’s restorative justice program, Craig has now partnered with the nonprofit as a muralist, painting large-scale works addressing the carceral system in under-resourced communities and teaching art to court-involved youth.
Recently, Craig, Thomas, and Baker connected to discuss the importance of politically motivated art, whom they create for, and the dangerous ways the opposition is furthering racist narratives through media.I really do believe that, in general, artists are the gatekeepers of truth. That is a Harry Belafonte quote that I love and live by. I believe that writers, specifically, can open up political imagination and possibilities.
I’m writing a book about reparations and land theft. In this country, Black people were the exclusive workers of the land, the forced workers of the land, and now, this country is happy to have Black people working the land but never owning it. You now have a bunch of young people who don't want anything to do with anything agricultural because they associate it with slavery, even though there is so much magic and healing and redemption in being out in nature.
I applied for a creative capital grant, and I’ve made it to the second round. I want to use the money to travel around to places like Atlanta and expose our people to conversations like this one. A lot of the time, the people who I want to get these messages to don’t even see the art that I do. They don’t go to museums. I’m starting to be in a situation where they look at me as bougie or like I’m unrelatable.
“Writers help us step outside of the box to learn historical context, but also to remember that we get to spark new possibilities for ourselves.”Hank, something you said is really sticking with me, which is that your audience is anyone who’s still breathing and wants to keep breathing—we all suffer from our current criminal legal system.
Russell, you’ve mentioned trying to be a bit more abstract and conceptualizing in different ways and not being so on-the-nose. In my writing work, I’ve felt the need to do so much myth-busting and fact-checking and providing an arsenal for people who want something different but are constantly being bombarded with propaganda that says something different is not possible.