Injustice to One is Injustice to All
July 2024 Issue
We recognize the intersectionality of all injustices
and hold the audacious belief that art helps create a more just world
Soldier
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
Words: Paul R. Abramson, Photo: Tania L. Abramson
This 1944 painting, titled Soldier, was made by the African American artist Charles White. He painted this artwork shortly after he had been drafted into the U.S. army. This artwork is meant to represent the staggering psychological burden experienced by soldiers at war.
_______________________
We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America or know the reason why.
W.E. B. DuBois, Returning Soldiers, The Crisis, XVIII (May 1919)
BE IT RESOLVED that the NAACP calls for African American troops who volunteered for combat in World War II or their heirs to receive full recognition from the Department of Defense including, where appropriate, certification of their original grades or ranks together with financial compensation for pay lost by reduction in rank to avoid outranking white troops.
NAACP: World War II Veterans (1941-1945) Deserve Justice
The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam…Billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. … The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities.
Martin Luther King (February 25th, 1967)
Just think about what that must have been like for those young [black pilots]. Here they were, trained to operate some of the most complicated, high-tech machines of their day—flying at hundreds of miles an hour, with the tips of their wings just six inches apart. Yet when they hit the ground, folks treated them like they were nobody—as if their very existence meant nothing.
Michelle Obama (May 11th, 2015)
Tania L. Abramson, MFA is a visual/conceptual artist as well as a lecturer in the Honors Collegium at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the co-creator and co-instructor of the UCLA Art and Trauma class and author of Shame and the Eternal Abyss, Concern, and Truth Lies. More of her work can be found at tanialoveabramson.com.
Paul R. Abramson is the lyricist and lead singer of the band Crying 4 Kafka which has been memorialized in Erika Blair’s book The Sanctity of Rhyme: The Metaphysics of Crying 4 Kafka in Prose and Verse (Asylum 4 Renegades Press, 2018). Paul is also an artist of note, and an Editor at Breathe. Otherwise, Paul is a professor of psychology at UCLA.
By Zack Davies
Summer. The tarmac bakes,
captive, dry and black.
Gnarled posts hang chains
beside the gangway track.
Who owns this land?
John Hawkins, reads the sign.
Here down to the low-tide sand,
John Hawkins, it is thine.