Looking Within
Looking within is about looking within yourself to see what kind of justice YOU can bring into the world.
Justice
The unfortunate euthanization
This piece of art is in regard to the horrors and injustice of FWC workers killing 34 pythons including a pregnant boa due to a misidentification which they were told beforehand to be careful since it was a snake the owner, Chris Coffee, was allowed to legally own. This massacre was all recorded by the FWC workers after coming to Coffee’s house unannounced, killing the snakes with a bolt gun that Coffee wasn’t able to rehome in time, even taking pictures with the dead bodies like a reward.
Unseen
My art piece is meant to bring justice and awareness to those living in poverty. In the picture, you can see people with blank faces walking past an alley that has a homeless girl sitting there with her head down. The reason I chose for the pedestrians to have no faces is because it represents how people are so busy and caught up with their own life, they then a blind eye to those living in poverty.
Social justice
My entry discusses hate crimes and how we can prevent them. Not many people are educated about hate crimes, so my film discusses how we can stop them and end them as soon as possible. My film provides pictures of protests against hate crimes.
Monkey
Life is hard enough, but we have to continue to combat issues that shouldn’t exist to begin with. My submission is about racism.
The Police Officer!
When I was 12 years old, I went to a summer camp (a place I went to from 8 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday) at Allan Witt Aquatics Complex and that particular day, different dispatchers (like firemen, police officers, etc) came to teach us the importance of safety. Me and the remainder of the children were directed outside where we were shown the police car and firetruck. We were instructed to only look and walk around the outside of the vehicle, with anticipation we eagerly scrambled into a single file line. Once it came around to my turn, as I was toward the back of the line, one of the staff members, who had an issue with me, the reason still unknown to this day, shoved me into the cop car and closed the door. As a result, I climbed through the middle and tried to exit through the front door on the driver’s side. Upon exiting, the officer saw me and drew his gun, yelling at me to get out of his car and put my hands in the air. The gun remained drawn, pointed directly at me for several minutes, with numerous younger kids watching. After the incident, none of the staff present did anything or comforted me, I didn’t tell anyone the full story until a couple of months afterward. That instance, unfortunately one of several, has shaped how I view the world and thought that it‚and be a good example to bring more awareness; especially coming across it at such a young age.
The Exterminator
Such a large number of bees and other pollinators are being unnecessarily killed due to toxic pesticides that so many people are unaware can contaminate them in a number of ways. I hope to educate people and draw attention to the everyday dangers bees may face, the importance of bees to the planet and food supplies, and how non-harmful pesticides can be so impactful
Smoky World
Air pollution has been a prevalent problem throughout my life, and respiratory health concerns should be taken seriously. My childhood home was located in a high-pollution area, and I would suffer from health problems when I lived there.
Justice is (not) Blind
People of color, poor people, and other minorities are disproportionately criminalized, which is unjust.
Bulletproof
It’s incredibly disheartening how school shootings are almost normalized now. They happen, we talk about them for a few days, and then everyone goes back to normal until it happens again. No child should lose their life to violence, especially not the kind that could be easily prevented by gun control laws.