Creative Resistance in the Eye of the Storm

Banner Image: Left to Right, Illustration by Asahi Nagata, Abolish Ice laser loon print by Chanci Art, and Abolish Ice print by Heather Schroeder.

A Forward by Carl Atiya Swanson

I have lived in the Central neighborhood for thirteen years now, at 38th just off of Portland Avenue. I didn’t know when we moved here that we would be near the epicenter of two national (global, even) tragedies in less than a decade, but here we are. 

The murder of Renée Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross happened four blocks from my house. That Wednesday morning I saw a post flash up from a friend – "ICE shot someone at Portland & 34th." The past few weeks have continued with that chaos. I walk my kids to their bus stops to make sure they get on alright, and then take a loop to watch out at Green Central Elementary, which is dual language, Spanish and English. ICE come up quick off 35W down 35th and 36th Streets to harass neighbors, run a car off the road, drag a disabled woman from her car. They snatch people, despite neighborhood efforts – last Saturday I helped neighbors push a car to the side of the road that ICE had left open, wheel-locked, in the middle of the street. Rhythm is hard to find, the helicopters are incessant overhead, and the Signal chats are always pinging.

But the neighborhood networks that sprang up in 2020 have been reactivated, strengthened in this crisis. The muscles of mutual aid and community care have kicked into overdrive. Protests and vigils show solidarity and keep people peacefully in the streets. Seemingly everybody has whistles, will come out if called upon, and at the very least witness the brutality that is being inflicted on our neighbors and neighborhood.

I've written more in other places about this moment, because writing is how I process – on parenting in this crisis, and poetry to try and comprehend this depravity, and record this moment. We may be in the middle of winter, where spray can tips would block up and paint may freeze on the brush, but the fires for humanity and justice are burning bright. ~Carl

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Image courtesy of Carl Atiya Swanson

Community Solidarity

Calling on Celeste Bembry’s Parable of the Choir, the crux of this ICE occupation in Minneapolis has felt like one unbearably long note to sing. Singing may not seem the most apt comparison as would screaming, crying, sighing, or literal whistleblowing right now, but nonetheless, it’s a moment that calls for staggered breathing. Practicing staggered breathing is one way to test interdependence, like stepping one boot onto a frozen lake’s surface, assessing the strength of the ice underneath, shuffling a second boot beside it, then pausing again to confirm the mass will hold. When we trust the choir’s sound to carry on unbroken, we can take a break without risking a gap in community care, and can proceed by taking turns providing.

Community solidarity isn’t about being the one to show up every day of the week, the one to sign up for the most patrol shifts or donate the most food, or being the most active member in the signal chat. It’s about spreading out the labor and weight, and holding the brunt of this brutality together. It’s holding the anger, the fear, the overflowing response to terror in one hand, and holding the wisdom of all the people who’ve fought this fight before in the other.

It’s listening to the ones who know the most about radical survival, and letting their fortitude become the backbone with which we direct our motion. The undeniable truth is that we need all of us. Being an overworked, under-rested hero isn’t what will cease this occupation, but being inseparably linked to the wellbeing of a neighbor and knowing that connection in the marrow of your bones? When combined with sustainable action, that’s powerful. Times like these remind us that image doesn’t matter, that career doesn’t matter, and that saving for an IRA barely matters because the family of four down the street is at risk of eviction, and what a gift those reminders are. Thank all that is godly for that clarity in priority. This is the time when the definition of art expands or dissolves, depending on how you see it.

 

Top Left: Sam Gould and Confluence Studio before Jan 30th Strike, Top Right: Maggie Thompson photographing textile resistance, Bottom left: Burlesque of North America (Brlsq)  prints by Mike Davis, Bottom Right: Free Brlsq Posters in Minneapolis.

Creative Acts of Resistance

In some ways everything becomes art–the way you stashed some zines and whistles in the little free library alongside the romance and horror novels, the impromptu decision to bring a thermos of tea to the vigil, so that a group of observers could wrap their chapped, aching hands around a hot beverage while they grieve the loss of another community member. Everything is artful because it is done with great care and intention.

We’re becoming crafty with our resistance, and finding ways to interrupt the dark. And because creative acts become instinctual in times of collective resilience, there is less of a separation between us and our art, so it’s harder (or easier) to spot.

At this point we’ve all watched the videos, right? Each witnessed abduction or execution taxing the nervous system’s ability to regulate, the horror pulling at your eyes and ears and throat. Before you know it an advertisement jolts you out of the scroll and you think, wait, Prose is still trying to sell me curl cream? Neighbors are dragged from their homes, poets and nurses are gunned down, 5-year-olds are detained out of state, and in the same place that I’m consuming this information Meta is analyzing the texture of my hair. Yep, makes sense.

Digital Activism

Despite my cynicism here, artists do seem to be using social media as a vessel to amplify that fervent, aforementioned protection of neighbors.

Many creatives are selling prints and shirts, countless tattoo artists are offering flash work, other artists are organizing social media raffles, with the profits of all of these being funneled toward mutual aid efforts. This wave of digital activism turns the machine on its head, and the cool thing is that anyone can participate.

Poet and activist, Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre, examined how artists can propel change during a recent 500-person virtual workshop called “What Can Artists Do? What Are We Doing?”. Hosting alongside his partner, UyenThi Tran Myhre, they spoke of signal boosting, of mobilizing people and resources, and of finding “ways to use artist skills as activist skills”. The workshop hosts illuminated the “artist's role in helping people (including ourselves) resist isolation, alienation and overwhelm”. You can read the notes and slides from the workshop here.

 

Slides from What Can Artists Do? What Are We Doing?,workshop by Kyle Tran Myhre.

I’d also recommend reading the article Guante wrote for Racket, “How Can Artists Show up for Minneapolis?”, in which he shares the fruits of the workshop. In this video of Noval Noir painting a large-scale portrait of Renee Good near the site of her vigil, someone walked by and called out, “Thank you. Art will save us.” And it will, because for us to be artful, it means using our whole bodies as our voice, not just our mouths. Such a chorus sounds fiercely and abundantly irresistible.◼︎ 

What can you do? Here are some helpful links, mutual aid funds, and other sources to help those affected by ICE: MN50501 Mutual Aid Linktree, Mpls Mutual Aid Linktree, ICE OUT MSP Signs for Solidarity gofundme, and Bench Pressed prints, We Love Our Immigrant Neighbors and We Love Our Somali Neighbors, whose funds help support local advocacy organizations, legal aid groups, and mutual aid projects.

 

Monarchs and the art of living in a fascist occupation. Artists: Conor, Dio, Louis. Image courtesy of Carl Atiya Swanson. See more on the Art Shanty Projects website.