Introduction
"NOT ANOTHER RACIST KILLING," undated. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive.
Group commemorating victims of anti-Asian violence, June 23, 1992. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Protest banner against police brutality, c. 1994–1995. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive.
“Who picks up the placards after the protest? Who stores them and catalogs them? Who makes them public again for research and understanding?”
— Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee, Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now
Protest movements are crucial democratic tools for demanding change. In the broadest sense, they allow us to gather publicly and express our opinions. More precisely, strikes, civil and uncivil public demonstrations, and occupations of space allow us to mobilize communities against perceived inequities and injustices, bear witness to traumatic events, and publicly object to social- and government-sanctioned acts of violence and oppression.
Many of us are familiar with the emotions that arise when injustice and violence occur—anger, sadness, and urgency, to name a few. These feelings often inspire us to grab a spare piece of cardboard or fabric and scrawl a message that encapsulates what we urgently wish others would hear. The protest signs we create represent a unique way of documenting history and play an important role in creating a legacy of activism and mobilization.
Since 1986, the members of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities have been dedicated to the ongoing fight for racial and economic justice, specifically within poor and working-class Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City. Hundreds of protests have taken place since the organization’s birth, and an exponential number of protest signs have been made by CAAAV members and allies. These protest signs embody the wide range of organizing efforts that CAAAV has engaged in for the last four decades. Given the ephemeral and highly personal quality of protest signs, many such items are lost to time. But photographs of these protests, preserved in CAAAV’s digital archive, offer a way to preserve and remember these objects in the digital sphere.
Via visual and historical analysis of select photographs in the CAAAV digital archive, this online exhibition explores the relationship between activism and visual culture and demonstrates the important role of the archive in providing access to materials that document activist history. The twenty-some photographs in this exhibition represent two important themes that are present throughout the entire archive: memorialization and solidarity. Protests have offered a way for Asian American communities to commemorate, grieve, and bear witness to violent crimes and killings. Images from anti-racism and anti-war protests demonstrate the critical role that community alliances—particularly with other communities of color—have within CAAAV’s history of direct action campaigns.
Many of the protest signs and scenes depicted in these photographs are reminiscent of those resulting from the recent series of highly reported violent attacks against Asians and Asian Americans. It is more important than ever to provide public access to these photographs—and thus, social histories of marginalized communities— and help others continue the work of building activist legacies.