Free Gaza

In August 2014 Mike Brown, an African American unarmed teenager was murdered by a cop in the city of Ferguson, Missouri. Shortly after the murder, word got out about what happened to Mike as his dead body lay in the streets for hours. The residents of his neighborhood started to come together seeking justice - a type of justice that seems to elude African Americans in this country historically speaking. They were seeking police accountability and the end to unarmed people being murdered by the police. Protests and demonstrations took place which were quickly put down by a heavy police presence. Many protesters were pepper sprayed and teargassed and no one seemed to know how to get the pepper spray out of the eyes of the innocent people who were doing nothing but exercising their constitutional right to protest. When the world saw what was happening in Ferguson, word came to the protesters and demonstrators that they should use milk and not water to get the pepper spray out of the eyes of whoever it was used on. That word came from the proud, repressed and oppressed people of Palestine who took to social media to help heal their repressed and oppressed sisters and brothers here in this country from the harm being done to them by the police. They shared what they had learned to do to protect themselves from the police over there. 

I, as an innocent but imprisoned man, wanted to show my respect for, support for and solidarity with the sisters and brothers of Palestine, but I didn't know how. A month before Mike Brown's murder, Israel had invaded Gaza in July 2014 and the news was filled with stories about Mike Brown and Gaza. After a few weeks of some serious and critical thinking on the matter I decided the best way I could show my respect, support and solidarity was to do a painting. Because I am on death row my art and that of other artists is monitored by the prison authorities to make sure no coded messages are hidden in our art. So I decided to paint a very simple painting which stated out loud,not hidden in any way, what I wanted to say and to use an elderly woman to say it. That's how "Free Gaza"! came about. I then gifted the painting to a Comrade, sending it out with my own money with no idea that one day in the future I would be asked by a different Comrade if it could be used in a mural. Today it is doing what I intended to do when I painted it in the first place:  Showing Respect, Support & Solidarity with our Palestinian Sisters & Brothers in this seemingly never ending nightmare that they find themselves in. 

I will always show appreciation for the people of Palestine for the way they reached out to us in Ferguson in our time of need.

In Struggle & Solidarity, KC