"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now." African Proverb.
Affinity will partner with ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Communities to host an invitational day of artists, writers, musicians, performers, working around the theme "Know Justice, Know Peace," On June 28 from 12 noon to 4pm. Our space is very limited, but if you are interested just respond to this blog or to vmares33@gmail.com
"Know Justice, Know Peace" is being designed as both a joyful and serious day of artists thinking about the creation, maintenance, substance, feeling, sound of Peace and Justice. We will work together or individually, and come together with what we have created, if only a thought, at the end of the day. We are asking that artists donate or pledge a piece of their work for an exhibit and open house at Affinity in August. A percentage of those sales in August will go to ARC, a 2 year old 501(c)3 non-profit committed to a mission to develop and mentor multicultural, change agent leaders and grassroots social change groups for a democratic society. ARC's website and information is at www.responsiblecommunities.org.
Why "Know Justice, Know Peace"at Affinity Arts?
I began to think about an invitational day of artists thinking and creating around this subject after David, a young man in Portland was shot by police in May, 2009. So much violence occured in the world in the same month. This young man was an artist, and came to Maine with his family as a child refugee from Sudan. He carried so much on his shoulders from a young age. His family is large, and most of the older siblings have earned the college degrees their parents wished for them. I saw his mom receive her GED several years ago in a huge ceremony in Portland a week before another son received his degree in economics from Wheaton College. However David's life ended by violent death, it is death which has no respect for where it occurs. Whether in the country that his family had escaped to raise their children in safety as so many other families, it is still a violent death. Is it a short journey to violence, or a long one, by whomever is carrying the weapon? What are we human beings thinking when any one of us loads our guns? Is it the first option or the final one? How do we know? Words in our news, in all venues of our lives today where immigration is discussed, are too often vicious, accusing, condescending without ever knowing one person in that group. The vile words keep us from looking at violence and injustice squarely in the gut, splaying them out and examining their innards to extract the disease that can affect all sides, everyone in denial. Words can become a form of violence; and lately we have seen them as a precurser to violence against the perceived "other," as a shooter, this month, gunned down innocents in the Holocaust Museum here in America. We are a nation of immigrants, in a country that has been "multicultural" from its beginnings. I think of so many young people trying to find peace and justice and having to struggle even harder against the socio-political fury against "other." Yet, they are America's next wave of strength, workforce, talent, problem solvers, mothers, fathers, public servants.
We think of the holocaust in Darfur, the millions dying of war in Congo, and more, but can we take action to discover the journey to "Peace" from where we sit? Peace in the classroom, in the home, in city hall in the public streets. How do we "know" justice so that it is the principle of our democracy that triggers an outcry, a corrective action whenever there is even a whisper of it being threatened, taken from anyone. What does it look like, sound like, feel like walking down the street when one truly knows there is peace and justice as present as the air we breath? How do we begin at the place of knowing justice, knowing peace, before taking off to make peace with a weapon or a war; to consider justice that does not come with assumption of guilt by profile; or the fear that one will not get justice because of profiling?
On our Artists Day of "Know Justice, Know Peace" we will work on it...and tell you, show you what it looks like through artists' skills.VMH writing at Affinity Arts
No comments:
Post a Comment