Last Saturday was the opening date for my collaborative exhibit with Youth Together. It was a display of posters that I have created over the years and work by YT’s 8th grade program at Melrose Leadership Academy. There was also a great silent art auction that was organized by my partner Melanie, with some of both of our art as well as other Bay Area Artists. The turn out was great and the art auction helped raise almost $700!
For those of you who don’t knoe Youth Together was created as a community-based response to inter-racial conflicts and violence in our school communities. Shortly after the passage of Proposition 187 and during the Proposition 209 campaign efforts, school officials, mental health workers, and parents were reporting increased incidents of inter-racial conflicts and violence in school communities, including group attacks on youth based upon racial identity.
YT organizers do great work in the schools in the Bay area and it has always been an honor to create flyers and posters for them. I think some of the coolest things I have created have been for YT, like the ODB poster i created for the 2005 Oakland walkout and the poster to commemorate YT’s 10th anniverssary.
I was honored to partner up with YT once again and help celebrate everything that YT stands for and it was nice to be able to help raise some much needed funds to keep the organizing going. I hope to keep this collaberation with YT going for a long time, I have always felt that we need to keep education in the forefront of the struggle cause we need to help the youth keep struggling and coming up!
This is one in a series of events that will include a film screening of Favela Rising in Janurary 2008 and Speaker Panel to discuss the historic Brown vs. Board of Education desicion in May of 2008.-jb