I’M SPEAKING — for Kamala Harris, perSISTERS digital original print in the Female Power Project
During the October 8 vice presidential candidate debate, the current Vice President repeatedly interrupted Harris. Harris managed to communicate her insistence on her right to speak while walking an extremely narrow tightrope of expectations. I cannot express it better than this, from Maiysha Kai of The Glow Up:
“And yet, while many will report on the moment, fewer will recognize or appreciate the tightrope she walked on Wednesday night. Teetering precariously between white disdain, male dismissal, and Black distrust, Harris was tasked with neither being too angry, nor too reactive, nor too…much. Arguably, this also includes being burdened with the restraint of not being too brilliant or dynamic, so as not to upstage the man she was there to represent and support (whom she had also previously trounced on the debate stage).”
DESIGN NOTE The text in the background behind Harris expresses the constrictions she experienced: “Keep Smiling, don’t be too smart, don’t act angry, not too strong, not aggressive, not too black, use simple words, don’t be too girly, be feminine, act motherly, don’t speak too loud, not too black too strong too angry.” Behind this text, on the print but not the magnet, is a kolam design, a winding knot-like drawing that women in some states in Southern India draw every day in flour on the ground outside their front doors. People walk on it and by the end of the day it is destroyed and swept away, to be replaced anew the next day. It is a woman’s art that has interesting mathematical properties. It reminds me of the winding calculations many women have to run in their minds while they are speaking, in order to avoid the many traps women can fall in to just by speaking with power. It is truly exhausting. But Kamala is very powerful, indeed.
Kamala Devi Harris (born October 20, 1964) is the junior Senator from California and the Vice Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in the 2020 election. Before she was a senator, she served as Attorney General of California. Harris was born in Oakland, California. She is the daughter of an Indian mother—a cancer researcher who emigrated in 1960—and a Jamaican-American father who is an economics professor. (Wikipedia)
Did you know that Black Lives Matter was started by three women? It was a hashtag at first, a technology for rhetoric, a verbal key that makes a place for an idea to aggregate. And what a large and multitudinous, profound and simple idea it is! The message I distilled for this artwork is “Hold Space.” These words come from the text on the Black Lives Matter website. You should all go there and read all the words there. They are clear, beautiful, powerful. Perfect.
“Hold Space” I think points to the openness that #BlackLivesMatter allows. It is a coalescing medium, a place that is not occupied the way Rosa Parks performed her rhetoric, whose message I stated as “Take Up Space” in another perSISTERS print. I think it is interesting to contrast “Hold Space” with “Common Ground,” another phrase that seeks some kind of reconciliation between differences. “Common Ground” implies a defined space between determined territories, and I submit that this phrase claims space for the privileged, whereas “Hold Space” implies, among other things, a holding back of privilege. Clearly, this message is about history from within history — which is not clear — and time will allow us to name it.
You can find this design for sale on my Etsy site, here is the listing. For this piece I am donating my creativity, time, and materials, so what you pay goes to Black Lives Matter DC and the US Postal Service (and to Etsy for fees).
“In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman.
The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. Our members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
As organizers who work with everyday people, BLM members see and understand significant gaps in movement spaces and leadership. Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men — leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition. As a network, we have always recognized the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people. To maximize our movement muscle, and to be intentional about not replicating harmful practices that excluded so many in past movements for liberation, we made a commitment to placing those at the margins closer to the center.
As #BlackLivesMatter developed throughout 2013 and 2014, we utilized it as a platform and organizing tool. Other groups, organizations, and individuals used it to amplify anti-Black racism across the country, in all the ways it showed up. Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland — these names are inherently important. The space that #BlackLivesMatter held and continues to hold helped propel the conversation around the state-sanctioned violence they experienced. We particularly highlighted the egregious ways in which Black women, specifically Black trans women, are violated. #BlackLivesMatter was developed in support of all Black lives.
In 2014, Mike Brown was murdered by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. It was a guttural response to be with our people, our family — in support of the brave and courageous community of Ferguson and St. Louis as they were being brutalized by law enforcement, criticized by media, tear gassed, and pepper sprayed night after night. Darnell Moore and Patrisse Cullors organized a national ride during Labor Day weekend that year. We called it the Black Life Matters Ride. In 15 days, we developed a plan of action to head to the occupied territory to support our brothers and sisters. Over 600 people gathered. We made two commitments: to support the team on the ground in St. Louis, and to go back home and do the work there. We understood Ferguson was not an aberration, but in fact, a clear point of reference for what was happening to Black communities everywhere.
When it was time for us to leave, inspired by our friends in Ferguson, organizers from 18 different cities went back home and developed Black Lives Matter chapters in their communities and towns — broadening the political will and movement building reach catalyzed by the #BlackLivesMatter project and the work on the ground in Ferguson.
It became clear that we needed to continue organizing and building Black power across the country. People were hungry to galvanize their communities to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people, the way Ferguson organizers and allies were doing. Soon we created the Black Lives Matter Global Network infrastructure. It is adaptive and decentralized, with a set of guiding principles. Our goal is to support the development of new Black leaders, as well as create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network would not be recognized worldwide if it weren’t for the folks in St. Louis and Ferguson who put their bodies on the line day in and day out, and who continue to show up for Black lives.”
The print says “#BLACKLIVESMATTER” in the background; the largest type says “HOLD SPACE”, and the smaller type says “In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter.” which is a quote from blacklivesmatter.com/herstory. The smallest type is the photo credit: “Photo credits, top to bottom: Alicia Garza, Citizen University, 2016; Patrisse Cullors (May 2015) and Opal Tometi (August 2015), The Laura Flanders Show” and the project credit and artist’s website and the creative commons license.
I’ve made previous designs for Elizabeth Warren (scroll down) and here is a new version.
2020 UPDATE
During the February 19th Democratic debate, Warren made sharp and clever jabs at her rivals, as well as what has been widely acknowledged to be a fatal attack on Bloomberg’s candidacy. Afterward, she was called savage, and the reaction of many women was gleeful. She was tough and aggressive. “Yes! Knives out!” I said to myself. It was a Facebook post by Rebecca Solnit which helped me see the toughness as a loving power, and encouraged me to stay away from the language of violence. Her phrase was “Love in Action.” See: https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.solnit/posts/10157728635685552.
Here is what I posted on Facebook before Warren dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary… Elizabeth Warren will be the best president: smart, prepared, tough, and caring. She embraces the powers of consensus and consent. She listens to people and she takes them seriously. She is not condescending and she is not mean. Her campaign is welcoming, kind, caring, and committed. We can recognize her fighting, her toughness, as a loving power, the way we recognize the effective aggression of a mother bear. She is fierce. She is experienced. She is wise. She is funny. She is human.
Previous Designs
Click on thumbnail to see image
NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTS for Elizabeth Warren, perSISTERS print Female Power Project (current variation)
SPEAK variation — Female Power Project perSISTERS print for Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren Alternate—PERSISTS
SPEAK—Senator Warren reads from the Coretta Scott King letter reporting racist acts by Jeff Sessions suppressing the votes of elderly people. Female Power Project
Two current designs and their precursors
General info pertaining to earlier designs as well:
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said those words after the U.S. Senate voted to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren’s objections to the confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General. She was reading a letter from Coretta Scott King about Sessions’ racist policies as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.
According to Daniel Victor of The New York Times, “A broader theme—that women are too commonly shushed or ignored—emerged on social media.” Victor also noted that “a man silencing a woman struck some as all too common”, and “rang familiar with many women who had their own stories of being silenced.” The Atlantic’s Megan Garber wrote, “American culture tells women to be quiet—in many ways they are reminded that they would really be so much more pleasing if they would just smile a little more, or talk a little less, or work a little harder to be pliant and agreeable.” Further, she wrote, when Senator Warren was silenced, “many women, regardless of their politics or place…felt that silencing, viscerally… Because, regardless of their politics or place, those women have heard the same thing, or a version of it, many times before.”
Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American academic and politician. She is a member of the Democratic Party and is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts. Warren was formerly a professor of law, and taught at the University of Texas School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and most recently at Harvard Law School. A prominent scholar specializing in bankruptcy law, Warren was among the most cited in the field of commercial law before starting her political career.
Warren’s untiring advocacy work for consumer financial protection is founded on her personal experience of financial vulnerability. Warren was born in, Oklahoma, to middle class parents. She has described her family as teetering “on the ragged edge of the middle class” and “kind of hanging on at the edges by our fingernails.” When she was 12, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack—which led to many medical bills, as well as a pay cut. Eventually, this led to the loss of their car from failure to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work, and, when she was 13, Warren started waiting tables at her aunt’s restaurant.
You must be logged in to post a comment.