, or listens to a song by Ozomatli. How will their values shift?

Raoul Deal, Stop Breaking Up Families, 2012

To develop long-term rubrics, we should think about cultural shifts in three areas. First, narrative-shifting. What can we do immediately to make pro-migrant culture cool through music and art? We need to push anti-migrant policies to the extreme fringes, as LGBTQ rights activists did with anti-gay messages. Gay-straight alliances are now the norm in high schools, which wasn’t the case 20 years ago.

Second, infrastructure-building. The gutting of the public sector created a huge commercial sector that dominates art schools and art institutions. So while we think about creative strategies for mobilization, we also have to rebuild the space for artists to engage in public service. How are we developing artist leadership in the field of cultural organizing, which is about merging our social justice practices with our art practices? How can we bring more resources to artists, especially undocumented artists?

This leads us to the third area: creating cultural policy oriented toward access and equity for artists. In many ways, artists are seasonal workers; their practice does not bring them a steady workflow. There is very limited funding for artists who have papers. If you don’t have papers, the likelihood of your getting public arts funding is pretty much nonexistent. Furthermore, schools focused on art or music haven’t caught up with math and science schools in accepting undocumented youth. What policy changes do we need to make in the national arts infrastructure so that our field can grow, and so that we are respected by both the art world and the social-justice world?

We have come a long way in the last few years. We should be proud of the work we’ve done and think about taking it to the next level. How can we conceive of artists’ roles in a more expansive way—not just making posters, but also contributing visionary ideas for social change? There are many important short-term needs right now, but we need to look beyond immediate concerns and build up all the forces in our movement, until it becomes an unstoppable wave.

Originally published at Creative Time Reports.