Poster Project
AKONADI FOUNDATION CALL FOR POSTER SUBMISSIONS
"Road to Racial Justice, 2007"
Artist: Melanie Cervantes
SHOW THE WORLD WHAT
RACIAL JUSTICE LOOKS LIKE
Submit your poster design!
Submit your poster design!
The Akonadi Foundation is inviting poster submissions for selection as the 2009 Racial Justice Movement Poster. The Racial Justice Poster Project (RJPP) is a new effort by the Akonadi Foundation to honor racial justice movement building in Oakland and inspire racial justice movement building in communities around the world.
WHAT IS THE AKONADI FOUNDATION?
The Akonadi Foundation’s mission is to support the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism and create a racially just society. Akonadi believes that racial justice movement building means communities of color lead efforts to build power, shape policy, and strengthen culture.
WHY A POSTER PROJECT?
In 2008, the Akonadi Foundation distributed our first Racial Justice poster (above) on March 21 the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which commemorates the Sharpeville tragedy. On March 21, 1960, the movement against apartheid was spreading as blacks across South Africa began demonstrating against “pass laws” requiring them to carry identity cards. In the township of Sharpeville, a huge crowd of black Africans gathered peacefully outside a police station, singing and offering themselves up for not carrying cards. The police opened fire, killing sixty-nine people, including ten children. Akonadi chose to honor people continuing the work to build a vibrant racial justice movement by creating this poster.
Here in Oakland, daily stories in communities of color go untold: Students challenging the “achievement gap” by demanding schools with college-track courses, neighbors refusing to let developers destroy their livelihood and culture, young people producing music to tell about their own lives and struggle. While the work is unfinished, each of these stories represents a strand we are weaving into a larger movement for racial justice.
LEGACY OF RACIAL JUSTICE POSTERS
The Racial Justice Poster Project builds on the legacy that political posters creation has sparked and nurtured as a part of virtually every social movement in recent history. In the 1960s Emory Douglas’ Black Panther Party for Self Defense posters helped engage Black families in free food programs, cultivated resistance to police brutality, and exposed Oakland City Council investments in South African apartheid. In the 1970s Xavier Viramontes’ “Boycott Grapes” poster helped launch the Mexican-American farm worker struggle to national attention while the “Long Live The International Hotel” poster sustained Bay Area Filipino and Asian community organizing with the image of mounted police forcibly evicting elderly Asians from the hotel. The 1990 “No Blood for Oil” poster by Keith Potter and Steven Lyons helped energize a new generation of anti-war activism, while the 1991 “Salvadoreno” by Zelaya popularized the demand for work permits and a call for against deportations while providing telephone help lines to immigrants. More recent posters such as “Schools Not Jails” by Favianna Rodriguez and Jesus Barraza continue to reflect and reshape how we think, talk, and act for racial justice.
HOW WILL THE POSTER BE USED?
One submission will be selected for reproduction as a poster that will be provided at no cost to community organizations, foundations, and other allies. The artwork may also be reproduced on other Akonadi public education materials, such as a commemorative card. All submissions will be featured on the Akonadi Foundation website. The artist selected will receive a $1,000 prize that includes $500 for the artist and $500 as a donation to the Oakland community organization designated by the artist.
SELECTION CRITERIA
Selection of artwork will be based on: creativity and originality, and artistic and design quality, and potential to inspire and inform racial justice movement building. Selection will be made by
- Quinn Delaney, Akonadi Foundation founder and Board Chair
- Juan Fuentes, artist/former director of Mision Grafica
- Mateo Nube, Director, Movement Generation
- Mervyn Mercano, Training Director, Center for Media Justice
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Poster submissions must focus on racial justice movement building in Oakland or the Bay Area. Submissions must include a visual image accompanied by words conveying the theme. All artwork must be original. Artists must have permission to use any copyrighted images displayed in the artwork. The artist’s name should not appear on the artwork for the purposes of judging. The final dimensions of the poster will be 11 x 17 (please keep this in mind as you execute your design). Artwork must be submitted as a jpeg attachments, high resolution (300 dpi), to info@akonadi.org or as hard copy photo ready art.
Artists must include a completed submission form. Click here to download it.
Hardcopy art can be submitted to the foundation at:
Akonadi Foundation,
436 14th Street, Suite 1417,
Oakland, CA 94612,
ATTN: RACIAL JUSTICE POSTER PROJECT
Submissions are due by midnight, Monday, January 5, 2009!
436 14th Street, Suite 1417,
Oakland, CA 94612,
ATTN: RACIAL JUSTICE POSTER PROJECT
Submissions are due by midnight, Monday, January 5, 2009!
"Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle."
- Malcolm X