Clarissa Lunday Week 2 Blog Post

Over the past few years, I have personally seen art come out of the Black Lives Matter movement through music from artists like Meek Mill and Omari Hardwick. Alice Bag is no different from these artists, in that her song “White Justice” doesn’t just encompass the Chicano Movement, for which she speaks about in her book, but also, as the end of the video showed, it encompasses the Black Lives Matter movement as well (3:43).

The Chicano Movement was one of cultural pride. But just like many movements, it missed a key aspect, the women. Maylei Blackwell, author of Chicana Power, gave many examples of how Chicanas organized for themselves within the Chicano Movement. She writes, “Women activists learned to name the structures of exclusion and inequality they faced and how to negotiate complex relationships of power within and outside their community” (p.61). This is important in any movement. Alice Bag, author of Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage a Chicana Punk Story, writes about seeing a Chicano Movement march. She writes that, “..I had never before realized that I was part of a minority group, and I felt good about being part of something as powerful as the Chicano Movement…” (p. 70). She also writes that now she understood that, “…this group had enemies who weren’t afraid to throw bottles at us or shoot us” (p. 70). As she sings in her song, “White justice doesn’t work for me/ White Justice is a travesty.”