A warm welcome to all of you joining this list from the Women Against War shows in Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa last week. And thank you for turning out in thousands on rainy weekday nights to unleash the power and the magic of an amazing lineup of artists! I’m still replaying the moments that blew my mind. Did people rock in the aisles to Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir? They did. Did an entire audience rise to its feet to sing Testimony with Ferron and all of us on the stage? It did. Were we all – artists and audience – moved to tears and swelled with hope by the force and beauty of art harnessed to a vision for global peace and justice? No answer needed.
I saw an exhibition recently at Galeria de la Raza in the Mission. This quote from the artist, Patrick “Pato” Herbert, stayed with me: “So beauty is so profoundly subjective that just sharing the beauty that we know of each other becomes profoundly political.”
That’s what we do as artists and activists. Share the beauty we know of each other, of lives outside the dominant culture, economy and media. Keep insisting on the beauty and value of those lives, those voices, those communities, worlds, and realities. Keep expanding the definitions of beauty.
In community,
Shailja
