Occupy Wall Street - the 99% must be heard

From Westlake Park, Seattle Occupy Wall Street Protest, 2011. All rights reserved, Ann-Marie Stillion

 

 

It has been widely reported that Homeland Security has been coordinating the Occupy Wall Street crackdowns. Today I sent the following to  President Obama.

Dear Mr. President,

I have been a strong supporter and writing this pains me. How could you allow the government to play a part and coordinate the police against Occupy protesters? Attacking media, hurting old people, destroying books. Really? The White House should be coordinating conversations not crackdowns. We are your people and using the police against us is wrong.

Please find a way to stop attacking the people who elected you.

Thank you.

Occupy Seattle 10.08.11

Photograph by Ann-Marie Stillion. All rights reserved. 2011

If anyone at the Occupy Seattle event on Oct. 8, 2011 in Westlake Plaza knew what was going on, it was this little marcher. Headed up the street with hundreds of others of all ages and backgrounds, it's hard to imagine a sterner or more purposeful look on a child. I couldn't stop to talk as people flooded over the corner of Pike and 4th headed out for the beginning of the march. But when I looked at the shots later I wondered what this little girl would say now and in the future. I hope she sees this someday.

For more images of Occupy Seattle from that day take a look at this slideshow. The images render a difficult truth for some politicians and business groups alike: this group of people is purely grassroots, on a message of their own, as well as educated and smart enough to keep on bringing it. If you are in Seattle, stop by and lend a hand. You can get started at the Occupy Seattle website.

churn 2011

"Subject two," by photographer Ann-Marie Stillion, 2010 from the ongoing project, churn, about American technology

For more about churn, visit my web site.

Rally to Restore Sanity--Seattle

(Photo by Ann-Marie Stillion/arttrek.com, 10-30-10, "Laugh More")

I met up with excellent editor and beautiful friend Sherri Schultz at the Rally to Restore Sanity in Seattle. When we got to Westlake the plaza was filled (more than 6,000 by the rally organizers count) and the mood was high. We laughed while standing for sanity and articulate and thoughtful debate. When the rally broke up at noon as the rain poured down, the "protesters" scattered and one lone sign remained leaning against a retail shop, a lost balloon bobbed nearby. The sign called out "Laugh More" and the yellow balloon's message, "Enough," fell with a whisper to cold blue pavement.

Lots of other signs made me laugh that day like "Hitler is Hitler" but "Laugh More" pretty much sums it up.

Churn :: American tech workers, a photography project

Visit the slideshow here
(Updated 8.16.10) Hiring workers while laying off others is defined as churn in the language of human resources. For tech workers, churn has long been a way of life, a undeniable fact of the global economy. For a few months now I have been photographing individual tech workers, learning their stories and documenting their too often silent journeys.

This photography project is meant to maintain the integrity of the broader tech worker story without compromising the individual job seeker: Each individual is photographed in a way to conceal rather than reveal identity. Anonymous text from photographic subjects will accompany the images.

Interested in participating as a photographic subject for Churn? Please contact me at annmarie@arttrek.com. At this time, the project is focused on the greater Seattle area.

If you or someone you know is laid off, or contracting with an uncertain future then consider participating as a potential photographic subject. If you are not in this geographic area but plan on traveling here and would like to be part of the project, please let me know. As support for the project becomes available, more subjects from other geographic locations will be included.

Beautiful Sue

I met Sue Doupe over a year ago. Full of energy and a great photographer with an established photography business in family portraits and headshots for actors & business in Seattle, her beauty inspires great photography. Also a skilled actor who has taught and performed, her natural sense of drama comes out in front of the camera as well as behind it.

Of late, Sue and Lisa Ahlberg and I started getting go together for fun with our cameras for a few hours a week somewhere in the Seattle. Business, children and jobs mean we can not do it for long but actually good things don't have to last long to be meaningful.

I took this picture with the Mamiya 330s I got from another photographer, Neil Lukas. It feels both heavy and light, complex and simple. Somehow I am so comfortable and excited about it in ways that the digital doesn't always provide for me these days. There doesn't seem to be a way to easily use the flash for now so I am concentrating on natural light.

I am planning on using the medium format almost exclusively for an upcoming project, facelessness, which will talk about displaced American tech workers and their foreign counterparts caught up in the current global struggle for jobs. Not an easy subject but an important human one which impacts so many aspects of life now: can we live globally and locally? Can we leave these most personal decisions to the massive impersonal corporate decision makers who often choose profit over balanced living? Can the marketplace really work for individuals to help us mind the heart and soul we need to survive once the bills are paid?

Angry faces of resistance

I went along today with Dave Hirning, one of the local leaders of MoveOn.org. MoveOn was supporting the 34th district's town hall on health care. Several hundred people turned out in support of health care while only 4 showed up to oppose. Are we really going to bow down to what appears to be crazy people or hired actors when it comes to our future with health care? More photos here

Today in Iran

There are so many great images coming from Iran. I tell everyone I meet not to miss this chance. Jump on Twitter and listen, learn.

No more evil empire baloney. Just search on #iranelection and start finding people to follow in Iran. This is for the whole world, not just the people inside their borders.

Happy Birthday Martin

Yesterday Seattle celebrated Martin Luther King Day. Afterwards, they went inside to warm up. Sitting with his grandfather, this little boy held his tiny handmade sign covered with images of Obama and shiny with tin foil.

Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, OOOOO

I can't stop crying, with joy. It's a new day.

Obama's brilliant mind and deep love is shining on every street in America.

Kenge Kenge: Obama For Change

"American people, citizens of the world. Here are songs and memories from Africa, drumming support for Barack Obama."

Artist and musicians around the world calling for change, singing for Obama.

Beautiful.

Presidential debates at the Meridian Market

Lucky for me I live in the heaven of Seattle: Green Lake. Check out the slide show above from our celebration of democracy on 55th St.

Last week, some of my neighbors including the great photographer Roseanne Olson and one of the latest MacArthur fellows, David Montgomery gathered to listen and watch.

Wally Wright, one of the proprietors at the Meridian Market, offered his place for the community to gather for the first presidential debates, and took a few pictures for posterity.

I haven't heard yet but I imagine we will be back together for the vice-presidential "I can see Russia from my house" debates this Thursday, Oct. 2.

Update: Game on! Wally just replied that "we couldn't pass up one of the most anticipated comedy events of the year." He'll be serving lasagna, caesar salad and other appetizers for debate night Oct. 2 at the Meridian Market again. Don't be late!

Peace is the way

My friend Kate in Arizona is part of a small Quaker community in Flagstaff. They asked me to design a new sign for their meeting house based on the words of the peace activist A.J. Muste.

HOPE and NOPE

Continuing the theme of the creativity streaming out from the Obama campaign, inspired by the man himself. I added news corpse widget in my side bar counting the days Palin is NOT talking to the press. Maybe she's just too busy in her private tanning booth in the governor's mansion. Or shooting wildlife from her private plane. Who knows? 

Shepard Fairey's iconic portrait of Obama  has inspired countless political portraits around the country. Now it has an evil opposite courtesy of Steve Sedam from Colorado. In the campaign office in Seattle, someone has redrawn the democratic candidate for governor ala Fairey. Fairey, a graphic artist, printmaker and street artist was proudly arrested in Denver for plastering his beautiful and provocative imagery on the walls of the mile high city. NOPE  aka McCain is being pinned down daily by the media for his lies-- share NOPE's link from the bravenewpac on youtube. (Correction thanks to Don Gray )

Yes, we can.

Eva (with update)

I have seen her for quite awhile on the #16 bus heading north on the evening commute. Always dressed in many colors and layers of cloth with a wild hairdo that morphed a little each time. One day we talked while waiting for the bus. I asked if I could photograph her. This week I had my camera.

Her full name is Eva Maria Cajetan Shirley Washington. We talked for couple of hours. She was on her way to the free classic movies at Seattle Center but first she had to go to her storage unit and get a chair she explained. She was born in Seattle on the south end in 1932, then known as Garlic Gulch for the Italians who lived there, now Rainier Beach. Soon she found herself living on her own. Not long after she learned how to live without a home.

The storage locker became a focus early on. She emphasizes that she has had homes and lots of jobs: Kelly girl, document worker at Boeing, dancer. She contracted tuberculosis in 1948 and remembers the World's Fair in 1962. She says Seattle, the world, was better back then. Last January, she landed back on the street. I asked where she goes at night. She just says "'out' after I get my night gear" and I take this to mean somewhere in park or nearby woods. I promise her that I will try and find out how to get her a place of her own. At 76, she needs a little help. She tells me often during our conversation that she would get far away from America if she could.

Update: I have talked with the two social service agencies since I first wrote this post. They are agencies which would be most likely to be of service to Eva. It turns out that Eva is well known to one, Solid Ground. She is known as a strong-willed, self determined woman and it is clear that she is respected. Not surprisingly, she doesn't easily take to rules and regulations and though she has many supporters refuses to utilize offers to find her a home. I will send her photo to one of these places where she gets her mail and seek to understand her story better. But it appears that Eva is doing fine, thank you very much.

Dylan, Obama and Drawing

Colliding and making a new world before our eyes: music, politics and art. Pinch me. When I saw the post on the Daily Kos saying that Dylan had endorsed Obama in an interview for The Times Online, I couldn't stop smiling. His interview wasn't about his lastest music tour though, it was about Dylan's art exhibit, which opened this week.

The interview Dylan did with Alan Jackson explains how and what the musician draws and paints a little insight into why." It's relaxing." Dylan's line and color speaks with the same timeless sense of authority as his music--he's never out to prove anything, he is just going to say it. One of the exhibit images is posted here.

'The times they are a changin' ranks as one of the great political songs along with 'Masters of war' in our lives as citizens--wherever the boundary lies. Get involved if you can with the Obama campaign and don't forget to draw and make music along the way.

How great it is to be alive when the likes of Dylan and Obama collide--will we see them together at some point?--one can only speculate.

Yes, we can...the times they are a changin'.

Campaigning for Obama

On Saturday I joined the Neighborhood Challenge to help register voters. The organizers needed someone to photograph the process and I tagged along with three UW students on their first attempt to get out the vote. Tomorrow I will put up a few of the images. I blog in the Daily Kos community, and have followed all the twists and turns of the long election season. One of the Pentagram designers has talked about the senator and his approach to design.