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Fannie Lou Hamer: Be inconvenient

Fannie Lou Hamer Feminist Art Feminist Graphics Protest Art Resistance Art Womanist
Be inconvenient — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS poster honoring Fannie Lou Hamer

I’m not saying I’m finished with this new perSISTER design for the Female Power Project. But I will post updates if I change it. Regardless, Fannie Lou Hamer’s story will remain the same. Here goes:

Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917–March 14, 1977)

It was inconvenient to the racist white establishment of Mississippi when Hamer decided, at the age of 45, that she wanted to register to vote. She was prevented by an arbitrary literacy test and then fired by her boss (“we’re not ready for that in Mississippi”) and kicked out of her house and shot at by white supremacists. She failed the test a second time. On the third time she passed, but when she went to vote she was told she needed to have two poll tax receipts. She eventually did pay for the receipts and it was inconvenient that she finally did vote. The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent such voter suppression. (See RBG)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had no sense. “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.” (This fearlessness reminds me of Harriet Tubman’s)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had returned to Mississippi after attending a pro-citizenship conference in South Carolina. She was arrested and it took her a month to not-fully recover from the beating the police gave her. It was inconvenient that she never recovered because it proved the brutality of the white people in power there.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so gifted at organizing voter registration drives like the Freedom Summer.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so good at hosting and nurturing activists of all colors.

It was inconvenient that Hamer could quote a Bible passage to support every social justice initiative she embraced.

It was inconvenient when Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to contest the legitimacy of the all-white “official delegation” to the 1964 Democratic convention from that state. It was so inconvenient that President Lyndon Johnson had to interrupt the broadcast of her testimony to the credentials committee. He was afraid of it looking like the “Negroes” were taking over the Democratic party platform, and that too many scared white people would vote Republican. (Sound familiar?) After this election the racial alignment of the parties did shift, starting in the South.

In 1971 it was inconvenient that Hamer co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, created “to increase the number of women in all aspects of political life—as elected and appointed officials, as judges in state and federal courts, and as delegates to national conventions.”

More than anything else, it was inconvenient that Hamer told her story so eloquently, authentically, and clearly. It was inconvenient that people couldn’t ignore her words. “…but if I can’t tell the truth—just tell me to sit down—because I have to tell it like it is.”

At her funeral service in 1977 Andrew Young said, “None of us would be where we are today had she not been here then.”

Here are my sources and some really great resources:
Film, “This Little Light of Mine, The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer” https://www.fannielou.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer
http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm
https://timeline.com/hamer-speech-voting-rights-d5f6ddc7470a
This is a very interesting text laying out the racial politics in the US during the 1964 election. It has everything to do with what we are seeing now:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/lbj-and-white-backlash-1.html

 

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PAY ATTENTION honoring Rachel Carson

Revised design, August 2018

Here is a new perSISTERS design in the #FemalePowerProject for Rachel Carson.

First it is important to understand the times in which Rachel Carson’s attention changed the world. Nature was perceived as a threatening realm in opposition to humans, something that we need to control. Humans were making amazing progress in that regard. The late 1950s was a time of unprecedented prosperity that depended on the exploitation of technologies which had flourished because of wartime investment.

The US and its allies had recently vanquished fascism while creating explosions rivaled only by volcanic forces. It seemed like “man” could do anything: conquer disease with antibiotics; stop plaques with pesticides; create amazing yields with synthetic fertilizers; and…kill billions of living things with one explosion. Not just the explosion—it was the rain of nuclear fallout that spread far and wide afterwards that could wipe out whole populations—something that could not be seen or tasted or touched. This eventually created a profound anxiety. The immense power to control nature first created an optimism about human progress. It took a while for people to realize that this control was also a frightening power that was being deployed heedlessly and without forethought. Rachel Carson was responsible for that reorientation.

Carson had described nature (mostly the shore and the sea) with beautiful language that created a feeling for the delicate and amazing web of interconnected lives and processes. This aesthetic dimension was essential to the power of her message. It could motivate people to cherish the living web that held us up. Not just because humans might perish without it, but also because it is worth saving in itself—it has a value outside of human utility. That is stewardship, a value on which the environmental movement would be founded. Carson saw that human arrogance was outrunning wisdom and she sought to put them in balance. This was accomplished by widening our scope of examination in space and in time. The effects of certain agents might not be evident here and now, but in more distant places and times.

Carson also saw that scientific research was affected by the profit motive of corporations and she called for decisions to made based on more impartial science. One of her biographers, Linda Lear, says in The American Experience
“She is calling for the population to understand that money has a great deal to do with what is done in science. We need to ask who speaks and why. What is done in the name of science and why doesn’t the public have a right to know? These are not just scientific questions. These are questions that a social revolutionary asks.”

Rachel Carson’s goal was to shift the paradigm about humans and nature. She accomplished this not as a scientist, but as a master synthesizer of scientific information and a gifted communicator of science. She also fought hard to convince those in power to heed her alarm. This they did. And she accomplished this before she died of breast cancer at 56.

from Wikipedia:
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.

Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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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.