Hey Everyone!

Homeless Activists and Artists Team Up for Mission District Murals
San Francisco, California – Monday July 18, 2016

At 6:30pm on Friday, July 22nd the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) and the San Francisco Print Collective (SFPC) will unveil a collaborative mural in San Francisco’s Mission District. Come join us as we party along with our friends at Hospitality House in celebration of both of our powerful and beautiful murals.
Located in Clarion Alley near Valencia and 17th Street, the unveiling is timed with WRAP’s annual membership conference which will bring together national homeless activists for two days of strategizing and organizing.

WRAP was founded in 2005 by social justice groups across the West Coast to eliminate the root causes of homelessness and poverty, protect human rights and restore federal funding for affordable housing. Established in 2000, the SFPC is a printmaking collective that uses posters, murals, banners and billboards to support social justice organizing in the Bay Area.

Produced with input from WRAP members in Portland, Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, Berkeley, Sacramento and San Francisco, the SFPC mural brings the slogan, House Keys not Handcuffs, to life through art. WRAP members directed the overall theme while painting was done locally by the SFPC, printmaker Art Hazelwood, SF Art Institute student Michelle Williams and many community volunteers.

As a symbol of community organizing, the mural’s main figure is a woman who holds house keys and handcuffs in opposite hands, offering a choice to the person looking at the mural. We can support inequality and repression or we can fight for affordable housing and social justice. She looks to the future with a baby slung from her shoulders while masses of protestors move from nearby streets into the woman's body. The woman's arms reach across two sides of the mural, one half with today's violent reality while the other has the future we want to build.

The mural is located in one of San Francisco’s most popular art corridors, Clarion Alley, which is curated by a community-based, artist-run organization, the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP). Created in 1992, CAMP has produced over 700 murals on and around Clarion Alley with an emphasis on emerging artists, new styles and social justice. Since 2005 the SFPC has curated one space in the alley, producing work in collaboration with local anti-poverty activists organizing around issues such as immigration raids, gentrification, homelessness and Indian treaty rights.

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A New Mural in Clarion Alley

Over the past three months, Community Arts Program (CAP) staff and neighborhood artists have collaborated with the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) to speak directly to a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco.

Envisioning the potential for a mural began last March when CAP participants, staff, and community artists decided together that the mural must be reflective of a diverse San Francisco and Hospitality House’s core values of Community Power, Resilience, Dignity, Mutual Respect, and Self-Determination.

CAP staff Robert Chambers designed the mural and led participating artists into the five-day painting project in mid-June. The result is Clarion Alley’s newest mural proudly declaring that “We all deserve a healthy and safe community.”

Stages of creating a community mural [Photos by Emma Fenton-Miller]

Come join us as we celebrate the CAP’s new mural along with the unveiling of a new mural by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) on Friday, July 22nd at Clarion Alley off Valencia Street in the Mission District. Festivities will begin at 6:30PM with live music, spoken word performances, dancing, organizing and having a blast!