Finding Heart and Courage in Difficult Times through Art

Quinn: We wanted to celebrate art and lift up the connection between art and activism. At the time, Melanie Cervantes, who worked at Akonadi Foundation, was making beautiful social justice posters, so we commissioned her to do the first one. The response was amazing because it really captured people’s imagination. And so we continued with different artists and themes over time. Racial justice is a broad topic, and the poster project allowed artists to think of their own vision and their own place in the movement.

Thi: In Oakland, art just springs up like wildflowers. Whatever is on the public’s mind comes out expressed in art, and so it becomes a way for people to engage in public discourse. I think about all the businesses that closed during the pandemic, including the plywood that went up over windows to protect property, and how people created art all over them. Local artists were getting paid to do beautiful murals, and I would be walking or driving by and recognizing the artists because they were my colleagues and friends. There is an aliveness to the culture in Oakland that is just part of the way people move through life. When there are political things happening, whatever is on the public’s mind comes out expressed in art.

Thi: Art is made by people and helps you remember that you’re a human being with flesh and bones and feelings, as well as thoughts and political stances. We can’t solve human problems without thinking about our humanity. To solve human problems, we have to act like human beings, and art helps us stay grounded in that. 

Thi: The idea of concentric circles actually came up in my book when I was creating a quick graphic to help people in New Orleans organize in response to ICE. I was trying to visualize what care looks like in a whole system and how people could self-organize into concentric circles, protecting the most vulnerable in the center. The tighter we made our rings, the safer those people were likely to be. I carried that idea into this poster, thinking about what mutual aid has looked like in Oakland, where I lived during the pandemic. I thought about caregivers and kids at the center, and the rings around them as all the different ways people show up, including urban gardeners, turf dancers, protesters, voters, door knockers, and community kitchen workers. I also thought about our inner child — that we have to nurture that in ourselves so we can keep doing this work and stave off cynicism as long as possible.

Thi: That’s my inner child. I put her in there. I could speak from my pedestal as an artist, but I feel like it’s more direct if it’s my inner child reaching out to someone else’s inner child, saying: “It’s okay, we’ll make it, we’ll do this together. Come on in.”

Quinn: I see myself in that same image — the person welcoming people in. My years at Akonadi Foundation were a chance to bring people into racial justice funding, to think about racial justice in all of its many aspects, and to engage with funders focused on other issues who may or may not have thought about the racial equity dimensions of their work. Akonadi has always tried to make it easy and understandable for people to join the fight for racial justice.

Thi: Standing up in scary times does require courage. Speaking out when it’s easier to keep quiet and blend in requires courage, and sometimes we have to encourage each other to do so. The root word of courage is cor, which is Latin for heart. Courage is motivated by love and empathy, and the desire to protect and nurture what is good. A capacious heart sees all children as our children, Earth as a home that all beings share, and a future where all of us are free.

Thi: It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by bad news. It can feel like a five-alarm fire every day, and that can be really paralyzing. That’s the opposite of what we need. We have enough people to deal with a lot of things, but so many people are defeating themselves before doing anything at all. I wanted to show people that it is okay to do whatever they can. The best way for people to help right now is to literally find where they fit in and get to work.

Quinn: We shouldn’t overthink it. We should jump in and do what we can in the moment, and maybe in the next moment we’ll think of something else. All of our efforts, cumulatively, will cover everything. There is no single way to participate in building a racially just world. Dancers and protesters. Voters and caregivers. Artists and organizers. Funders and teachers. All of it matters.

Quinn: We are at a real tipping point. We were making progress around racial justice and racial equity, and there has been a backlash. But a backlash is just a testament to how far we’ve gotten in this work. So we need to take that for what it is and think about how we stay true, galvanize our efforts, and continue to push through. The times we’re in are far more difficult than they have been in quite a while, but that just means we need to sustain ourselves and fight longer and harder.

Thi: It’s such a gift to be honored as a whole person and to be given the space and freedom to really create, rather than just illustrate an idea or meet a request in a transactional way. A lot of people think that when they engage with an artist, they have to already envision what they want, so the artist just executes, and that loses so much of the magic of what art and artists can do. So it’s really wonderful when you come upon an organization that gives you broad autonomy and, quite frankly, a budget to do things.