Dear Sisters, Brothers, and Kin,
This past summer we experienced the most substantial and significant popular movement that we have seen in our lifetimes. Next week, we will participate in the most important election of our lifetimes. At the East Side Freedom Library, whether in person or in cyberspace, artistic activism is providing a critical thread tying these historic moments together.
From our very beginning in the summer of 2014, ESFL has insisted on the power of storytelling through diverse artistic practices, from Karen women’s weaving and Hmong paj ntaub (story cloths) to poetry, music, dance, theater and visual art as a vehicle to inspire solidarity. We have been thrilled to work with an amazing range of artists, such as Lakota storyteller Joseph Marshall III, composer and musician Douglas Ewart, muralist Ger Yang, choreographer and dancer Alessandra Williams, visual artist Dyani White Hawk, playwright Carlyle Brown, vocalist Mari Harris, writer Rebecca Nichloson, and poet Mai Der Vang, to name only a few.
As our communities’ attention, our attention, activists’ attention, everyone’s attention has turned in the past month towards the election, it has not been surprising that artists have stepped forward to provide inspiration and leadership. Leon Wang, who has worked with ESFL on many projects, has launched Love, Vote, Rise using posters and projections. Keith Christensen, who designed ESFL’s logo and manages our website, has initiated a visually-driven messaging campaign on our website. Frank Theatre and the On Stage project offered ESFL’s audiences a theatrical mirror with which to reflect on ways to prevent fascism through their reading and discussion of Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. And composer Lembit Beecher, with whom ESFL collaborated more than a year ago in his Say Home project with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, created an animated musical short to encourage voting. ESFL is trying to amplify these messages.
Sisters, brothers, and kin, we hope you will take inspiration from these artistic undertakings and, if you have not yet voted, VOTE!
Love and Solidarity,
Peter Rachleff
