Creative Resistance
On the Friday after Thanksgiving Day, I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Years ago in Philly, I dealt with the bureaucracy of the U.S. Government to do all my immigration paperwork. Sometimes I'd have to drive there from Happy Valley in Central Pennsylvania, and back on the same day, several times per month. Perhaps due to the haste and stress of the whole process, I never had the time to visit the museum. So this time, when I made plans to meet a friend in Philly, I suggested that we meet at the museum.
It was a felicitous idea. I arrived early at the museum and had enough time to see carefully the exhibit Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. It reviews the artistic movement that surrounded the revolutionary process, portraying the lives of agricultural peasants and industrial workers as the revolution transformed Mexico. In the wake of the recent election, in which xenophobic rhetoric directed at Mexican immigrants was applauded by a significant proportion of the electorate, it felt good and appropriate to observe the depictions of the lives and cultures of indigenous and mestizo Mexicans in an important cultural institution.
As I saw a video that showed the whole length of the murals by Diego Rivera at the the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Department of Education) in Mexico City, I thought: "If they build a wall, we should paint a mural, and dig an anthill underneath." The idea of an anthill comes from the song "El hormiguero" by the Puerto Ricans of Calle 13; the vision of a colorful, expressive mural, from Rivera and his contemporaries. We should paint a beautiful mural as a sign of love, while we dig an anthill for resistance.
Creative resistance will be important. Thoreau not only stated his principle of resistance to civil government, but actually refused to pay his poll tax as a way to protest against the Mexican-American war and the tacit collaboration of the State of Massachusetts with the institution of slavery. Ghandi, MLK, and others devised original strategies for resistance. My friend Niall told me that if a list of Muslims were drawn up by the government, we should all register. I would do it, so long as I don't offend Muslims, as a way to disrupt the oppressive system and break it down.
It is clear that they are coming for us. We will be ready to resist, lovingly and creatively.
It was a felicitous idea. I arrived early at the museum and had enough time to see carefully the exhibit Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. It reviews the artistic movement that surrounded the revolutionary process, portraying the lives of agricultural peasants and industrial workers as the revolution transformed Mexico. In the wake of the recent election, in which xenophobic rhetoric directed at Mexican immigrants was applauded by a significant proportion of the electorate, it felt good and appropriate to observe the depictions of the lives and cultures of indigenous and mestizo Mexicans in an important cultural institution.
As I saw a video that showed the whole length of the murals by Diego Rivera at the the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Department of Education) in Mexico City, I thought: "If they build a wall, we should paint a mural, and dig an anthill underneath." The idea of an anthill comes from the song "El hormiguero" by the Puerto Ricans of Calle 13; the vision of a colorful, expressive mural, from Rivera and his contemporaries. We should paint a beautiful mural as a sign of love, while we dig an anthill for resistance.
Creative resistance will be important. Thoreau not only stated his principle of resistance to civil government, but actually refused to pay his poll tax as a way to protest against the Mexican-American war and the tacit collaboration of the State of Massachusetts with the institution of slavery. Ghandi, MLK, and others devised original strategies for resistance. My friend Niall told me that if a list of Muslims were drawn up by the government, we should all register. I would do it, so long as I don't offend Muslims, as a way to disrupt the oppressive system and break it down.
It is clear that they are coming for us. We will be ready to resist, lovingly and creatively.
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