Angie Lai Week 2 Blog response

Social movements are deeply connected to art-making practices. Art is often a reflection of historical circumstances and social movements often define history. For example, in discussing Chicana feminism within the Chicano movement, Blackwell says that Chicana feminists "named, theorized, and built a political praxis to confront oppression in student, community, and labor organizing, in the cultural arts, in educational and scholarly associations, and in their homes" (50). This summarizes how social movements influence art, and we are seeing how art influences social movements through Maya Jupiter and Alice Bag. In Alice Bag's chapter "Chicano Power!", she discusses her first first-hand experiences with the Chicano movement as a child, which undoubtedly influenced her song, "White Justice". Her music video shows clips of the protestors with "brown berets", "boots and uniforms" that she writes about in her book (0:25, pp. 69). Additionally, Bag uses different colors in familiar phrases, like "blue collars", "silver dollars", "black clubs", and "blood red", to combine key aspects of art, colors, with aspects of an unjust society, economic inequality and violence (1:30). Also, in a sort of meta- way, her song itself is a piece of art that contributes to a social movement. Her music plays over clips of cultural celebrations (0:52) and police attacking crowds of citizens (1:05), enforcing her lyrics of there only being "white justice", and that justice is in fact not color blind. Embedded in her work are layers of art-making practices combined with social movement efforts.