If you are having to go to Target to find your self worth, it's a different kind of control of culture, it's a different kind of control of the possibilities of what people may see. And it s at the heart of what racism has been in this country. Culture has become a commodity and is used to promote tourism and business rather than to validate human beings. The work of the Esperanza is to create spaces where whole human beings, in all of our complexities are allowed to tell our honest stories in whatever medium we choose. The process is one that transforms everyone involved in the process.
Art is seen as a vehicle where the melding of personal and political change can come together.
In other words, the act of creating art as a vehicle to tell our different stories, and really begin an honest dialogue is one that most of the people I spoke with explicitly said had changed them personally, as well as in their relationships to their communities and families. The Esperanza staff were very clear about the ways that working at the Esperanza had pushed them to look at themselves in a very different way, and that this was central to the process of change that they are all working to enact. Our goal to work against the historical attempts of genocide of entire cultures and people via censorship of certain voices and viewpoints is at the heart of the trial. One thing that everyone I spoke with agreed on was that the Todos Somos Esperanza campaign is so much larger than the lawsuit per se, and that the community education that the campaign has facilitated has been a huge success. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, the Todos Somos Esperanza campaign has already taught us so much.