Social Justice Art: Learning from Youth Artists at the Southern US Border

By: Jeff M. Poulin with Monix Williams-Garcia

This spring, Teaching Tolerance – a program of the Southern Poverty Law Center – provided a platform for educators and young creatives to make art and build campaigns in their schools and communities through the #USvsHate project. We were thrilled to see the several winners announced last week and to feature some of their work on our blog.

Student members of the Bell Middle Social Justice Project develop their knowledge and skills around identity, civic engagement and leadership and carry out a service learning project to be part of the solution to problems that they identify. In the previous year, they chose the theme of being an "upstander" to discrimination based on race, gender and sexual orientation and created and performed a play for students, family and community members. 

This year, they participated in a human rights institute with the American Friends Service Committee and produced the Youth Justice Squad comic book with Little Fish Comic Book Studio featuring the "Battle at the Border", applying lessons learned about people working together to promote humane treatment for those in need.

Check out the comic book here.

We got a chance to catch up with Monix Williams-Garcia, an 8th grader at Bell Middle School in San Diego Unified School District to learn about the project:

Creative Generation (CG): Can you describe the message of the artwork you created and why you made the choices you did?

Monix Williams-Garcia (MW-G): Our story was inspired and is based on our awareness of the lack of equality in this world especially here, where the border divides the U.S. and Mexico. After learning about the border wall and seeing how unfair things are with the border at the moment, we wanted to raise awareness that even though the superheroes in our comic aren't real, there is a hero in everyone that can help any problem. As our comic says, “Many people don’t know that San Diego and Tijuana have the greatest disparity of wealth between border cities.” Donald Trump has been saying for a while now that he wants to build the wall using Mexicans’ wages when this quote says that there is much inequality between the two countries. By using the comic book as our main source of attention, we were trying to send a message to everyone. We were trying to let everyone know the importance of equality in our broken world. 

The message that was being relayed by the artwork was how even though we are different in some ways we are all each other’s allies no matter what you look like. The comic book is supposed to symbolize how people may put an obstacle in front of you, but when you work with others, you can accomplish something great. Barriers or borders can’t stop you from doing what is right. We made this comic book to tell the world that it is full of injustice and that we should change that. We need to let the world know that we cannot let the injustice happen, we need justice now!

CG: How did you first get into creating art? 

MW-G: I don’t have much experience with art and I wasn’t the best artist either. However, I started more towards the end of elementary school making just small little drawings when I was bored. However, coming to middle school and meeting many kids in the social justice club who had amazing drawing skills and that kind of inspired me to try and do better and now I draw a lot more. I feel like I have improved a lot since we drew the comic.

CG: How would you describe yourself as an artist?

MW-G: I would describe myself as a fairly creative artist who can think of many different ideas. Whenever I draw there are a million things I can think about and just things that I can imagine being drawn on paper. So I feel like as an artist I can be thoughtful and creative. I see myself as an artist that maybe one day can draw people into a story that would show something important to the world.

CG: How do you think your message and work may change your community, people's minds, or the world? 

MW-G: Our message that is introduced in our work shows a different perspective on how students may think about serious world problems. It may make people think more about the things they are doing and how it makes others around them feel. We decided to have the characters act as superheroes who are also kids our age because they can help others to show that anyone can be a hero. Even if you are small or an adult, everyone has the power to make a change.

CG: What advice do you have for other young artists and change-makers around the world?

MW-G: Some advice I have would be not to give up on what you think is correct. There will be many people that will tell you off and that will say that you should stop or give up on what you’re doing, but you shouldn’t let those kinds of people get to you. Even if you're young, that shouldn’t matter, because what you're doing is right and somewhere out there, people will listen and maybe you can change their minds.