Just a gentle reminder to shake what your Mama gave you this Mother’s Day, and keep in mind how motherhood binds us across generations, cultures and borders. To participate in a pro-migrant, pro-family Mama’s Day arts movement, take a look at the work CultureStrike co-founder Favianna Rodriguez and other artists are doing at StrongFamiliesmovement.org.

–MC

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.

Chalk art in Berkeley, Calif., in September 2012. (Flickr/Quinn Dombrowski)

Bold colors. Transfixing traditional patterns. Provocative declarations. Gut-wrenching narratives. These are part of the vivid images and stories that you might have witnessed at immigration events across the United States over the past few years. In these ways and more, the immigrant rights movement embodies several generations of movement-building lessons from artists and cultural workers. Today, however, at the mass events being held in Washington, D.C., and across the United States, cultural contributions might not be front and center. Among organizers, the strategic value of arts is getting short shift from those who only see art as a tactic and who are blind to its broader value.

Today’s rallies honor the moment seven years ago when 70 cities rallied against anti-immigrant bills in Congress, and they strive to recreate that success in defense of the 11 million undocumented people in the United States now — at a moment when immigration is once again at the center of the congressional agenda with a bill that proposes a pathway to citizenship. The D.C. rally’s line-up includes famous orators and musical performers, but resources were not made available to support many of the grassroots visual artists who have contributed so much to the movement’s growth. The groups working on immigrant rights in the United States have come a long way recently, and graphic artists, singers, storytellers and others have played no small role in this.

Standing on the shoulders of the civil-rights movement’s freedom fighters, LGBTQ activists and others, artists have helped to define what it means to be an immigrant, and to be counted as an activist. Through their cultural work, they have painted a positive vision of immigrants as not only a natural part of U.S. society but also a people who are living through a quintessential story of transformation. Artists are generally freer of the logistical constraints that limit political organizers, and this helps enable them to serve movements as visionaries, outside-the-box thinkers, and vanguards of a more beautiful and vibrant world to come.

Consider, for instance, the widely used image of the monarch butterfly as a graphic representation of the migrant. Beloved for its beauty and its seemingly miraculous migration across huge distances, the monarch embodies hope for those who must travel great distances to survive and find opportunity. Their pattern of migration takes monarchs from Mexico to Canada through the United States, spanning lives of several generations; no one butterfly makes the whole trip. How new generations know to return to their ancestral grounds is still the stuff of scientific mystery. And for the activist artists who support immigrants, this mystery conveys the message that holding on to one’s cultural heritage across generations can be a wellspring of strength for a long struggle. Migration and transformation, in fact, are what make us beautiful.

Poster that uses a variety of Native American and natural symbolism.(Facebook/César Maxit)

In the same way that the LGBTQ movement has been represented with rainbows of vivid colors, the butterfly has now become an iconic image of the immigrant rights movement. Similarly, too, the power of “coming out” is being harnessed by today’s undocumented immigrants, who are now willing to be open about their dreams of equality and justice, often at risk of arrest and deportation. Groups like No Papers, No Fear use the tactic of openly declaring their undocumented status as a way of building a community capable of fighting the fear and violence unleashed by the federal immigration system. In the summer before the presidential conventions, many activists took their message on the road with No Papers’ UndocuBus to (literally) drive home the need for politicians to address immigration issues.

The early suffragists who harnessed conventional idealizations of women to promote their right to vote, and the early ACT UP activists who incorporated their expertise in public-relations, design and theatrical performance into their strategic plans, modeled a way of building movements in which artists and cultural workers have a seat at the strategy planning table. Art becomes more than a pretty banner or concluding song. Migration is Beautiful, for instance, is a film featuring Faviana Rodriguez and others that illustrates this comprehensive approach.

Consider also a new video that highlights the high cost of U.S. immigration policies: “Ice El Hielo.” It follows in the tradition of the unforgettable 1950s film Salt of the Earth — acted out by actual striking miners and their immigrant wives and families who together took on corporate bosses in their company town in a fight for better living conditions and basic dignity. The actors in “Ice el Hielo” are themselves undocumented — several of whom are currently embroiled in legal fights of their own; Salt of the Earth was blacklisted in the United States. Even though one is a full length feature and the other a music video only a few minutes long, both are all the more moving because the stories are told by people facing these issues for real. There is incredible power in affected people telling their own personal and community stories — a power that can motivate, uplift, humanize, move to action and even win over would-be enemies.

Embracing patterns, graphics and colors of native traditions has not only enhanced the immediate experience of immigration activists and those coming in contact with the demonstrations and events, but it has also served to coalesce the movement. If you see some of the compelling images at the rallies today, let them serve as reminders of the value of cultural work in the broadest strokes. Crafting strategic campaigns with the guidance and involvement of cultural workers can do more than enliven a drab rally; it can validate the ancestry of front-line communities in this struggle and provide a font of support for difficult transformations on the path to a brighter world.

Originally published at Waging Nonviolence.

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.

The sleeper hit of Oscar night was the story of one young artist who painted herself outside of every box society tried to impose on her. Inocente, the winner in the short documentary category, follows the journey of a homeless girl struggling to survive and basically raise herself in San Diego. Her mother struggles with alcohol dependency, and her abusive father has been deported. Sheer survival is no small feat under these circumstances, but, with the help of a community-based program, Inocente manages to thrive as an artist. Her story isn’t just one of youth overcoming daunting obstacles; it’s a window into the life of a girl who throws herself into every challenge the way she throws color on the wall, with defiance. She’s a homeless undocumented immigrant who carves out a dominion for herself on an unforgiving urban landscape. She’s isolated from many of the social institutions that her peers take for granted, but she builds a support network that embraces her artistic vision and brings it to a public that might otherwise have dismissed her as another statistic.

Inocente got to be in the Hollywood spotlight on Oscar night, but her story is fundamentally about how an artist can shine her own light on a corner of the social canvas that’s too often overlooked.

After the winner was announced, CultureStrike co-founder Favianna Rodriguez posted a note about why progressive movements need to reach out to communities where so many more kids like Inocente are waiting for a spark of inspiration:

I hope we get to a space where the progressive movement really respects the labor of artists. While its important to work in a rapid response mechanism and support campaigns, its equally as important to work on art that is about color, composition, healing, life, love, pain… 

I hope to see a future where we support the socially engaged artists as they are their full complex selves. That is the work I hope to do in CultureStrike, is to support undocumented artists be their full artistic selves, not just making art about the struggle but also art that is about healing, about pain and about being human. Its already hard enough to be an artist with papers in this country with the extreme cuts in arts funding, its already hard to be an artist of color in a sector dominated by white men – it’s even harder if you do not have papers and therefore no access to public arts funds, and imagine the barriers to get into art school or music school. Its not just about math, science. Art is crucial. It’s how we can really shift the debate in this country on the issues that most matter to our people.

Inocente (courtesy of the producers via Facebook)

Learn more about Inocente at the film’s website.

–Michelle Chen

In the month of February, CultureStrike, Center for New Community and our network of partner organizations and allies from the art, literary and activist worlds are converging twice–in Berkeley on the 15th and in Denver on the 23rd. Since we launched UndocuNation last year, CultureStrike founder Favianna Rodriguez has been working to develop it into a cultural “thing”–a cultural event with a brand, a kind of gathering that leaves a lasting imprint on people’s senses and sensibilities, but also proves versatile enough to be adopted and adapted by many diverse communities. Like the Vagina Monologues or Theater of the Oppressed, our project is blossoming into a cultural phenomenon that lives and breathes, a concept that’s both portable and participatory. 

This week’s UndocuNation event at University of California-Berkeley showcases local artists as well as creative change-makers whose voices resonated around the country. Writer, activist and performance artist Cherríe Moraga will be one of the better-known names on the bill, but she’ll be letting her students take center stage with performances from a new working play about the migrant experience.  Nationally renowned poet and Comedian Josh Healey will be joining us too, and sharing a platform with local spoken word artists and performers. The backdrop and soundtrack of UndocuNation comes courtesy of our crew of gifted “artivists,” but the roster of artists and the works on display get changed up depending on where we are, playing on the styles and talents of the community hosting UndocuNation. 

To get an insider’s take on UndocuNation and our campaign to take the CultureStrike movement undocunational, read Berkeley scholar-activist Marco Antonio Flores’s reflection on his journey from audience member to coordinator of the project.           — MC

Getting UndocuNationalized

“I am grateful for those first moments of consciousness, always born from a living experience of injustice turned to righteous rage, that first experience of genuine collectivism, that blessed epiphany of art-inspired action.”

- Cherrie Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness

“Jota, it’s going to be amazing!  There are artists from all over the country using art to talk about immigration,” those were the first few words Julio Salgado expressed to me about UndocuNation. And like many other moments in my undocumented life, my first reaction was uncertainty: “Is this a crime?” I thought.  I was terrified that ICE could show up at the doors and take me away.

UndocuNation, an artistic encouentro created to bring together gente without papeles, was created at such a pivotal point of the immigration debate that I feared any possibility of national attention.  Of course, this wasn’t new to me.  I knew this fear as a child, always being asked to not bring too much attention to myself because of my families undocumented, “Marco, muerdete la lengua.” I feared  UndocuNation would do exactly what it intended to: pick up national attention.

Julio Salgado

I had just met Julio Salgado a few months back, at this point, our friendship had began to unfold.  One thing was certain to me – art kept us centered.  It allowed me to see that we are both hermanos, undocujotas en la lucha.  But despite the sense of familia I had nurtured with Julio, I was unable to imagine what this even would look like.  In all honesty, I was consumed by my own fear of deportation.

I found myself in awe of the undocumented artists who were willing to put a face to the immigration issue.  I couldn’t believe this kind of courage was possible. I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve never had the courage to speak against injustice.”  It became clear to me that UndocuNation took that risk. I thought, this IS face of the struggle against injustice.

As artists took the stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, I was captivated by the artwork on the walls, each piece revealing many political affirmations of being undocumented.  Prints with vibrant images indicating the exploitation of undocumented workers to stopping the separation of families.  Visual artists illuminated the room with images that spoke to our struggles as undocumented community.  But it was the poets who captivated me, their every word seeping into my skin reminding me about how ‘real’ my undocumented life is yet how much power there is a collective esfuerzo.

Much time has passed since the start of it all. Today, I find myself making phone calls, meeting with funders and collaborating with various artists in an attempt to bring UndocuNation to the University of California, Berkeley.  As a co-coordinator of UndocuNation, I’m working with CultureStrike to spark creative energies and bring a sense of collective consciousness to our undocumented communities.  I’ve come to learn that many of these creative encounters don’t stand alone; UndocuNation serves as artistic witness to the injustices happening across the country, shedding light to the many faces of living an undocumented life.  UndocuNation has created a space for artistic talent to mobilize our gente, and to shift minds and corazones.  By enabling artists the ability to mobilize our communities through developing their craft, UndocuNation is a tool of creative transformation.

I come to Berkeley with a vision y con un corazón sano.  I return as a lover of words; poetry has served as buena medicina.  I am learning to nurture and nourish words.  I am learning to create a path towards consciousness and justicia.  I am learning to weave the necessity of healing arts alongside undocumented community and my undocuqueer familia, I am learning resistance.  I have been able to create community and familia de corazón.   Today, I believe in the power of fearlessly making art, and it’s the ability to make corazón.

UndocuNation is more than an evening of cultural jamming and an artistic celebration, it is poetic justice.

UPDATE

Undocunation is taking Denver by storm on February 23. As we prepare for another weekend fest of art-making, music and dialogue, Domenic Powell, a senior organizer at our partner organization Center for New Community, reflects on UndocuNation as a vehicle for a widening social justice movement.

Oree Originol setting up art for UndocuNation Denver (Favianna Rodriguez)

Art makes community, even on the smallest scale. When you gather together to listen to a musician at an El stop or on the street, you share a moment with the other listeners, you acknowledge one another and your shared emotional experience. In that way, making art is a lot like organizing, which helps us recognize our shared experience and leverage our collective power to change society. With UndocuNation, we’re bringing people together around art that moves us, hoping that we’ll move together from then on.

Art has always been part of the fight against injustice. Photographs, posters, poems, what have you—they make us reflect on the moment and recognize the need to act. When we bring together artists and activists in UndocuNation, the artists find ways to connect to organizers in a way they may not have in the past, and the organizers find ways to work with artists. In this moment, when the rights of immigrants are being challenged by the anti-immigrant movement, art is a perfect way to rebuild the community that movement is trying to destroy.

(Irina Crisis / Migration Now)

In the coming days, you’re going to hear a lot about immigration reform–from the usual people: the politicians, the think tanks, the right-wing radio personalities and television pundits–all breathlessly airing opinions on how to fix immigration. Amid the polemical din, we ask you to pause for a moment, tune out the political chatter, and focus on what you see around you: the people who form your community, the nameless and faceless workers who keep your neighborhood running, the mothers and fathers who build their lives quietly, whose voices don’t carry in the echo chamber of Washington. And if you can start to visualize that, to imagine what those folks would say to people in power if they had a chance, then take a look at what an emerging movement of artists has been doing to make their voices heard in a different medium.

(Melanie Cervantes / Migration Now)

Migration Now is a nationwide visual arts collaboration, led by CultureStrike and the JustSeeds Artist Collective, aimed at raising consciousness about immigration issues and the imperative for just and equitable change to the nation’s immigration system. Unlike the noisy polemics you’re going to hear in Washington about “securing the border” or putting undocumented immigrants on the “back of the line” for citizenship or granting temporary relief to one group or another, we let these powerful images speak for themselves. And we leave it to you to spread the word about the fundamental human rights and social justice issues that should be at the heart of the debate.

The collection consists of 37 works of political art created by 38 artists, all produced in response to the developments in the immigrant rights and pro-migrant movements of the past year. This diverse group of artists includes: former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas, Undocumented DREAM Act agitators Julio Salgado and Felipe Baeza, Chinese American visual artist and designer Imin Yeh, author and printmaker Josh MacPhee, and renowned street artist, El Mac.  Together they represent the myriad visions, aspirations and lived realities of many creative communities, from the street art scene to organized labor to political comics to historical traditions of agit-prop from around the world.

The organizers, Favianna Rodriguez of CultureStrike and Roger Peet of JustSeeds, present the images with this artists’ statement:

When people move, they are either going toward their families and communities, or more often, away from them. The artists in this project believe that migration is about our fundamental right to move freely in search of our fullest and best selves. Migration is a central crisis of our time, and we as artists believe that we can help shape the dialogue about this, promoting compassion and humanity.

(Lalo Alcaraz / Migration Now)

To view the full collection and to read individual artist’s statements about their work, visit MigrationNow.com. You’ll also find information on how to purchase and use these prints in your community, so you can support the creative workers who, with humor and conviction, have documented and in many cases personally struggled through these issues from the ground up.

You can also read CultureStrike’s 2012 interview with Ray Hernandez about his poster depicting the Dreamer movement. And learn more about Favianna Rodriguez and her work with these artists in the I Am Other documentary, Migration is Beautiful.

–Michelle Chen

(Shaun Silfer / Migration Now)

View Part II and Part III

Over the past year, the immigrant rights movement has seen nascent victories and faced monumental political challenges, but its greatest triumph so far has been creating a space for envisioning a more just, inclusive society. And the boundaries of that space have been drawn, redrawn, blurred and exploded by the creative workers who’ve taken the fight to the media, the canvas, the big screen and the digital realm.

(Voice of Art)

CultureStrike founder Favianna Rodriguez has been leading many of these efforts as a community educator and activist, fusing street art with political campaigns ranging from reproductive justice to opposing unjust deportations of undocumented youth. In this new documentary by Voice of Art on the i am Other YouTube Channel, she’s a guide and witness to the journey that activists have pioneered from the southern border to the White House, pushing for a recognition of their dignity and rights. The film highlights the power of culture in changing the public dialogue on immigration issues, as well as efforts to empower immigrant communities to raise their own voices and participate in a political arena that has historically excluded and silenced them.

The film follows Favianna to the Arizona border, where we hear from intrepid civil rights activist Isabel Garcia about the abuse, fear and racial attacks have exploded across the state. Favianna and other artists then hitch a ride on the Undocubus, the groundbreaking protest tour that brought the pleas of millions of undocumented immigrants and their families to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Also featured in the film are CultureStrike’s own undocuqueer artivist Julio Salgado, journalist-turned-activist Jose Antonio Vargas, and hip hop artist Jasiri X.

(Voice of Art)

As Washington moves again toward debating immigration policy, culture–from the depiction of migrants in the news to the graffiti murals in your neighborhood–will play a key role in shaping the public conversation about just and humane reform.

CultureStrike is proud to help elevate and amplify the voices of creative souls who have turned struggle into inspiration. Yet the film is just one snapshot of the lives of these advocates, community members and cultural workers making a difference. As their narrative is still being written, keep watching, and keep in mind a couple of choice quotes:

(Favianna Rodriguez / Presente.org)

Favianna’s manifesto for the radical artist:

Art has the power to shape thoughts and change hearts. Art also has the ability to shape our laws, change society, and speak truth to power. … When an artist understands the political landscape and can incorporate that into their art, the art really becomes powerful.

And at the film’s conclusion, Presente.org co-founder Roberto Lovato sums it up:

Very few but the activists and the artists and cultural activists are going to be the ones who help define what being an immigrant really is, instead of what we’re being told by the media, by the politicians, and by the hate groups, increasingly. Any number of artists are going to be the ones who help kind of save the world, basically.

Basically.

–Michelle Chen

Learn more at Voice of Art, which has also featured the work of CultureStrike partners Gan Golan and Oree Originol among others, and see more films at the i am Other Channel on YouTube. And learn more about the artists involved with the project at Favianna’s blog.

In this talk on Open Line Media News with hip hop activist Davey D, Jeff Chang, Jeff Biggers and Favianna Rodriguez wax philosophical about the nexus between culture and politics. Chang, Biggers and Rodriguez have all made their mark as creative workers, authors, artists, critics and historians, sometimes all of the above. Here, they relate their experiences in the trenches of the immigrant rights movement–Biggers’s expose on the dirty politics of Arizona’s nativism, Rodriguez and Chang tapping into street art and hip hop culture to sharpen youths’ political perspectives.

They also speak frankly about the limitations of conventional organizing, as well as the emerging prospects for new models of seeding and fostering creative change. At one point in the conversation they challenge the hegemony of the punditocracy, recognizing that even prominent liberals in the news media fall into the same trap of gravitating toward powerful figures. Unfortunately, while it may be good for satire, smacking down the political establishment can’t replace the heavy lifting of activism–going to the grassroots and thinking critically and openly about how to reach out to new communities and forge new coalitions.

In the immigrant rights movement in particular, there’s a dynamic tension–though not necessarily a trade off–between working through the mainstream channels (like lobbying for the DREAM Act, or urging reporters to “drop the I-Word“) and changing the game on the ground by building new institutions, new avenues of public protest, and pursuing ground-up resistance (see: an Occupy encampment, going undercover in a detention center, or a grassroots alternative university, or straight-up taking off in a renegade pro-migrant caravan). CultureStrike operates at that cusp between the aesthetic and the political, and whether it’s through books, workshops, murals or performance art, we’re always learning about how to make rebellion a beautiful thing.

Laurel Fish

As two critical bills waited quietly on California Governor Jerry Brown’s desk this weekend, immigrants across the state held their breath, hoping that the progressive legislation could affect the national immirgation debate. By Sunday night, the anticipation gave way to disillusionment with two stunning vetoes.

The highly anticipated Domestic Workers Bill of Rights would have enacted major protections for tens of thousands of housekeepers, nannies and other caregivers and closed loopholes ignored by federal labor law. It would have extended California’s policies for overtime pay and workers’ compensation, and helped ease in-house workers’ arduous, sometimes-abusive work routines by providing for a set amount of sleep and the ability to cook one’s own food.

Above all, the Bill of Rights would place California alongside New York (where similar legislation has already passed) in formally recognizing the rights and unique needs of this burgeoning, cross-cutting sector. The bill won support from a huge array of groups, from labor unions to celebrities, precisely because of the myriad social issues that domestic work braids together: the changing demographics of the workforce, the challenges of securing affordable childcare or elder care for families, and the struggles of immigrant workers, particularly women of color, in a largely unregulated industry.

But Brown scrapped the bill (sadly following an earlier veto by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger) and aligned himself with the business lobby, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, which had complained that the provisions of the bill would be unworkable and overly burdensome for employers.

The California Domestic Workers Coalition will continue its campaign (with plans to deploy sponge bombs to help Brown “clean up his act”) by building on its growing network of allies, including women’s rights, labor and faith groups. Looking ahead, Katie Joaquin, a Filipino community activist with the California Domestic Workers Coalition, tells Working In These Times, “We’re going to continue to build upon those relationships. And the first step is to hold Governor Brown accountable for what we view as a blatant lack of leadership.”

Julio Salgado

Inspired by the New York example, Joaquin says, the California bill is part of a movement for what the National Domestic Workers Alliance calls “an alternative vision of care,” which is based on sustainable working conditions and better training in the care industries, in order to meet the growing need for caregivers as the population ages. “We need to have a vision for training and caring for caregivers at the same time that we’re making care accessible for families,” Joaquin says.

Immigration policy complicates the labor struggle. Brown delivered a one-two punch to California’s migrant communities by also vetoing the Trust Act, which would have restrained the power of local police to route arrestees suspected of immigration violations into the custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That means that the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, including domestic caregivers and other low-wage workers, will continue.

Immigrant rights activists had pushed the Trust Act to counter the Obama administration’s enforcement regime, particularly the Secure Communities program, which encourages federal and local police to collaborate to nab undocumented immigrants. The program mirrors Arizona’s infamous SB1070 law and other state initiatives that threaten to expand racial profiling of Latinos and feed the federal deportation machine (which hasn’t significantly eased up in spite of the administration’s slippery claims of refraining from deportating “low priority” cases, such as students with clean records).

Still, aside from the painful vetoes, Brown managed to approve more modest pro-immigrant measures, such as allowing driver’s licenses for some undocumented immigrants (a move apparently aimed at the youth who would qualify for temporary immigration relief and work permits under the White House’s new “deferred action” policy).

Melanie Cervantes, Favianna Rodriguez

The problem is that making it easier for undocumented workers to drive isn’t going to prevent them from being pulled over and ensnared in deportation proceedings. A young man named Juan Santiago told the Associated Press:

he was pleased he would be able to get from his home in Madera to his college classes 30 miles away once his work permit application is approved. But he said the measure does little for his mother, who brought him across the Arizona desert into the U.S. when he was 11.

“It was a happy and a sad day for us,” Santiago said. “The fact that the governor vetoed the TRUST Act, it means there’s nothing to protect the rest of my family members.”

The legislative changes that immigrants most need now are those that protect the whole neighborhood–at work, in school and at home. In an email to Working In These Times, Chris Newman, legal director of California-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), one of the leading advocates for the Trust Act, says:

Equality demands that all Californians have faith in law enforcement, and the vetoes send a message that whether it’s civil rights, labor rights, or public safety, Jerry Brown does not respect the interests of immigrant workers in California.

While the vetoes were a blow to the movement, passing pro-immigrant policies is not an end in itself. Even in New York, where a hard-fought Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is already on the books, workers have faced difficulty in using the law to directly challenge employers over workplace violations.

Building political savvy and leverage on the street level is critical, with or without supportive legislation. As NDLON activist Pablo Alvarado wrote on the group’s blog, the governor “can veto a bill but he cannot veto a movement.” Ultimately, it’s the community’s power, not the letter of the law, that defines justice.

The images shown here are part of a collaborative project with CultureStrike and two Bay Area movement group, Mujeres Unidas, a grassroots organization of Latina immigrant women, and the Alameda County United to Defend Immigrant Rights (ACUDIR). The participating artists were Melanie Cervantes, Laurel Fish, Oree Original, Favianna Rodriguez and Julio Salgado. Though the Trust Act and domestic workers’ campaigns experienced a temporary setback with the vetoes, CultureStrike’s Favianna Rodriguez reminds us that the partnership will continue to bear fruit: “Part of our mission at CultureStrike is to support arts production for urgent campaigns such as these. We had an excellent experience collaborating with movement leaders, Andrea Mercado and Cinthya Muñoz.”

CultureStrike and community groups display their swag.

Oakland-based painter, Oree Original, designed this banner for the Domestic Workers. (Black figures by artist, Jason Justice)

This article was originally posted at In These Times