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Emma Gonzalez Uses Her Silence

Here is a another design honoring Emma González. My first highlighted her fierce use of words. This design highlights her fierce use of silence. It is compelling to be making these messages as history is unfolding. I finished this design on April 6, 2018.

FIGHT for your LIFE — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS poster honoring Emma González (part 2)

The image of González’s profile is based on an Instagram photo posted by one of her high school comrades and fellow activist, David Miles Hogg, who is also a stunning and wise speaker. His account is at https://www.instagram.com/davidmileshogg/

Emma González and many of her comrades have embarked on a passionate and wise campaign to reform gun laws in the U.S. They were responsible for organizing one of the largest marches in U.S. history, the “March for Our Lives,” on March 24, 2018 in Washington DC. It was too big for a march, in the same way the Women’s March of 2017 was too big. People were crowded together in the allotted space and we couldn’t move from one point to another as a group. We stayed put and it was rivetting to watch these young people (all young people!) perform their conviction and trauma on stage and screen.

Many Parkland students and young guests spoke well. Emma González was stunning because she held a silence after her short speech, so that her time on stage aligned with the time it took for the murderer to end the lives of 17 people and injure 14 others: approximately six minutes and 20 seconds.

To recap the context:
From Wikipedia and http://time.com/5160267/gun-used-florida-school-shooting-ar-15/
On February 14, 2018, from 2:21pm to 2:27pm, 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz murdered seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Fourteen more were injured. He used a legally bought AR-15 semi-automatic style weapon during the massacre, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. The highly deadly military-inspired rifle has been the weapon used by several mass shooters. The AR-15 was most notably used during the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that claimed 27 lives, including that of the shooter. AR-15-style rifles have been used in recent mass shootings in Aurora, Colo.; Santa Monica and San Bernardino, Calif.
The AR-15 was classified as an “assault-style” weapon and outlawed under the assault weapons ban that lapsed in 2004.

About González’s silence:

From https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/emma-gonzalez-is-responsible-for-the-loudest-silence-in-the-history-of-us-social-protest/
by Ari Berman

“Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us.” That’s how Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and one of the organizers of the March for Our Lives, began her remarkable speech on Saturday afternoon at the rally in Washington, DC.

After reading the names of her classmates who were killed in the mass shooting, Gonzalez stood at the podium in silence for six minutes, fighting back tears. It was an incredible, chilling moment. All of the major cable networks carried it live. “Loudest silence in the history of US social protest,” my colleague David Corn tweeted.

“Never again,” many in the crowd of 500,000 chanted in response. After her timer went off, Gonzalez said, “since the time when I came out here, it has been six minutes and twenty seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest,” she said. “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.” And then she left the stage.

MY EXPERIENCE AND DESIGN NOTE

It didn’t take us long in the crowd to realize what she was doing. If you’ve ever worked in radio you know that broadcasting silence is probably worse than cussing on air. Everything said before this was predictable, except maybe Yolanda; this is not to say meaningless. We know how we are supposed to feel. There can be a banality to the expected emotions of outrage. I have been persistently outraged for a long time. It is hard to hold that authentically for so long. The crowd was uncomfortable in the silence, and I extended my imagination over the crowd to feel their discomfort, to hold it present there, as well as my own. Some people felt moved to chant for change. I felt that too. Nervous laughter. That sort of thing. It was about the not knowing. And then something like a sigh when I heard the timer go off. It sounded like the timer on our old microwave. Done. This was about the feelings of the survivors. She stood there in her pain and the thousands of us could share it only insofar as we are individually able. This is about trauma.

In the process of building this design, it was very hard for me to leave that big white profile unembellished. I went through several versions with something in the space of González’s profile, and each time I told myself, “No. It is silence.” White space on a page correlates with silence when speaking. The words in the background of this design are from González’s spoken words, before she stood silent.

Female Power Project, Nasty RZY

Meet Nasty RZY

What is she about to do with that fist?
In which the artist explores the rhetoric of vulgarity within the feminist discourse of anger…

Here is a new body of work in the Female Power Project: Nasty RZY

RZY (“Rosie”) has some things she would like to say and sometimes the most direct language is the most effective. When you’re this angry you are entitled to roll up your sleeves and speak clearly. Is there a decorous and feminine way to express anger? Is it still anger? Can you stomach more anger if it is sweetened and mediated? Does a spoon full of humor help the medicine go down? What if you have to look harder to see the anger—if you have to work to make out the words—what if you can let it sink in slower? Can you digest it then? [What if you make every statement into a question?] Maybe then it can be a seed of power. Maybe then it can communicate. It’s a funny thing to make artwork that I am afraid to speak its name when people come to the studio. Maybe this is work for me, too. That is what RZY SEZ.

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

use PRIVILEGE to sow JUSTICE

USE PRIVILEGE to sow JUSTICE for Eleanor Roosevelt, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

Current design for Eleanor Roosevelt

[The] recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world …

from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office, and served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage was always complicated, and she resolved to seek fulfillment in a public life of her own. She persuaded Franklin to stay in politics after he was stricken with debilitating polio in 1921, and Roosevelt began giving speeches and appearing at campaign events in his place. Following Franklin’s election as Governor of New York in 1928, and throughout the remainder of Franklin’s public career in government, Roosevelt regularly made public appearances on his behalf, and as First Lady while her husband served as President, she significantly reshaped and redefined the role of that office during her own tenure and beyond, for future First Ladies.

Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady at the time for her outspokenness, particularly her stance on racial issues. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies, including the decision to intern Americans of Japanese descent. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees.

Following her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F. Kennedy administration’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death, Roosevelt was regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the world”; she was called “the object of almost universal respect” in her New York Times obituary.

Adapted from Wikipedia