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Amidst the craziness of last week, I forgot to write up my part in an innovative new educational exercise created by social workers in Missouri. On Friday afternoon, Bay Area community leaders and organizers gathered at the Garden House Hotel in Palo Alto to be given an alias, as well as a background history. We were then ushered into one of the conference rooms to meet other members of our “family”: in my case, I was Pablo Perez, a 23-year old who had abruptly become head of the family when my divorced Dad was thrown in jail, leaving me to care for my two young teen sisters and their baby sister. The rules were as follows: we had to survive for 4 weeks (15mins of real-time each) below the poverty line, negotiating the kafka-esque labyrinth of social services, state benefits and pawn shops while ensuring that all household members were fed and the utilites weren’t shut off. The perimeter of the conference room was arranged with tables representing the different organizations we needed to visit: employment agency, bank, pawnshop, supermarket, utility company, daycare, police station – and to add an extra headache-inducing element, we could only move from table to table by surrendering a ‘transport pass’, which we had to buy when we ran out. This was to reflect the proportion of benefits that end up wasted on expensive local transport when people try to make their way out homeless shelters for real.
Here’s a video of the same poverty simulation being run in Pittsburgh to give you more of a sense of what it felt like to participate:
Needless to say, what started out as an interesting interactive exercise turned into a stressful, exhausting nightmare as we were deliberately kept waiting, hamstrung by misfiled paperwork and long queues everywhere we went. Some particular highlights included being robbed of a transport pass by none other than local council member Greg Scharff, or of $20 by a homeless outreach specialist. I might add that both were in character at the time, but the irony wasn’t lost on me. Here’s a full write-up of the afternoon by the local Palo Alto Daily, including a description of the above incidents:
Dan Archer, a social issues cartoonist from Mountain View, stood befuddled in the middle of the room after his character was robbed of his cash on the way to the grocery. It was the same money he had spent so long obtaining in the previous week that he was late picking up his child at day care.
All in all, it was an excellent way to raise awareness of a vital issue that applies to communities nationwide, far more powerful and resonating than a lecture or article, and further proof that interactivity is a key trigger for engaging with an audience on what some might deem “dry” topics. For more information, visit visit Step Up Silicon Valley’s website at www.catholiccharitiesscc.org/stepupsv/ or the Downtown Streets Team’s website at www.streetsteam.com.
Last but not least, here’s the full video of comics journalist Joe Sacco‘s acceptance speech of his highly deserved Ridenhour Prize for Investigative Journalism. Interesting to see the stigma against the term “graphic novel” in his closing comments, as opposed to “comic book”, which he prefers. Surely it’s a formal question of length (comic books being serialised 28pp saddle stiched), while a graphic novels are self-contained, 80pp+ works? As ever, your comments are welcome below.
Friday, May 8th 1970 marked the 40th anniversary of the Hardhat Riots, the subject of my upcoming graphic novel. Read all about it on the Hardhats page, together with some new photo evidence from the day that recently surfaced. Also, I’ve created an official press release for the Honduran Coup comic on the Honduras page – the link is so please RT it and share it around!
Here’s my page from the Stanford Graphic Novel Project’s latest book, based on the amazing true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the few survivors of both of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in the final days of WW2. Yamaguchi was actually at ground zero (within 3km of the blast’s epicentre) for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations, and his testimony as to the after-effects and devasatation wrought by the blasts is truly unique. The above page is thanks to Topher, one of head thumbnailers and project managers, who gave me the Chris Ware-esque thumbnailed blueprint. Although I baulked at first, it was actually a lot of fun to pencil and I think the multiple actions contrasted with the near-silence of the page works especially well. More on the class’s amazing journey from conceiving of the graphic novel to getting it off to the printers (fingers crossed) within 6 months to follow next week. Once it’s done, that is. Here’s my original post about the project.
A bit more information on Monday’s big news about my Knight Fellowship: it’s essentially a year-long stint at Stanford university during which fellows are expected to develop a project thesis on a specific area of innovation within their journalistic field. Not to mention having full access to the gold mine of Stanford’s classes and resources, fellow Knights and students/faculty. My pitch, as you’ll see from the impressive line-up of project summaries, will involve the creation of a rich content digital comic, taking full advantage of the flexibility of the web’s infinite canvas along with its capacity to stream video, animation and include interactive elements. Once the fellowship begins in September I’ll start chronicling the development of the project as I tie its disparate elements together.
Speaking of innovation, one project that’s been slowly percolating over the last several months has been my work with Fulbright fellow Olga Trusova on raising awareness about human trafficking through digital/interactive comics, in conjunction with the International Organization of Migration (IOM). Olga’s been in the field since the end of last year, visiting NGOs in her native Ukraine and interviewing staff and victims who have dealt with the reality of trafficking first-hand. She then sends me her detailed notes which I translate into comics. We recently premiered the first comic at an NGO meeting in Kiev and are currently revising the artwork to incorporate the feedback, so I’ll post some finish panels sometime next week.
Karla Lara performing at Sunrise Cafe, SFO
Last week I made it down to the Sunrise Cafe in the mission to hear Honduran artist, performer and activist Karla Lara sing and report back on the situation in Honduras. It was a great chance to meet members of the resistance (local to SFO and Tegucigalpa), as well as promote the comic, which went down really well. I’ll be attending the Sunday May 16th meeting at the Berekely Fellowship of Unitarians to sell more comics and talk to delegates fresh from Honduras, so save the date if you’re in the bay area – more details to come. If this is the first you’ve heard of the Honduran comic, then click here to find out more.
The rest of the piece will be published next week by Religion Dispatches. As ever, see below for sources:
Panel 4: Rosen’s quote from this 2005 New Yorker article. The comment about Rosen’s past as an espionage defendant concerns his August 4, 2005 Indictment on suspicion of passing US govt information to Israel. Read more here.
Panel 5: quote from p2 of Kenen’s book, Israel’s Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington, available to read online here.
Big news: I am delighted, proud and excited to say that I have been awarded a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford 2010-11. For more, here’s the official press release. More on this when I come back down to earth.
At last a full reply (at the very bottom of this post) from Chris Bryant, the Minister responsible for the Overseas Territories on the subject of the Chagossians’ right to return. To read my comic on the issue, go here. Meanwhile, Chris Ware, the visionary comics artist behind Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth is in the news for his recent prank cover art for the new Fortune 500 list, which is surprisingly pointed for a graphic novelist who usually steers clear of politics: here are two highlights, including Guantanamo prisoners and an ‘exploitation 
factory’. For the full story and the entire cover art, go here. As always, the piece has attracted its fair share of fans and critics, the latter of whom rails:
“My main objection is that this kind of smarmy, artsy-fartsy assertion of intellectual/political superiority only reaches the people who already know about and are convinced of corruption in the American economy. What’s the point if the people who need to make changes are only offended or don’t even “get it”? Mr. Ware would do better to donate half of what must be a lucrative income to charity, write letters, hold a sign up in front of a capitol building, and or spend his lunch hour serving in a soup kitchen.”
Interesting point, most deflated in my opinion by the flawed suggestions (let’s not even go into the ‘lucrative income’ part) for enacting grass-roots change, but it does beg the question: is laughter the goal of satire, even at the expense of informing a
viewer? It reminded me of a recent piece in the Guardian about the golden era of British TV satire, spearheaded by Spitting Image (see left for a quick intro to the show). Again though, this sort of entertainment could only appeal to those already familiar with the political hot topics of the day, and could arguably be said to only flatter the egos of the same people it sighted in its satirical crosshairs (see 4mins 10 secs). Can visual news media be informative/educational AND entertaining/humorous? Leave your comments/link suggestions below.
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Here’s the opening to my latest 3-page piece on the pro-Israel lobby in Washington – all of it should be up at Religion Dispatches in the next few days.
Sources: Panel 2: Attendance info from AIPAC’s website here, Clinton’s quote from the State Dept. website.
News, as ever, is below.
Recientemente he visto más visitas desde algunos países hispanohablantes, en lo que imagino tiene que ver con mi cómic sobre el golpe de estado hondureño. Si este es el caso, quiere ir aquí
para la versión española. Y no se olvida ir a mi pagina de facebook, en donde puedes registrar como seguidor de Archcomix para poder ponerse al día con todo mis cómics nuevos.
For the rest of you, see above for the latest hardhats panels. Sneak preview of the now almost finished AIPAC comic coming up tomorrow.
For more information about this story, or to read from the beginning, visit the Hardhats page. New visitors to the site, become an Archcomix fan here, or order your hard copy of the Honduran coup comic using the button the sidebar. News below.
Centre-spread in last week's Arbejderen from Denmark
Almost all of the Honduran comic orders have now been shipped, so if you haven’t received your copy by the end of the month then get in touch. Unless of course you live in the UK/Europe, in which case you’ll just have to wait until that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland stops erupting. Also, please let me know what you think – I’d love to hear any comments you have. I’m currently working on an iphone app for my comics, and am mulling options for an ipad app too. In the meantime, checkout the lower-tech, hard copy of the Danish paper that ran the last part of the comic last week.
Click here to read a new page from Yiddishland over at the Social Histories page.
