By Janica Torres
In an effort to counter hate speech, Tusk is calling on its audience to participate in a community art project we are launching coined: The Art of Dissent.
Each week, we will put out a call for our readers to send pictures to our Instagram and Twitter accounts. Then we’ll use our platform to proliferate and spread those messages of dissent. Tusk will dedicate a weekly post on our social media featuring artwork you send in, as well as highlight the art on our website.
Early in the semester, the CSUF chapter of Students for Quality Education (SQE) informed our campus about stickers popping up in our community promoting a white supremacist group called Patriot Front.
Joshua Fatahi, president of Students for Justice in Palestine, made a call for the administration to address the issue shortly after stickers started showing on campus.
“The message being sent is one of violent exclusion,” Fatahi said. “The administration is saying they’re supposed to protect us; we should hold them accountable to that.”
Tusk concurs with students such as SQE member, Gabi Cuna, who condemns these flyers that spread messages of hate.
“They should not be on campus,” said Cuna. “They promote hate speech. Fuck that noise.”
Although CSUF is a public institution that cannot block hate speech from breaching our campus, we want to make sure those sentiments are drowned out by messages of love, dissent, and resistance.
The Art of Dissent invites our readers to snap photos of artwork featuring messages that disrupt the status quo.
This artwork can take on any form. So go out and capture community art projects or graffiti murals in your neighborhood. Flex those ‘feminist as fuck’ stickers and buttons. Show us the radical shirts you rock that shake shit up!
We hope you will join us in spreading dissenting food for thought through our campus media outlet as an opportunity to share with us what your communities care about, and how we at CSUF collectively resist white supremacist patriarchal capitalistic culture.
Fists up! Tusks up!
