In Memory of Kalief Browder and Our Responsibility to Others
The following blog is a repost from Social Justice Art, "A Collaborative Learning Environment and Online Art Gallery Focusing on Human Rights, Social Justice and Environmental Issues," based out of South Texas College, which can be found here.
Around four months ago, a community mural was unveiled in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City by two New York-based street artists, Gilf! And Lmnopi. The mural (shown below) is a simple profile picture of a young Black man, staring at no one in particular, with only the words “Demand Justice” carved out of the white lines intended to depict prison bars. While I have not seen the image in person, I frequently think about it and all that it represents.
This past year, an article by Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker, revealed the tragic details of the death of Kalief Browder, the young man depicted in the mural. In 2010, at age 16, Browder was accused of stealing a backpack while walking home in the Bronx one evening. Though there was no evidence against him and while he vehemently denied the theft, Kalief Browder was thrown into Riker’s Island Correctional Facility for several years, without ever having been formally convicted of the crime. His family was unable to make the $10,000 bail and for years, Kalief Browder stayed there, having attempted suicide numerous times and having experienced several violent interactions between both his peers and prison guards before he was set free in 2013. Although his case garnered celebrity attention, including Jay-Z and Rosie O’Donnell, and an anonymous donor helped pay for his studies at Bronx Community College, the horrific psychological effects of his three years experience, two of which were in solitary confinement, were far too great. In 2015, Kalief Browder, tragically committed suicide at the age of 22.
I bring up Kalief Browder’s story because as the Executive Director and Founder of Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE), we frequently engage young people around global human rights violations through the arts. Yet, what happens when the most heinous of human rights violations, like that experienced by Kalief Browder, emerge out of your own backyard? While we focus on a wide range of issues, from immigrant rights and women’s rights to children’s rights, we should also understand the great importance of focusing on the issues that affect young people in the United States directly, which includes the rights of children in the mass incarceration system. The United States is the only country in the world, besides South Sudan and Somalia, that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the world’s foremost international instrument exclusively dedicated to protecting the rights of individuals 18 years and younger. Furthermore, the United States is one of the few countries in the world that permit the prosecution of children as adults, and according to the Equal Justice Initiative, “children as young as 13 years old have been tried as adults and sentenced to die in prison, typically without any consideration of their age or circumstances of the offense.”
Understanding these human rights violations, and in our work with young people at ARTE, we have come to recognize a few patterns in our projects across New York City. Firstly, quite simply, young people are interested in the lives of other young people. In my time with ARTE and as an educator in general, we have found that the young people we work with are interested in exploring human rights violations that directly impact the lives of other young people, from human trafficking to child slavery. My speculation is that when young people learn about the human rights abuses experienced by those their same age or younger, they feel more compelled to create awareness and take action. When I see examples of this, I am constantly inspired by their strong sense of empathy and humanity, having created pieces of art to bring attention to the exploitation of people they will never meet, in countries they may have never visited.
Secondly, I think many of the young people in our programs, while interested in what is happening on a global scale, feel most compelled to address human rights abuses happening on the local level. This past year, students in three of our programs were interested in focusing on racial discrimination and two focused on both addressing racial discrimination, and upholding immigrant rights in their own communities. One example of this was our work at a school in Elmhurst, Queens, where many of the students were recent immigrants from Latin America. At the school, students painted a mural that included birds, escaping prison-like bars, moving towards a bright, vibrant sun and the Statue of Liberty. The birds, the students decided, would represent immigrants, moving towards a more just existence within the United States. For students, the mural was a representation of the amalgamation of their lived experiences. As we painted the mural, students shared their own personal stories of migration, the sacrifices of their parents, and their own dreams for the future in their country. (For more information on this particular project, please visit our post here on Amnesty International USA’s Human Rights Now blog).
ARTE’s intention for this upcoming year is to continue our commitment to upholding and creating awareness around the rights of children throughout our programs. While students ultimately decide what human rights issue they would like their public arts pieces to focus on, we seek to further educate and empower them on issues of mass incarceration, racial discrimination, and juvenile justice within the United States.
We understand that Kalief Browder was not an isolated instance and there are many other young people throughout both New York City and the United States, facing similar dire situations. Yet, we believe not only in the power of creating awareness through the mechanism of art, but in organizing communities to take action in creative ways as well. Kalief Browder has passed away. His life was cut tragically short and the last few years of his life were filled with abuses so heinous we will never begin to know the full extent of them. We believe that the best way we can honor his memory is to never forget him and do everything possible to ensure that no other young person will ever have to experience what he did, ever again. While we are an emerging organization, and have much to learn in this growing field, we are firmly committed to supporting young people by not only educating them about human rights, but helping them uphold their own rights and commit themselves to upholding the rights of others.
Kalief, you are not forgotten.
