Marisela Escobedo was 52 when she was shot dead on a sidewalk outside of the Government Palace of Chihuahua City, northern Mexico. She had set up camp in one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities – a place where people won’t leave their homes at night to protest day and night against corruption and impunity in her daughter’s murder case.
"It appears that Banksy has struck again, this time painting the brick wall of the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, where Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years over his “indecent” affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
"WILD: Act I" is a film demonstrating the power of creativity in constraint. Using moving choreography performed by Elijah Lancaster and vivid imagery displayed on three walls in a mock cell, Jeremy McQueen gives voice to young Black and Brown men caught in the criminal 'justice' system.
In a collaboration with fellow artist @vyalone on Instagram, Lucinda Hinojos or La Morena as the artist is known recently completed this mural in Phoenix which showcases the Native American culture of the people indigenous to the area. La Morena said in a post about the project on Facebook, "This mural is about reclaiming space, reclaiming our roots, our identity and finding our truth.
A group of organizers came together Sunday afternoon at the Howard County Detention Center to protest the detention of immigrants charged with civil infractions, along with all nonviolent offenders, who they say are at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus inside the facility.
Khalil Bandib is a Berkeley-based, award-winning editorial cartoonist with a unique perspective. He critiques a myriad of topics, from racism and homophobia to foreign policy and the Patriot Act. Bandib was born in North Africa under a French colonist regime; he brings a non-Eurocentric perspective not typically visible in large corporate media.
Li Wei, 18 (not her real name), doesn't seem like a dissident. She is more focused on her accounting studies, her friends on the social networks and chatting with her sister. Nevertheless, she took part in a demonstration last month in front of the Chinese Communist party offices that degenerated into violent clashes with police.
Anthony Papa was arrested for a drug crime and with no prior offenses was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for violating New York's harsh drug laws. While in prison, Papa began to document his inner struggles via painting and ultimately earned a pardon from New York governor and has gone on to actively fight the drug war in his years since release.
Charged with participating in demonstrations against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Soudabeh Ardavan was held for eight years (1981-1989) in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. She found sanity and solace through the forbidden activities of drawing and painting, secretly producing paint from flower petals and tea, using brushes made from toothpicks and human hair.
"There is a tragic timeliness to Flyaway Productions' Meet Us Quickly With Your Mercy. As the nation grapples with systemic racism and police brutality, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, choreographer Jo Kreiter's new aerial work seeks to amplify the call for ending the mass incarceration that disproportionately affects people of color.
The prints exhibited June 2013 at Firestorm in Asheville NC, will comprise two separate bodies of work; Chelsea Ragan’s combination screen print / woodblock print / painting / drawings graphically detail police shootings of young black males from across the country, and Adam Void’s hand-painted screen prints state the facts of important national news stories that have been swept under the rug of mainstream corporate media.
Veteran Industrial band Skinny Puppy have objected to their disturbingly dark music being played to discombobulate inmates at Guantanamo, and plan to “charge” the government for doing so. They are not the first band to express such objections.
In keeping with his activist turn on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole’s new album, KOD, is an exploration of addiction. The title has three different meanings that all speak to this aim: Kids On Drugs, King OverDosed, and Kill Our Demons. Each feeds into the next in this narcotic odyssey.
" Rich is a fighter. The entrepreneur, abolitionist and mother of six boys has spent the last two decades campaigning for the release of her husband, Rob G. Rich, who is serving a 60-year sentence for a robbery they both committed in the early 90s in a moment of desperation.
In an effort to prepare against chemical, biological and radiological attacks in the New York subway, the New York Police Department has announced plans to release harmless gases into the city’s streets and subway stations to better understand the pathways of airborne contaminants. Officials will use more than 200 sensors, set up throughout all five boroughs, to track these benign gases as they disperse.
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a revolutionary, writer, social activist and founding member and Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, and member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. At 18 years old, in 1990, he was convicted of murder, which he has consistently challenged on the grounds of misidentification.
Najah al-Bukai cannot forget.
As an accomplished artist in Syria before the war, Mr. Bukai had long thought his photographic memory was his greatest asset, allowing him to recreate scenes on his sketch pads and canvases days, months and even years after he witnessed them. But now, after he has survived two stretches in the Syrian government’s notorious detention centers, his sharp memories only serve to haunt him.
In this series featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, artist Alexandra Bell edited headline pages from the New York Daily News in 1989 concerning the case of the Central Park 5. Through redaction, highlighting, and censoring, Bell shows how the teens accused of this crime were painted as a pack of animals by the media.
Police in Jamaica kill three people a week with impunity. But one woman, Shackelia Jackson, is determined to get justice for her murdered brother.
Shackelia Jackson’s email signature reads, “Broken, not Destroyed.” After her brother Nakiea was shot by police in 2014, Jackson has spent years fighting for justice for him and other victims of extra-judicial killings.
Last August, as protesters marched in Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old unarmed teen shot by a police officer, another group of activists began thinking about how to incorporate the creative community into the movement. The result is Manifest:Justice, a free pop-up art show taking place in Los Angeles.
The Black, Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes put George Floyd’s final words in a place where everyone could see them: the sky. Five days after Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 30th, Holmes’s piece took flight across Detroit, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. Airplanes carrying banners flew between the hours of 11:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. EDT.
In early 2016, I began paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people being killed by the police. The posts on social media deeply disturbed me, but one in particular brought me to tears: the killing of Alton Sterling in my hometown Baton Rouge, La. This could have happened to any of my family members who still live in the area. I felt furious, hurt and hopeless.