International Migrant Rights Poster Project

Please read the letter below from fellow Tallerista and artista activista Favianna Rodriguez. We are seeking our communities support for this timely project.

Please help fund this Immigrant Rights Poster Project

April 5, 2008

Dear Art Lover,

We need strong and pro-immigrant art to confront the multitude of images of disempowerment given to us by our daily media – and I need your help to do this.

I am asking for your support in the production and distribution of FIVE empowering posters. This support is crucial in order to place them into the hands of hundreds immigrant right activists around the globe, and the thousands of people they help organize. I am coordinating this project and reaching to you as an individual.

A major conference is scheduled for May 12-17th, 2008, in Mexico City. This historic gathering will bring together over 300 migrant leaders from the US and Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America to form a global association of remitters and their families. The event will consolidate remitters’ economic and political power and give them the space to define an agenda for the sustainable economic development of migrant communities. The conference is convened by TIGRA (Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action). Sponsors include the Applied Research Center, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Migrant Forum in Asia, CARECEN, and the Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc.

We need to create some powerful art to inspire and mobilize communities around these very issues. Five artists will create five oversized posters around the issues facing immigrants today. We will print EACH poster in a run of 5000 via offset and freely distribute them to the organizations attending the gathering. The posters will reach cities around the globe, so that we may introduce new and inspiring concepts about what it means to be an immigrant in the 21st century.

YES! We need posters for today’s immigrant rights movement!

There has never been a movement for social change without the arts – posters in particular – being central to that movement. Protest posters flaunt their politics and court discussion. They can deepen compassion and commitment, ignite outrage, elicit laughter, and provoke action. The power of the poster is that it is produced in multiples, and therefore can be easily distributed for all to see.

Our poster designs will document and portray the lives of immigrant workers, their challenges, their victories, and their role in sustaining the economies of the world. The themes we will explore include anti-immigrant legislation, violence against day laborers, criminalization of immigrant workers, detention of immigrants, political participation and the economic and political power of remitters.

The artists who are participating in this project and donating most of their labor are: Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Dylan Miner, Artemio Rodriguez & myself, Favianna Rodriguez. Please view their attached work samples which contain images of their previous work.

We need to raise $4000 in the next three weeks to make this project a reality and we need your help. Please review the attached budget and consider contributing $100, $200 or whatever you can afford. This is a project that is independent of the event, so we are not receiving funding from the conference itself. We are merely offering our services as artists to contribute to the grassroots organizing that will take place at the conference. If we raise $2000, we will print the posters in a run of 2500.

All contributors of will be listed on my website. All contributors of $100 or more will be listed, in the format below. If you would like us to list your website, we can do that as well.
Example: “ This poster is made possible thanks to the generous contributions of…..”

This is a small project, so we do not have a fiscal sponsor. You may contribute via paypal (click here) to the email listed below. You should send funds to favianna@favianna.com. I can provide you with a receipt if necessary.

Please don’t hesitate to call me with questions.

Thank you again.
Favianna Rodriguez
favianna@favianna.com

Budget (click on image to enlarge)