A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice

by Nicolas Lampert

The city council pledged to stand behind Baca’s work and made it clear that the artwork could not be legally changed without the artist’s permission. Baca issued her own statements in defense of her work and the community that it represented.

  Our capacity as a democracy to disagree and to coexist is precisely the point of this work. No single statement can be seen without the whole, nor can it be removed without destroying the diversity of Baldwin Park’s voices. Silencing every voice with which we disagree, especially while taking quotes out of context, either through ignorance or malice, is profoundly un-American.13

  She added, “While this group [SOS] has cast the artwork as part of a ‘Reconquista movement,’ it is in fact neither advocating for the return of California to Mexico, nor wishing that Anglos had never come to this land.”14

  Others voiced strong support for Baca and her monument while rejecting the racism of SOS. Comments on the SPARC website (the Social and Public Art Resource Center, which Baca founded in 1976) included:

  Before the Mayflower was even built, my Spanish and Indian ancestors lived in what is now part of the U.S. Our land was conquered by force and our culture suppressed; these are historical FACTS. We need more monuments that stress our shared experienced [sic] of loss and oppression, as the only way in which true reconciliation can take place.15

  César López wrote:

  Baca’s public art work provides a model for the community-based reclaiming of sites of memory. Danzas Indigenas actively remembers not only the indigenous peoples of this land, but also the historical context of conquest that was ultimately about the erasure of histories. The power of Baca’s public art production and community-based process is evident by the vision it inspires for social change. I am a witness to this power and it has shaped my reality.16

  Following the first SOS demonstration and their plans for a second demonstration on June 25 in Baldwin Park, Baca worried that a tense situation would lead to violence during the second demonstration. “A concern that I had,” reflected Baca, “was that I would have built something that was beautiful and it would become a place where people would be hurt.”17 To ensure that this would not happen, Baca became a leading voice in organizing a nonviolent movement against SOS.

  Good Art Confuses Racists

  “If a drop of blood is shed on this site, we have failed.”

  —Judith F. Baca, June 12, 200518

  Baca’s words on June 12 set the tone for the June 25 counterdemonstration. Hate would be countered with love. Racism would be met with multiculturalism, and art would be defended with art. Baca and her supporters declared June 25 as “La Reconquista de Justicia, Paz, Libertad y Amor” [The Reconquest of Justice, Peace, Liberty and Love]. During the lead-up, an “Arts Committee to Defend Danzas Indigenas” was formed and a plan of action was articulated. Goals included:

  The rejection of violence as an appropriate response to ignorance and fear.

  The support of ceremony, creativity and culture as points of resistance.

  The confrontation of political ideas and not people.

  The “reconquest” of spaces for dialogue and responsible action.

  The cooperation with appropriate authorities.19

  The Art Committee’s statement read, in part:

  We are neighbors to a work of art, DANZAS INDIGENAS, that reflects indigenous history, evolving sensibility about a multicultural world, and the power of human creation. We are simple people of diverse backgrounds who fear neither the fierce rhetoric of those who would insult us, nor the thoughtless actions of those so few who believe us to be a threat. If we are a threat, we are merely a threat to the idea that humans can be judged by race or region, and that the freedom to express is merely the obligation to agree. We are part of a larger movement of many people who, like us, face the growth of racist hysteria and must confront it.20

  Other aspects of their statement addressed nonviolence and the power of art to combat hate:

  The resistance we envision does not look to violence as the response to the ignorance of their empty rhetoric, but looks instead to creativity. We believe that the groups who oppose us welcome confrontation so that they can broadcast their message of fear to others through the media. We will not succumb to these tactics, but will mount dignified and serious resistance to their ideas. We will protest, but we will challenge ideas and not people.21

  The powerful statement closed with the following:

  They will offer cynicism and we will offer ceremony. They will raise criticism and we will offer culture. They will condemn art and we will simply make more of it. They will paint a picture of weakness and we will celebrate our strength, for in our eyes, the law protects us, our creativity dignifies us, and we have already won. Ours is a defiance of spirit; our weapon is sound, color, word, and song.22

  On June 25 this statement became a reality. More than a thousand community members and supporters told a handful of SOS supporters that they were not welcome in Baldwin Park. As the police guarded Baca’s monument and formed a line between SOS and the counterdemonstrators, music filled the air and art was visible to all. Baca helped create a new work of art—a Mural in Three Movements, a portable mural including approximately twenty large digital images on both sides that were attached to wooden poles.

  The front side had two themes. The first was “Reconciliation,” and it highlighted Spanish and English translations of a Mayan concept-word, “in lak ech,” which translates to “You are my other me,” and “Tú eres mi otro yo.” Baca notes that this signifies “that whether we like it or not, we all share a common humanity, and that even the most vitriolic hatred doesn’t change our connection to others who think differently.”23 Interspersed between the “Reconciliation” images was the second theme, “Speaking Back”—short quotes that supporters had uploaded on the SPARC mural website:

  “We think you mean save our status, not save our state.”

  “The world is too big to fit into your narrow mind.”

  “Good art confuses racists.”

  Walking mural, Baldwin Park demonstrations, 2005 (Social and Public Art Resource Center)

  Walking mural, Baldwin Park demonstrations, 2005 (Social and Public Art Resource Center)

  The backside of the mural included the final theme, “Turn Our Back.” Large text across the entire width of the mural read AMERICA TURNS ITS BACK ON HATE-GROUPS.

  Behind the text were black silhouette images of people whom Baca had invited to her studio to become part of the portable mural. Listed on each person’s silhouette was their ethnicity, a list that included Native American, Cuban American, Mexican American, Chinese American, Irish American, and numerous others.

  The beauty of the mural stretched beyond the images and the words. For the mural to be read, each person had to hold up an individual sign and come together to form the completed message. The power of the mural could be seen in the content of the words and images, as well as the collective responsibility of people coming together and taking a unified stance against racism. This approach mirrored Baldwin Park itself, a diverse working-class community that came together and confronted a hate group.

  On June 25, SOS left Baldwin Park and would not return again. No one was hurt and no one was arrested. Baca was presented with a proclamation by the city government that Danzas Indigenas would not be removed or altered.

  The quote on her monument “It was better before they came” rang true, for it was indeed better before SOS came to Baldwin Park. Yet the community response and Baca’s response were vital. They handled SOS in the correct manner and in doing so they inspired others to learn from their tactics. Baca wrote after the second protest, “My dream has always been that community participants would take ownership for our public art projects.”24 In Baldwin Park, this dream came true.

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Operation First Casualty, ca. March 2007, Washington, DC, pictured: Ryan Lockwood (photograph by Lovella Calica, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

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>   Bringing the War Home

  ON MARCH 19, 2007, MORNING commuters in Washington, DC, witnessed a terrifying scene outside Union Station. More than a dozen U.S. military soldiers rushed upon a crowd and began apprehending civilians. Soldiers yelled:

  “Move!”

  “Get down on the ground!”

  “Get your hands behind your back!”

  Eight people were detained. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Some detainees had sandbags put over their heads. Beside them, soldiers crouched, surveying the crowd for sniper fire, holding imaginary M16s in their hands and pointing them at the crowd. Some people in the crowd stood still, some screamed, others ignored them.

  The soldiers were members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and they were reenacting their experiences of combat patrols in Iraq and reenacting what it was like to detain Iraqi civilians. They were bringing the war home, using street theatre to get the public to pay attention to what was taking place overseas and what the politicians, pundits, and media rarely discuss: the brutality of war and its effects on Iraqi citizens and U.S. soldiers alike.

  Garett Reppenhagen, a former sniper with the 1st Infantry Division, explained why street theatre was needed:

  Talking and marching wasn’t getting the point across. We wanted a demonstration that depicted what . . . we did. The average person could look at that . . . They can see what we are doing and see that the soldiers are going through a hell of a time and the occupation is really oppressive and violent and brutal on the Iraqi people.”1

  Reppenhagen helped conceive the action, along with Aaron Hughes and Geoff Millard. The three veterans were frustrated by the cautious approach of antiwar demonstrations, exemplified by the massive protest march that had taken place in Washington, DC, a few months prior. As Hughes said:

  All these people had come in from out of town and arrived on a Saturday—a time when representatives aren’t even in Congress. President Bush isn’t there. He’s not in the White House. He’s in Texas, in Crawford. And there’s this huge march. But everyone goes home afterwards. Everyone goes and sleeps in their own beds. No one’s willing to sacrifice to deal with the war. So we were pissed off. How do we make people deal with the war? Deal with it in a way where it’s a part of their life.2

  Reppenhagen and Millard named their action Operation First Casualty (OFC)—the first casualty of war being truth. IVAW sent out a press release but never informed the police of their intentions and never sought a permit or permission. They dressed in full military uniform—minus weapons, flak vests, and Kevlar vests. They walked in the same formations they used during combat patrols in Iraq. They held their invisible weapons the same way, employing their memory of months of training and battle experience.

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Operation First Casualty, ca. 2008, Denver, CO (photographer unknown, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Operation First Casualty, ca. May 2007, New York City, pictured: Garett Reppenhagen (photograph by Lovella Calica, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

  The detainees were friends—peace activists who agreed to act as if they were regular civilians. During the course of the day, thirteen veterans performed mock patrols in numerous sections of the city.

  They did a vehicle search on the National Mall, and patrolled in front of CNN and Fox News (who refused to interview them). They were briefly detained themselves by police officers on the U.S. Capitol lawn. Hughes recalls:

  The cops actually surrounded us and a couple of SUVs pulled up. We were still on the Capitol grounds and as soon as we saw that the police were starting to surround us, we immediately got into formation, which is what we practiced the day before.3

  Hughes continues:

  We had a police liaison stand in front of our formation. When the cops came up to us, they really did not know what to do. We were more organized than they were. We were more disciplined than they were. All of a sudden they realized that we were not this mob that they could go up to and pull one person aside. They had to deal with us as a community, as a force together.4

  For IVAW, the action was a way to force the public to recognize the trauma that the soldiers had experienced and to make a political statement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It reinforced the primary goals of IVAW: an immediate withdrawal of occupying forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, adequate care for the physical and psychological health of veterans, and reparations for the human and structural damages that Iraq has suffered from the military occupation.

  IVAW had formed in 2004 at the Veterans for Peace (VFP) convention in Boston. By the end of 2006, IVAW had transitioned from a speakers’ bureau, where churches or organizations would call them requesting a veteran to speak at an event, to a membership-run organization where chapters would stage their own events and campaigns. By 2009, IVAW had sixty-one active chapters, including six on military bases, and a membership of over 1,700 veterans and active-duty service members across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Iraq.

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Operation First Casualty, ca. March 2007, Washington, DC, pictured: Charles Anderson (photograph by Lovella Calica, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

  Creative resistance is central to IVAW’s tactics. Their actions are decentralized and arise from the creativity of individual members and chapters. Nothing is mandated from a central leadership. Hughes explains, “There is a real fear with being authoritative within a veteran community when you’re coming from a completely authoritarian structure such as the military.”5 Their creativity derived from soldiers’ need to heal and the need to speak out. The war had been pitched to the public as “Operation Iraqi Freedom”—a just war where U.S. soldiers would liberate the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator. IVAW argues that, in the process, the United States imposed a state of martial law, turned Iraq upside down, and opened it up to allow multinational corporations to come in and reap fortunes.

  OFC articulates this critical perspective. It turns the stereotypical image of the soldier on its head. In OFC, the soldier is violent and authoritarian, but also critical, peaceful, and creative. Here, the soldier engages with the public on a direct level, and the soldier becomes the leading voice of dissent—reenacting war to end war.6

  It presents the wars as ones that are fought by young Americans—enlistees in a military that former U.S. Marine Martin Smith describes as a “cross section of working class America . . . many of the country’s poor and poorly educated.”7 Moreover, it allows these same soldiers to speak out and openly critique the military in public. Reppenhagen states:

  Being in the military, I felt oppressed and controlled by the government. I didn’t feel like I had a voice. I didn’t have the right to speak out, and now, I’m out here in the streets, doing something, taking control of my life, taking control of my country, taking control of my military and that is extremely empowering.8

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), DNC Demonstration, ca. 2008, Denver, pictured: Jeff Englehart (photographer unknown, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

  After Washington, DC, other mock patrols were staged by different chapters in other cities, including New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Denver.

  Hughes took part in a New York City patrol of Union Square, the subways, the former site of the World Trade Center, and Times Square. He described the Times Square action as a “real mess” because “we kind of got confused on who all the civilians were and we ended up pushing into some people that were real civilians. There was a moment of fear. Veterans are these young kids—eighteen and nineteen and we’re patrolling New York. We were forcing the public to make a lot of jumps in their understanding”9

  A YouTube video of the action attests to the chaos that was created. People in the streets scream as IVAW members rush into the crowd and begin detaining people. Some people try to help but are pushed to the side. Others in the crowd freeze and put up their hands so they won’t be shot. Around them, the blinking lights, billboards, and tele
vision monitors of Times Square adds to the surreal nature of the scene.

  For the veterans, the performance verged too close to reality, too close to an actual patrol. Hughes recalls:

  It would click in your head that there was this anger—you stop seeing Americans for a moment. You just see these people that you’re angry with. It’s just this idea of dehumanizing them to the point where there’s anxiety.

  Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Operation First Casualty, unknown date, San Francisco; pictured left: Steven Funk (photographer unknown, courtesy of Aaron Hughes)

  You want to knock them over. You want to pull the trigger. It’s part of the whole mentality. That whole military training came back for a lot of us, and trying to process that back through was really hard.10

  He adds:

  I think we were performing something that we didn’t want to be anymore, and that’s a lot of [the] reason why that action was so powerful, and why we couldn’t keep doing it, why it wasn’t sustainable. It was literally destroying our membership in some ways.11

  OFC continued to force the public to deal with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts that were out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. Hughes asserts that OFC forces people to choose a position. “Depoliticalization is all about not having to choose,” he says. “Not having to deal with conflict. Not having to have a position. Creative work changes that. It forces people to deal with war.”12

  From Uniform to Pulp, Battlefield to Workshop, Warrior to Artist

  “We all have the ability to do something. We can push back.”

  —Drew Cameron13

  Creative resistance as personal and political action is also at the center of the Combat Paper Project by IVAW member Drew Cameron and artist Drew Matott. Cameron was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and served in the 75th artillery. In 2007, three years removed from active duty, Cameron put on his uniform outside his home in Burlington, Vermont, and asked a friend to take photographs of him cutting it off with a pair of scissors. He recalls, “My heart started beating fast. It felt both wrong and liberating. I started ripping it off. The purpose was to make a complete transformation.”14 His action provided the impetus for the Combat Paper Project. Cameron teamed up with Matott at the Green Door Studio in Burlington and learned the art of papermaking, and then they shared this process with the veteran community.