#Ferguson to #ICantBreathe

I really should take up fine art again because I need a more physical art for the sake of mental therapy. But I haven't seriously drawn or attempted to paint in decades. I'm a writer. Still, lately I have found myself making little digital graphic cards to capture moments during this stressful period of seeing justice fail. We have received less than two weeks apart the decisions of two Grand Juries not to indict white police officers who have killed unarmed black men, namely Mike Brown and Eric Garner.

While making these documentation cards and digital protest signs have given me a measure of relief, they're not the what a trained graphic designer would produce. And that's okay with me because sometimes the most effective signs at protests are amateurish, ones written crookedly on piece of a box cardboard.

All of these have been posted on Twitter or Facebook or both, but I thought it made sense to put them in one post on my blog. They have been presented it here in order of most recent to earliest.

The list includes the side eye for Pat Lynch's insensitive statement, "If you're speaking, then you can breathe!"; a picture of Missouri's attorney general's statement that the law that allowed Darren Wilson to escape indictment needs to be eliminated and that it's unconstitutional; a recap of part of a CNN discussion with Sunny Hostin and men who support the Staten Island Grand Jury's decision; a Van Jones quote; a snarky commentary on McCulloch's failure to prosecute Wilson; a poem, and a video. For a look at the cards in their actual size, click here.

© 2014, Nordette N. Adams