Sunday, February 10, 2008

Mural Design Workshop Notes

On Saturday, January 26th the Rachel Corrie Foundation hosted an all-day workshop to gather images and ideas for the mural. The following is a brainstorm list from our breakout discussion sessions:


Return

* birds heralding spring ("after winter must come spring")
* hidden history of return
* shahid poster
* Medicine Creek Treaty
* Chief Leschi
* bulldozers
* prisons
* regrowth, seeds of resistance
* handkerchief paintings
* Pheonix Rising, firebird
* invisibility
* bird/serpent as a symbol of healing
* women hands extended
* tree connecting earth to heaven
* native treaties violated, fishing rights
*family
*key
*salmon

* emptied nest

Relationships
*
isolation
* economic isolation
* greed and need
* Water (universal human need)
* Love and relationships as a universal human need
* windows
* contrast (green lawns vrs. polluted and diverted water)
* Artesian well (safe place, abundance)
* the well that Rachel defended (soldiers shooting, broken)
* mural painted by the rain, cloud of paint raindrops
* rain painting an opening in the wall
* salmon
* balance
* seeing images in the clouds
* eating meals together, gathering

Reconciliation
* Actualized hope, not just words
* Unification
* Education
* Weaving cloth "instead of a wall"
* Trees holding together the earth
* roots tearing down the wall
* Cedar, madrone, olive
* Justice scales in a teeter totter, children playing
* Salmon Leaping over the wall
* flood of humanity
* faces of people, shahid
* "Return to the Swing"
* Poppies, lisa's image of girl holding red poppies
* children flying kites

Resistance
*
Honor resistance in Oly
* Labor History
* Port Militarization Resistance movement
* candlelight, vigils, illumination
*Women In Black
* the Four Elements- earth, air, fire, and water
* wall
* stream of humanity, another world
* strength and courage
* human things that hold us together
* Caterpillar knocking down the apartheid wall
* spirit of art
* wall in Mexico
* 500 years of First Peoples Resistance

Images gathered from "Up Against The Wall"

* olive trees
* campesino trees
* clean water
* people eating together

poem for Rafah

This is a poem that I wrote several years ago, while one of my dearest friends lived in Rafah as an International Solidarity Movement activist. I was visited by dreams often of Rafah, and through hearing her stories developed a profound connection with the place without stepping foot there.


my sister is crying
she is standing abandoned
in a battlefield
destiny signed and sealed
and I am hearing her
here on the other side of the earth
not nourished by apple pies
and freedom fried lies
I dry my own eyes
and cry back to her

habibi, I hear you

my brother is broken
he is hoping he wont have to lay down
like his home
like bedrock
his grip is deadlocked on stopping it
but slipping like grains of sand
a furious fist falls dead to open fingertips
submitting at once to an upperhand
but my brother will spill blood before tears on this land

my mother is standing
in the kitchen fearing famine
she is demanding me to drink tea
to swallow my sea of salt for her sake
she asks me to placate my disposition
save my ammunition for the firing line

I am trying to find my way warm in this freezing winter of humanity's conscience
though dormant I am forming seeds to disseminate
to penetrate the silence by calling

habibi, I hear you

Welcome to the Olympia-Rafah Mural Design Blog!

Welcome Local and Global Community Members,

This blog was created as a tool for collaboration in the design of a mural to recognize the unofficial sister city relationship between Olympia, Washington and Rafah, Palestine. Here you will find words and images generated over the past year as well as information and links to related topics. We hope that you will join us in this exciting process of using one of our own walls here in Olympia to extend a hand in friendship to our world community with hope for peace and justice for all. Please feel free to publish your thoughts here, as well as images that you would like to be considered for incorporation in the mural.

In Solidarity,

Olympia-Rafah Sister City Mural Design Team