My first GIF!
HAIIII GUYS
“Originality is being different from oneself, not others.”
—Philip Larkin
(Source: applesauced)
I was recently invited by the collective members of Indig-nación; a Spanish language newspaper for the Occupy Wall St. movement, written and edited by Latin@s to create a poster for the the print and online editions of the publication.
I was tasked with creating a poster that would inspire people to mobilze and get out into the streets on May 1st 2012. Occupy Wall Street is urging people around the world to join in on the day of action:
Worldwide, May 1st is traditionally a ‘Workers’ day – a day of Labor Solidarity, and a public holiday. It’s a day to celebrate and march in support of im/migrant rights. In protest against the corruption of the worldwide marketplace, which has led to illegal foreclosures, mass unemployment, low wages, high taxes and a penalization of all those who do not own the ‘99%’ of the world’s resources, and in solidarity with the im/migrant movements of May 1st, we decided to declare May 1st, 2012 a People’s General Strike. Instead of calling upon unionized Labor to make a specific demand (illegal under Taft-Hartley), we are calling upon the people of the world to take this day away from school and the workplace, so that their absence makes their displeasure with this corrupt system be known.
As I reflected on how to best create an image that might galvanize people to action I began to “arm myself with knowledge of the past” by studying historic May Day posters. I finally found one that really caught my attention that was designed by Nikolai Kochergin. Kochergin was among the first artists to start to design Soviet political posters. The poster “I-oe maia goda” (May 1, 1920) has three central figures striding over the symbols of the old regime. Read more here: http://dignidadrebelde.com/blogpost/view/359
Unlike the beautiful 6-year old Jonbenett Ramsey who received coverage all over the media - every tabloid, newspaper, news channel, talk show, 7-year old Aiyana Stanley was killed by a police officer during a raid while she was sleep and her murder received very little coverage.
Police, searching for a murder suspect, threw a flash grenade through the window of her family’s apartment around midnight. According to Aiyana’s father, it landed on the couch, setting Aiyana on fire. A police officer’s gun then went off, and shot Aiyana in the neck.
Aiyana was asleep on the living room sofa in her family’s apartment when Detroit police, searching for a homicide suspect, burst in and an officer’s gun went off, fatally striking the girl in the neck, family members said.
Her father, 25-year-old Charles Jones, told The Detroit News he had just gone to bed early Sunday after covering his daughter with her favorite blanket when he heard a flash grenade followed by a gunshot. When he rushed into the living room, he said, police forced him to lie on the ground, with his face in his daughter’s blood.
“I’ll never be the same. That’s my only daughter,” Jones told.
We haven’t forgotten about you baby. R.I.P.
WHAT THE FUCK.
FUCK EVERYTHING.
As I said in a previous post: it doesn’t take a study to show that racism and violence towards people of color is prevalent in our society. It’s time to stop studying the problem and start doing something about it.
