Category Archives: Multicultural

OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS

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Charles Tuggle

Biography

Art Institute of Chicago / University of Chicago  BFA: Studied Art History, Painting, and Printmaking; Lone Mountain College / University of San Francisco  MFA: Studied Aesthetics, Art History, and Printmaking

Information Made His Life Matter
By Robert Lloyd

In elementary school when your skin is dark and your nose is broad and your hair is kinky, your peers don’t think your life matters. So, you find a sanctuary in the library. No one beats you up. No one calls you names. You read. You discover how much there is that you don’t know and you can find in a book. A teaching career. A military career. An artist’s career. A medical technical career. A career as a professor of art in Nigeria. African history, philosophy, literature, world travels. Information made his life matter. Charles made his life matter.

Artist Statement

I am interested in bringing into focus a particular space of time which most Americans have avoided. I suppose one could say the idea is not to tell a story or narrate history but rather by presenting fragments of history in visual form, ignite thoughts of history in the viewer’s mind at several levels, conscious and unconscious.

The Nigeria Series

The series of paintings and collages is based on my time living and working in West Africa. To express the feeling that Nigeria evokes in me, visually, I use musicians and scenes of everyday life as representational elements with color and movement as the abstract elements overlying the representational ones. Kind of a theory much like music theory can be viewed as cultural constructs. In Western thought, color is described in visual terms, such as pigment or light. In Nigeria, particular in Yoruba land, where I lived, color was described in terms of temperature, from hot to cold, with various colors also having religious connotations. In Nigeria, art is meant to be multiple, multi sensual experience, not simply a matter of sight, something you look at. This series of art represents a distillation of the many feelings I have for West Africa.


https://www.shipyardartists.com/artist/charles-tuggle/

More Our Stories Our Visions Artists

Our Stories Our Visions

Participating Artists

Organization follows Mobilization

People Get Ready In the 60’s artists like Curtis Mayfield used their art to build a movement.

Unpacking the Tension Between Symbols, Systems, and Substance from The Breakdown with Shaun King.

Which Side Are You On? As sung by The Freedom Singers. Words were often adapted to the particular protest and location.

Who benefits from your art? Perhaps you would like to read this article about the art created during the Seattle protests. Saving Seattle’s protest murals

Saving Seattle’s Pandemic and Protest Murals

What! After The March?

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Robert Lloyd, Spokane Civic Activist, May 30, 2020

What do you want?

By now we’ve all seen what’s happening in Minneapolis, Detroit, Louisville, Atlanta, New York, Washington DC, Phoenix, Denver, Columbus, Dallas, Chicago, Memphis, Bakersfield, Albuquerque, Los Vegas,  Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle  and more – twenty plus and growing – due to the killing of Floyd. The question is why and who benefits from these protests. We all know the why – systemic racism and injustice for people of color and the poor.  But who benefits? 

We have all seen this before – be it Martin Luther King’s death Memphis, be it the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, the Chicago fire truck killing, be it Ferguson, Trayvon Martin in Florida, Eric Garner in New York, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Orlando Castile in Minnesota. The lists goes on. The question is “Who benefits?”.

All of these demonstrations had three components. There are those who want to mourn. The parents and loved ones will bring flowers, teddy bears and pictures of the person lost. 

There are those who will hold non-violent protests. The politicians, the ministers and the status quo organizations will express their dissatisfaction with articulate speeches and venting rhetoric.

Here are some of those who on Sunday May 31 between 2 and 4 pm non-violently protested the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. They met at 2 pm at Spokane’s Riverfront Park and marched to the Spokane County Courthouse and Spokane City Courthouse/Jail. I asked those pictured here to tell us in their own words WHY THEY MARCHED.

And then there are those who will co-opt your non-violent protests. The extreme left and right, the anarchists and those who would like to destroy your community, institutions and trust with violence and chaos and destruction. Sometime after 5 pm and late into the evening groups like this looted downtown Spokane stores, broke windows and had confrontations with police that resulted in their use of flash bangs, bean bags, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters.

After demonstrations like this people will go back home to cynicism, apathy, complacency, self-medication and risky behavior, and party and bull shit and party and bull shit. And there will be no change. The question should be what is it that you want and what is the price you are willing to pay and how do you go about getting it. 

Will you build a grass root organization?  

If so form small groups of 5 – 10 people. Get to know and vet who your people are. Are they actors, allies or accomplices? Are they people who will sit down and meet regularly to discuss strategies and planned actions? Meet in a public place or Zoom. Let us know what your results are at 4comculture.com. Email info to:  info@4comculture.com

I’d suggest that you make this message go viral through your social media outlets. I’d suggest that you print this out on your home printer and distribute it at upcoming non-violent protests. You can become a civic activist and work between horrific events and elections.

Spokane People of Color Legislative Conference

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People of Color Legislative Conference
Areas of Focus Discussion for Spokane Region
Saturday, October 12th, 2019

The summit has three main goals: 1) to stimulate dialogue between diverse POC organizations, community leaders, and state legislators of color to build statewide solidarity, unity and mobilizing capacity on the most important issues to our collective communities of color; 2) to organize a platform for community leaders of color to develop a Legislative Agenda of top priorities for the Senate and House Members of Color Caucus (MOCC) to push forward; and 3) to come out with a working list of who’s working on what issue in what region, so that organizations across the state can build on momentum made at the summit. This is not meant to pre-empt any individual community’s legislative priorities, only build a resource for connecting people and organizations with shared issues.

Racial Justice Community Leaders

“Racial Justice Community Leaders” were invited to the summit and asked to bring their organization’s legislative priorities and were “welcome to invite POC community leaders you know to register for the event.”

Community Leaders of Color

The purpose of the summit was to hear from and connect people of color community leaders and legislators of color to build solidarity and mobilizing capacity across the state for issues that are of highest priority to our collective communities of color.

Below are Spokane’s top 10 priorities for each of the categories discussed.

Racial and Criminal Justice

  • End cash bail
  • Decriminalize driving with 3rd degree suspend license
  • Decriminalize poverty
  • I-1000 (pro) affirmative action (ref. 88 on ballot)
  • Expedition of voting rights restoration of people with felonies
  • HB 1517: Risk assessment, etc. for DV and IPV (need racial equity lens plus broader rep from impacted population)
  • Rights and education for women who enter prison while pregnant
  • True blood legislation

Housing, Homelessness, Displacement, & Human Services

  • Statewide rent control
  • Just cause eviction statewide
  • Fair chance housing
  • Enhance reentry housing
  • More $ for permanent affordable housing
  • Rental inspection
  • Landlord registry
  • Civil-legal aid/right to council for eviction court
  • Build in rent grace period or remove 3 notice protection revocation
  • Decriminalizing public camping
  • Data privacy

Education

  • Loan forgiveness
  • Universal voluntary access to ECAP
  • Full day kindergarten, Headstart
  • Raise ECAP poverty threshold so more people qualify
  • Cultural competence for Pre-K teachers
  • Increase support for teachers plus families for accessing development resources
  • Fund to provide disciplinary diversion to keep kids in classroom
  • More teachers/authority figures of color
  • Race pay equity-equal pay

Other

  • Racial health equity (tied for first priority)
  • Consideration of voting rights/participation in underrepresented communities (tied for first priority)
  • Ask for expulsion of Matt Shea (tied for second priority)
  • More $ resources towards impact of nuclear industry on communities of color (tied for second priority)

If you want to know what organizations and individuals registered for the event and represented people of color in our Spokane community, contact Terri Anderson and Jac Archer, the facilitators of the Spokane summit.

If you would like to see the entire list of issues suggested for consideration click here.

2019 Spokane Students Striking Over Climate

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How I Saw It By Robert J Lloyd

How We See It: She Is Trusted

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Make phone calls or knock on doors to share your support.

Invite your friends and relatives to a Fill Out Your Ballot Party.

Get a sign for your yard, a t-shirt or button to show your support.

This message is the unsolicited opinion of the editors of 4comculture.com.

Building 100 Discussion Groups

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We have all been to many meetings and rallies at the end of which no one knows what they can do.  If you participate in demonstrations, rallies and social media you need to go to your local coffee house and have a discussion with five to ten individuals about what you can do about racial and social justice and community development. Begin building the community you want to live in. We want to build 100 of these coffee discussion groups. You may want to come to one of these listed below. Or start your own and let us know. Be sure to invite someone from the affected classes.

There are now several First Thursday* Coffee and Discussion groups:

  • First Thursday Coffee & Discussion East Central Community Center 10 am (Resumes March 4, 2020) 500 S Stone
  • First Thursday Original Coffee & Discussion 10:00 am Clark’s Fork (meets 2nd & 4th Thursdays) 1028 N Hamilton St #100, Spokane, WA
  • First Thursday Evening Discussion 6 – 8 pm Location varies. TEXT (509) 934-3933 and ask for location.
  • African American Men’s Discussion TEXT (509) 934-3933 and ask for date, time, location.

*These groups originally started out on the First Thursday of each month. Now they meet on the dates and times established by each group.

Call to Participation

Those interested in racial and social justice
Those interested in community development
5-10 people meeting regularly for deep discussion
Willing to meet regularly to plan strategies and take actions

Contact TEXT (509) 934-3933 for more information.