Veena Vasista shows how the arts are inspiring and equipping people to use their power and creativity to promote social justice.
Victor Villalpando was 16 years old when he was shot and killed by police officer Jeremy Apodaca in Española, New Mexico, on June 8th 2014. Four months later, I attended an ‘art intervention’ outside the District Court building in Santa Fe, held in conjunction with a National Day of Protest to “Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.”
The intervention was a direct response to a grand jury decision of “justifiable homicide” in favor of Officer Apodaca. Yet it was more than a protest. Artists of many different ages created expressions of grief, rage, fear, opposition and hope through theatre, dance, poetry, spoken word, art and puppetry.
Organized by an ad-hoc group called Concerned Citizens for Public Safety, the protest also named over a hundred other victims of lethal police violence under the age of 30... Keep reading on Transformation
Victor Villalpando was 16 years old when he was shot and killed by police officer Jeremy Apodaca in Española, New Mexico, on June 8th 2014. Four months later, I attended an ‘art intervention’ outside the District Court building in Santa Fe, held in conjunction with a National Day of Protest to “Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.”
The intervention was a direct response to a grand jury decision of “justifiable homicide” in favor of Officer Apodaca. Yet it was more than a protest. Artists of many different ages created expressions of grief, rage, fear, opposition and hope through theatre, dance, poetry, spoken word, art and puppetry.
Organized by an ad-hoc group called Concerned Citizens for Public Safety, the protest also named over a hundred other victims of lethal police violence under the age of 30... Keep reading on Transformation