Cultural Organizing: unleashing the creativity and imagination of the social justice movement

Using creativity and people's personal experiences can be incredibly powerful and moving. Even though we're dealing with really serious subject matter there are ways to celebrate how resilient we are as human beings, how we are able to cope and thrive even after violence has touched our lives.

    — Terrie Quinteros, Western Prison Project, Portland, OR

Last December, the Social Justice Fund awarded seven grants totaling $60,000 to support cultural organizing. Through theater performances, murals, music, and film, grassroots organizations are strengthening organizing efforts in the farmworker movement; unmasking the intersecting issues of homophobia, racism and violence; promoting the culture, history, and survival of indigenous peoples; raising the visibility of social justice struggles in South Asian communities; and raising the voices of those affected by violence and the criminal justice system.

The Cultural Grants program re-emerged in 2005 after a yearlong hiatus during which Social Justice Fund members and allies explored the role of arts and cultural work in the social justice movement. The new Cultural Grants Program aims to: 1) support the ongoing efforts of those already using arts and culture as part of their organizing strategies, and 2) encourage organizations that are not currently using arts and culture as organizing tools to partner with artists in order to gain the skills and capacity to do so. Overall, the program seeks to encourage grassroots social change organizations to explore the creativity, imagination, experiences, and cultural traditions of diverse communities in order to build a stronger and more unified progressive movement.

“The Social Justice Fund grant makes it possible for the festival to happen,” said Farah Nousheen, co-founder of Tasveer, which organizes a groundbreaking South Asian film festival in Seattle. “For an organization like ours that doesn’t have any funding for operating costs — and we’re a very small group of volunteers — we need a grant like this to carry out our activities. The grant has also helped to make us bolder. Because we received a grant from the Social Justice Fund, we can really bring social justice themes to the forefront. This year we’re being very bold.”

Tasveer, which means “picture” in Hindu/Urdu, is a grassroots, community-based organization founded by Nousheen and Rita Meher. Tasveer’s mission is to bring progressive, independent films from South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora to the Pacific Northwest. Its goal is to increase the visibility of South Asian countries and cultures. This is the festival’s third year, featuring five days of films starting on Sept. 27th at the Broadway Performance Hall. This year’s theme is “South Asia Captured: Social Movements, Reel Moments”.

Nousheen said the festival organizers are especially excited to feature D’Lo in the festival programming this year, a queer Sri Lankan spoken word artist from Los Angeles. “We want to get the Asian youth community out using hip hop and spoken word,” Nousheen explained. “I don’t think there’s anyone else in this city who would bring her out, and we’ve tried before but never had the funding.”

The festival planners have ensured that every single feature film this year has a social justice theme, including films on the post-9/11 environment in NYC, on Tibetan refugees living in India, and on the 1984 mass hate crimes against the Sikh community following the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh freedom fighters.

“This is a film that the Sikh community in Seattle has been trying to get shown here for a long time,” Nousheen said. “They are very excited. I want to be clear that these are not documentaries, but feature narrative films. We are showing social justice through storytelling. That kind of theme is throughout the whole festival, including documentaries, short films, etc. telling stories of different people connected to South Asia, whether part of the Diaspora or in South Asia.”

Tasveer is holding a community fundraising event on Aug. 26th at the Theater Off Jackson at 7pm. For more information, contact the organization at info = at = tasveer.org.

In addition to film, four groups currently supported through the Cultural Grants program are using theater as the primary component in their cultural work: the Queer People of Color Liberation Project, housed at the Asian & Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center in Seattle; Teatro Juvenil at Voz Hispana Causa Chavista in Woodburn, OR; the Duwamish Tribe, Seattle’s First People who have been fighting for federal recognition by the US government for 25 years; and the Western Prison Project in Portland, OR.

“The Social Justice Fund grant was the first funding we got for this project,” said Joanne Alcantara, Queer Network Project Manager at the API Women & Family Safety Center. “It really helped us to legitimize the work, and made it easier to go for other funding. It allowed for us not to worry about things like the cost of the theater, and to have more people dedicating their time in a fuller way.”

The Queer People of Color Liberation Project is a partnership with community members, with guidance from two performance artists, Dean Jackson and Darius Morrison, to create three theatrical presentations to highlight the concerns of queer people of color living in Seattle and the violence they face. The theater pieces, titled "Beneath", "Within", and "Beyond", are being used as a way to engage communities in a dialogue about oppression, healing, and transformation. Jackson is a Black organizer/artist in queer people of color communities who grew up in Shoreline. Morrison is a transgender Korean American adoptee from Bremerton.

The first show, “Beneath”, took place on July 2nd and drew an audience of over 160 people. It highlighted the personal experiences of queer people of color through short theater pieces illustrating how they experienced both racism and homophobia at the same time. Post-show evaluations revealed an extremely positive audience response. Alcantara explained that the project began with a core group of eight individuals in May, and then grew to about 30 people in June, and now — “it’s kind of just bursting over.” The next show, “Within”, will take place on Aug. 27th at the UW Ethnic Cultural Theater.