Black Lives Matter.
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Tony McDade. Atatiana Jefferson. The most recently killed in a state war against Black people .
We say their names alongside the devastatingly disproportionate number of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people infected and killed by the Covid-19 virus.
The centuries and blistering open sores of white supremacy.
We honor those from before who have resisted the structures of injustice, survived the unimaginable, imagined and built, kept joy alive amidst terror. We stand as witnesses and supporters, recognizing with humility and gratitude the waves of Black youth who lead us courageously, who stand in the way of the intolerable, changing the possibility of life today and tomorrow. Throughout the country and the world, Black youth, including queer- and trans- identified youth, have led us both in the streets and into new forms of practice to remake social life, build sustainability, and plant the possible. In Mississippi and Flint, Ferguson and Soweto, in solidarity with Santiago, Gaza, and Hong Kong and more. We know that solidarity is crucial. This is not work for one person, one group, but the responsibility of all. To make freedom possible.
We teach and enact arts politics with an embodied understanding of interdependence, that all art is political, that our work can never be separate from the self-identified urgent needs and demands of communities whose very existence is threatened by a system built on the denial of rights.
We know that the work also requires support, nourishment, rest, joy, beauty. That the days after and in between can be the hardest. With purpose we unequivocally support, honor and join as we are each able, in the many ways we can, those who rise up today in order to make tomorrow.
The faculty and staff of the Department of Art & Public Policy
Tisch School of the Arts, NYU