Envisioning Abolition Through Art
06/12/20
By Monica Trinidad
I’ve been an activist in Chicago for 16 years, an organizer for 10 of those years, and an artist for 6 of those years. No one ever prepared me for organizing and creating during an uprising and a pandemic. I am exhausted.
When the pandemic and subsequent social isolating started for me back in early March, I was inspired by the mutual aid efforts that were immediately popping up online. I illustrated We Keep Each Other Safe to demonstrate the range of ways that people could step up to help their communities, especially the ones hardest-hit, such as the elderly, people who are immunocompromised, and incarcerated people. Art can often help us envision a path moving forward when things feel chaotic, and that’s what I hoped this piece would do. It’s also been incredible to see the piece wheat-pasted all over Philadelphia thanks to the Fill the Walls with Hope Project by Mark Strandquist.
The Free Them All illustration was made in collaboration with Survived and Punished NY. My friend and unofficial mentor Mariame Kaba, who moved from Chicago to NYC in 2016, organizes with them, so when they reached out, I immediately accepted the invitation. The piece supported their efforts to #FreeThemAll in April during an urgent push to release criminalized survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and to support their overall mission to abolish gender violence, policing, prisons, and deportations. People cannot get well in a cell. Back in Chicago, more than 500 people incarcerated in Cook County Jail have contracted the virus, and the lives of seven people inside have been lost.
While my Defend Our Communities, Defund Police illustration has been shared countless times online since the uprisings began, many people don’t know that I actually created a simpler version of the piece back in 2017 in collaboration with American Friends Service Committee - Chicago. Yes, we have been demanding to defund the police since 2017, and honestly, organizers have been demanding this way before 2017 as well. We Charge Genocide (of which I was also part of) crunched the numbers back in 2014. AFSC-Chicago then created materials around the city’s budget and how much of it went to policing and how little of it goes towards social services. As of today, the Chicago Police Department gets $4.9 million dollars per day. When I was organizing with the #NoCopAcademy campaign in 2018, it was $4 million per day. Now, their annual budget is $1.8 billion. That’s 35 times the budget for homeless services, and 84 times the budget for mental health services. It’s incredible to see the entire country demanding to defund their police departments in the aftermath of the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many more. I knew this piece would resonate again during the uprisings demanding justice for Black lives, so I cleaned up the lettering and imagery, added some new colors, and shared it again.
Like I said in the beginning, I am exhausted. I hope that we remember that this fight for justice and abolition is not a sprint, it is a marathon. We must pace ourselves and take care of each other. Only we keep each other safe.
Monica Trinidad is a queer artist and organizer of color born and raised on the southeast side of Chicago. She is the co-founder of Brown and Proud Press, the People’s Response Team, and For the People Artists Collective. Monica actively pushes for spaces where both artists and organizers recognize the necessity of cultural organizing, and creates work to uplift and document struggles in Chicago. In 2017, she and Assata's Daughters co-founder Page May started the Lit Review podcast, a literary podcast for the movement, interviewing community members and organizers about critical books to read in this political moment. You can listen to old episodes on Soundcloud. Monica is an emerging member of the justseeds artists' cooperative. You can follow Monica on Instagram at @itsmonicatrinidad, on Twitter at @monicatea2, and see more of her work at monicatrinidad.com.