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Rise Up! The Art of Protest

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Rise Up! The Art of Protest
Jo Rippon
Palazzo

Developed in collaboration with Amnesty International and with a foreword by Chris Riddell, Rise Up! celebrates the human right of peaceful protest. At the same time it encourages young people to engage in such protest for causes they believe in and to stand up for freedom.

Arranged thematically there are posters relating to the on-going fight for gender equality, civil rights, LGBTQ rights,

refugee and immigrant rights, peace, and the environment.

First come images of protest posters going back to the early decades of the twentieth century when women’s struggle for equality gave rise to the suffrage movement, which became popular across Europe at that time

coming right up to 2017 with the official poster for the 2017 women’s March on Washington but used around the world, in protest at comments made by Trump that many felt disrespected the rights of women.

Each theme is introduced by an apposite and powerful quote, such as this one from Nelson Mandela for the racial equality section, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

As you turn the pages you cannot help but feel both humbled and inspired. We seem to be living through a time when ever increasing numbers of people, especially the young, are politically aware, but there also seems to be more than ever to protest about. In the last couple of years I’ve carried pro refugees banners, anti BREXIT placards, of late proudly wear my pro EU sweatshirt and trainers, and have joined protests about climate change. I consider myself fortunate to be able to do so without any risk to myself, unlike many of those who carried some of the posters whose images are included in this enormously exhilarating, empowering book.

A copy, preferably several, should be in all schools and colleges; it’s a wonderful demonstration of the way in which a combination of creativity and bold resistance can help bring about positive changes that ultimately benefit everyone.

Refugees

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Refugees
Brian Bilston and José Sanabria
Palazzo

Here’s a book to make you think hard no matter what your feelings on the topic.

Two opposing viewpoints on migration and the refugee story are presented in Brian Bilston’s poem Refugees.

The first presents the reaction of separatist-minded individuals – all too many sadly – who think badly of refugees deeming them scroungers and wasters after an easy life in a new country: an attitude I fear in the fractured society of the UK at least, that has been fuelled by the current BREXIT thinking of those advocating our leaving the EU. ‘Go back to your own country’ is what people seeking asylum might be told having risked life and limb to find a safe haven.

Read the other way however,

the poem offers a warm welcome to displaced people needing asylum: understanding, compassion and kindness are the order of the day in this alternative viewpoint.

Now I am totally of the second view and have taught countless children from refugee and asylum seeking families from as far afield as Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Pakistan in schools around London gradually coming to know what traumas the families have undergone. More recently, I have befriended one Syrian family who have come to live in Stroud, the town where I currently spend much of the time.

However I am fortunate – one of the ‘haves’ with my own house, car etc. and have seldom been without anything I have wanted let alone needed, so really who am I to condemn those less fortunate – the ‘have-nots’ let’s say, who have little themselves and fear losing what little they have to others – the outsiders.
It is far less easy to understand the prejudice of the powerful and affluent who prey on those suspicions and fears to serve their own interests.

The dystopian world illustrator José Sanabria creates in his first six spreads where refugees arrive in an armada of hot air balloons and guardians of the ‘anywhere’ homeland are depicted as penguin-like police,

distance the dilemma from any particular reality, giving the reader space to ponder the topic transnationally. Those for the second part show open-armed residents welcoming the newcomers with offerings of food, drink, flowers, toys and more.

This poem has already been included in an anthology of poetry entitled From Syria with Love. Presented as it is now in this superbly illustrated book, Refugees offers a powerful and pertinent message for readers/listeners of all ages from KS1 upwards to adults, some of whom might one hopes, start to question their own attitudes.

No matter what, the book ought to be shared, discussed and pondered upon by all.