That’s How the Light Gets In

One of my most significant mentors and photographic collaborators, my dear friend and comrade David Bacon, joins me in conversations this week. David came up as a union organizer with the United Farm Workers and United Electrical Workers, then spent decades as a photographer, photojournalist, labor reporter, and radio host covering labor, migration, and global economy. In this week’s episode, we talk David’s journey from organizer to photojournalist, his early influences, the role of movement photographers, the importance of media workers taking collective action to support their labor rights, journalists speaking out to support a ceasefire in Gaza, and advice for new photographers developing their photographic practice. Find David on IG at @DavidBacon and at http://dbacon.igc.org.

Bay Area arts organizers David Solnit and Gemma Searle with the Climate Justice Arts Project share their process for making giant murals, banners, puppets, screen printed patches and posters, and projections for the movement. 
 
We trace David’s decades long direct-action organizing and art-making history from anti-war and anti-nuke organizing to migrant farmworkers to he and Gemma’s current collaborations with communities on the frontlines of climate chaos and in support for mobilizations in the street for a Free Palestine. Gemma also gives me a quick screen printing tutorial and shares her work to make an accessible arts lending library and archive movement history through preserving movement art. 
 
Find David on IG at @DavidSolnit. Find Gemma at an art build! 
 
The art making kits referenced in this episode can be found at:
bit.ly/arttoendfossilfuels
bit.ly/ceasefireart
You can find David’s books at:
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100654030
https://couragetoresist.org/army-of-none-the-book/
https://www.akpress.org/battleofseattleakpress.html

The Beehive Design Collective’s Sakura Saunders and Orion Camero share about the Callegory, a Beehive sister project and mega-story trilogy of images and creative education campaign about California’s social and climate crises, and the state’s role in global justice. 
 
The Beehive Collective is best known for its expansive narrative graphic posters and related campaigns that break down big complex issues and present them in accessible, engaging formats. Their incredibly intricate, hand-drawn illustrations become popular education tools to support ongoing organizing and movement building. 
 
This episode also includes an update about the artists who altered their work live, in public at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in support of a #Ceasefire in Palestine.
 
Find the Beehive Design Collective on IG at @BeehiveDesignCollective at the Callegory at @TheCAllegory.
 
You can sign a letter to support the YBCA artists’ demands at bit.ly/artists4gaza, and read the YBCA staff solidarity statement at bit.ly/YBCA4gaza.

Last week, eight artists featured in the “Bay Area Now 9” exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts altered their own artistic works live during a public YBCA show to speak out against the art institution’s silence on the on-going genocide in Palestine and to demand an end to YBCA’s censorship of artists calling for a #Ceasefire in Gaza. On this week’s episode, we speak to two of those artists, Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist Sholeh Asgary and queer Filipinx artist, filmmaker, and educator champoy about why they chose to take such bold action against YBCA and in support of a free Palestine, how they hope their action emboldens other artists, and how the public can support the artists’ demands. We also listen in to a few moments at YBCA, including a speech from Palestinian muralist Chris Gazaleh. 
 
You can find the artists whose voices you hear on this podcast on IG at @sholehasgary, @champchampchampoy, and @c.gazaleh. We also reference quotes from artists @Kilns and @Bluekaza. 
Send an email to YBCA to support the artists’ demands here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-ybca-stop-censoring-art-for-palestine

Korean pyungmul drummers Liz Suk and Jaeeun Jun shared about the informal group of Bay Area drummers rooted in the former Korean Youth Cultural Center, Jaemaesori, Ieumsae, and other Korean drumming groups who come together to offer collaborative music and beats in the spirit of liberation from the tradition of Korean folk drumming called pyungmul. Along the way, they talk about the parallels between the Nakba and on-going occupation of Palestine with the war on the Korean Peninsula, and the militarization, borders, and forced displacement and separation of Korean families. They also offer an incredible reflection on how cultural work offered in street protests can go from being a transactional energy drain to a shared expression of our hopes for collective liberation.

Boomshake Music's Mitali Purkayastha and Nicole Zapata discuss the legendary women, trans, and gender non-conforming BIPOC street protest drumming crew. Along the way, they share the legacy of Boomshake’s former-musical-director / now-ancestor, teacher auntie Monica Hastings Smith and how Boomshake publicly and unapologetically grieved such a sudden, enormous loss of their leader, and what role art, music, and cultural work plays in helping us make sense of our grief. We also talked about culture as a tool to show up as our authentic selves in a world hell-bent on compartmentalization, how Boomshake integrates ancestral rhythms and musical traditions into their music making from New Orleans to Brazil to Palestine, how music can create safety for children in street protests, and of course, we asked them teach us a few Boomshake chants/rhythms!
 
Mentioned on the pod:
Boomshake: http://www.boomshakemusic.com
Boomshake on IG: @BoomshakeMusic
Palestinian Debke group on IG: @aljuthoor.dabke
 
 

Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project collective members, Angela Aguilar and Quinton Sankofa discuss MG’s just transition principle, “If it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic.” In the process, they talk about talk everything from the Black Panther Party to the Zapatistas and from mass movements for a ceasefire in Palestine to land stewardship and radical imagination. 
 
Mentioned on the pod:
MG’s just transition zine: https://movementgeneration.org/justtransition/
"Zapantera Negra: An artistic encounter between the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas”: https://www.commonnotions.org/zapantera-negra-updated
MG’s Creative Wildfire program: https://creativewildfire.org/
City of Ghosts: https://www.netflix.com/title/80994664
African Camp Fire Stories: https://shows.acast.com/african-camp-fire-stories
Leah Penniman: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/leah-penniman/
Sins Invalid: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/

Welcome to "That's how the light gets in," where we’ll will be interviewing artists and cultural workers here in the Bay Area and beyond who make our movements shine, who root our actions in the wisdom of our elders and ancestors, and who create and defend culture to hold us and future generations through the best and the hardest of times.