JULY 2022 — ISSUE #26
ART INSPIRING CHANGE — MORE JUSTICE — STRONGER ALLIANCES
[The majority] eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy. – Three Dissenting Justices ––
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[The majority] eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy. – Three Dissenting Justices –– 〰️
“Mason-Dixon: The Cost of Cotton”
Visual Art by M. Anne Sweet
This piece above, entitled "Mason-Dixon: The Cost of Cotton," is part exploration of family history and also part of a larger project I call the 27 Project, which is an exploration of slavery, racism, and racial history in this country. The project seeks to answer, what can I do to make a difference, when what I have read from a hundred or more years ago seems to have changed so little today?
I am a direct descendant of Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President under Abraham Lincoln during Lincoln’s first term. Who was Hamlin as a man and what does this mean in terms of my family history? “Mason-Dxion” grew out of my research into this question. That story is told in the poem, “Descendant.”
In this image, the jagged red line that runs from left to right is the Mason-Dixon Line, with free states to the north and slave states to the south. A portion of the Emancipation Proclamation is in the upper left. On the right is a reference to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), with its own problematic history. The large blue area and figures in the lower right represent the Middle Passage and the many African lives lost. The lower left represents the enslaved lives, lives lost, and the cost of cotton. The female figure is wearing lace of 100% cotton. She is indicating silence ... silence that can no longer be tolerated.
By M. Anne Sweet
I.
I am Mirabel
Mirabel Anne
descend’d from Hannibal Hamlin
Maine senator selected
Abe Lincoln’s first VP
On this day my mother Mirabel
her thin skin torn
bandage bled through
cannot contain the pain
We are white
I am white feckless freckl’d
I yearn for Hannibal
swarthy-skinned
anti-slavery
politics sway’d against him