The crowd turned the corner and met with an angry white guy, yelling, saying something like, “get out - you have no right to be here”. I’m not sure what he anticipated, but the slogan every year was “si se puedes!” How perfect was that?? The crowd didn’t even have to tell him to shut up, or beat him up or whatever. They could’ve ignored him without being rude. They were informed of their enemy (and their conduits) who tries to hold them down. That’s the beauty of it.

I didn’t photograph that moment though (I was in on it with the crowd) but that moment will always be in my memory. When my class was given this assignment, I personally didn’t know what to expect. I imagined that I was going to take pictures of the crowd with different perspectives (such as being behind the crowd or being ahead of the crowd anticipating arrival). But instead, I ate it all in, the experience, and digested all that was wholesome… Photography gave me a different eye on the event. I had to be there, inside and out.

The relationships there, existing and forming, sharing and empowerment.. the open windows above us, the support from the balconies, the confused onlookers, the workers coming out to look on, joining us in spirit. I hung out with the crowd, weaving in and out of the groups, took some interesting pictures that took form coincidentally.. they revealed to me other realities that were happening at the same time in a conjunct motion. The photography assignment pushed me to go and see, like a hallucinogen that facilitates a quicker evolution of the mind. I gained a different kind of experience than last year.

The children who were there.. one of their first memories is bound to be inherited from a previous generation. They embody the potential of post-modernity (an idea brought to me by my photo teacher, an art form that engages and reacts to the symbolic structures of our time). The children, they look on, confused by the commotion, noticing the notion “no nos deportation”. These sayings will one day transmute and add meaning to our current state of mind. And like the book I was reading for our class by Takaki - Their birth here is a seed of settlement, an expression to our society that a new cultural identity is about to take form.

He says, our identity is not something that remains static - it is fluid, socially constructed, imagined, reinvented, and evolving over time. These events of protesting are more than just entertainment; they go beyond the social economic system that seeks to imprison our souls into divisions. The echoes of the voices, empowered each individual to use their own voice to contribute to the pool of solidarity. SI SE PUEDES!!!

Technorati Tags: protest, photography, may day, takaki, economics, immigration