 | | The Linda Lindas rocked the Los Angeles Public Library, as well as the Internet, with "Racist, Sexist Boy."YouTube |
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Punk-Rock Teens' Anti-Hate Anthem |
[This is an excerpt from a longer story. Read the rest here.] |
It can be comforting, in times like these, to be slapped cold by undeniable truth. And so it is with the Linda Lindas, a band made up of four Asian and Latina teens and tweens — Bela, Eloise, Lucia, Mila — who this week had a clip of a recent performance at the Cypress Park branch of the Los Angeles Public Library go viral. The song is "Racist, Sexist Boy," and it pulls no punches, switching back and forth between Eloise, 13, singing in an urgently aggrieved fashion ("You have racist, sexist joys/We rebuild what you destroy") and the drummer, Mila, who is 10, whose sections are quick and finger-waving ("You turn away from what you don't wanna hear"). |
The Linda Lindas have generated a significant wave of attention in the three years since the band was founded. A couple of the members' parents are culture luminaries: Martin Wong, a founder of the tastemaking Asian-American cultural magazine Giant Robot; and Carlos de la Garza, a mixer and engineer for bands including Paramore and Best Coast. The band is beloved by Kathleen Hanna, who selected it to open one of Bikini Kill's reunion shows; and it has appeared in the recent Netflix film "Moxie." The band's self-titled 2020 EP is sharp punk-inflected indie pop. And this new song, which Eloise said was inspired by a real-life experience, is a needs-no-explanation distillation of righteous anger. It's severely relatable, so shout along with the band: "Poser! Blockhead! Riffraff! Jerk face!" |
 | | Houston artist Reginald C. Adams poses for a portrait in front of a reflection of his 5,000 square foot mural honoring Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas.Montinique Monroe for The New York Times |
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Honoring Juneteenth Through Art |
[This is an excerpt from a longer story. Read the rest here.] |
More than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slavery was abolished in Texas. |
This June, Galveston will dedicate a 5,000-square-foot mural, titled "Absolute Equality," on the spot where Gen. Gordon Granger issued the orders that resulted in the freedom of more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas. The Southern states refused to obey the Proclamation during the war. |
The date of the Texas order was June 19, 1865, which is now celebrated around the country as Juneteenth (or Freedom Day, Emancipation Day or Jubilee Day). Some companies are recognizing the day as a paid holiday, and there are efforts to make it a federal one. |
The mural "sprinkles the hard bitter truth with sugar," said Reginald C. Adams, a Houston artist who was commissioned to create the art. "The sugar is the beauty and energy of the mural, while the bitter truth is that for two and a half years, people were held in slavery against a federal declaration." |
The theme of the brightly colored work is "absolute equality," drawing from the words used in the General Order No. 3, which officially ended slavery in Texas. It reads, in part: "This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor." The entire order is written at the bottom of the mural. |
The mural includes the story of an enslaved Moorish navigator who was shipwrecked off the coast of Galveston in 1528, the first recorded nonnative slave to arrive in the territory, said Samuel Collins III, a historian and co-chairman of the Juneteenth Legacy Project. Many more would follow. |
The mural moves on to Harriet Tubman and Lincoln, who is holding a chain with a broken manacle. And there is General Granger seated, signing an order giving the Union control of Texas, which led to the Juneteenth order. Behind stands one white Union soldier and four soldiers from the United States Colored Troops. |
The story told on the mural ends with a parade of people marching (including one in a wheelchair) and an astronaut with a clenched fist on his or her uniform — all of them moving toward the goal of absolute equality. It also includes a section with artwork by local young people. |
"This is more than just a mural — it's more than just paint on the wall," Mr. Collins said. "I think this corner has been transformed into an outdoor classroom." |
The mural has some accompanying educational elements, including a written and spoken word poetry contest for middle- and high-school students and undergraduates in the Houston area explaining what "absolute equality" means to them. |
Visitors will also be able to use their phone to scan portions of the mural to learn more, through augmented reality videos, about the stories portrayed. |
Mr. Collins was the driving force behind the mural. Born in Galveston, he has researched Black history, particularly in Texas. Although there are commemorations of Juneteenth in Galveston — it was declared a state holiday in 1979 — Mr. Collins felt more was needed. |
He read an article in The Galveston News by Sheridan Mitchell Lorenz, a philanthropist who lives in Austin but has deep ties to Galveston. In the piece, written shortly after the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, Ms. Lorenz noted that as a white woman, "I'm complicit if I don't use my voice to acknowledge and speak out against systemic racism." |
Mr. Collins reached out to Ms. Lorenz about his mural idea because he liked her article, and knew that her family owned the retail space Old Galveston Square and adjoining parking lot. |
That parking lot is where the Osterman building housing Union Army headquarters once stood and where General Granger issued the order. And there was a huge blank wall. Mr. Collins proposed an idea to Ms. Lorenz: What about putting a mural there depicting the scene? |
"I got chills thinking about that," said Ms. Lorenz, as she recalled receiving Mr. Collins's email. "I thought, 'How come we didn't think of that sooner — what an opportunity!'" |
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