30 Americans, an exhibition of art by Black Americans, is currently showing at the DIA. All the works in the show are owned by the Rubell Family—white billionaires who have “been recognized as pioneer[s] in what has been referred to as the ‘Miami model,’ whereby private collectors create a new, independent form of public institution.”
In this self-portrait, the woman on the left is “blind-me” and the woman on the right is the “raw-me.” In the piece, the blind-me is wearing a white shirt and the raw-me is wearing a black shirt, symbolizing the pressure we have as women of color to emulate white female standards of beauty. The blind-me is wearing earrings and lipstick. And the raw-me is wearing nothing.
Both ladies have a tattoo on their arm. The broken heart on the left epitomizes the hardship and self-loathing that comes with our failed attempts to be someone we are not, to be thinner, whiter, prettier, taller. The whole heart represents the wholeness and “raw” emotion we carry within ourselves, just as we are.
GOOD EVENING, GOOD DAY COMPAÑERO AND COMPAÑERA, SUPPORT BASES OF THE ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION, COMPAÑERO/AS MILICIANOS AND MILICIANAS,[1] INSURGENTS, LOCAL AND REGIONAL RESPONSABLES,[2] AUTHORITIES FROM THE THREE LEVELS OF AUTONOMOUS GOVERNMENT, COMPAÑERO/AS PROMOTORES AND PROMOTORAS[3] OF THE DIFFERENT WORK AREAS, COMPAÑEROS AND COMPAÑERAS OF THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SIXTH, AND ALL WHO ARE PRESENT.
Compañeras and compañeros, today we are here to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the beginning of the war against oblivion.
For more than 500 years we have endured the war that the powerful from different nations, languages, colors, and beliefs have made against us in order to annihilate us.
Still there is magic. Throughout the days I’ve spent at the 4th precinct, on that sacred, now spiritual road of Plymouth Avenue, I have seen what I’ve imagined in my mind’s eye for quite some time—a community blockade of resistance. I say sacred intentionally. Throughout black history the shedding of black blood has made things sacred. Consider the way we view voting. Often the argument is that it’s necessary to vote, because there is blood on these ballots. The people who came before us suffered so we can show up to the booth. This is true, though I think the idea distorts and manipulates people’s commitment to figuring out their own consciousness and defining for themselves what activism really is. It creates a sort of guilt complex around the trauma of our elders. I’m thinking of “A Letter to Maria,” when June Jordan writes, “So voting, or the right to vote, was a goal, yes, but not an overriding objective, nor was it a strategy, nor was it a tactic. The overriding objective was freedom from American apartheid.”
Buenos Aires
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Ann Arbor
Of the 34 photographs of people in this issue, 6 include people of color.
Janika and Kayla only lived to be 25, both dying this year at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, located on the border between Pittsfield Township and Ypsilanti, Michigan.
I have never been incarcerated in any prison. The information I deal with in the following pages includes reports by others, some of whom have also never been incarcerated. If truth is a value, a beauty, then prison is the antithesis of truth. Prison officials lie routinely.[1] What we do know is that the Huron Valley prison exists as a site of mundane torture, as a tool of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I want the women to be released immediately and tell their own stories. I want the next generation of women to tell stories that are not about abuse, repression, and torture, but about the good things in life. This is not too much to want. Two young women died in Huron Valley this year. They will not be able to tell their stories, they will never be released.
Radical Washtenaw 