Patrisse Cullors - The New York Times "Protesting U.S. Immigration Policies, Artists Aim for the Sky"

The New York Times | July 3, 2020

“The Thunderbirds and Blue Angels that President Trump plans to send flying over the National Mall this Fourth of July will have some stiff competition from a group of 70 artists looking to spread their own messages across the nation’s skies.

Two fleets of five skytyping planes each are set for takeoff across the country this Independence Day weekend armed with calls for the abolition of the immigrant detention in the United States as part of the project ‘In Plain Sight.’ (Developed from older skywriting technology, skytyping planes inject oil into their exhaust systems to produce a white smoke that is released into the sky by a computer-controlled system to produce precise letter-writing.) Phrases like ‘Care Not Cages,’ ‘Unseen Mothers’ and ‘Nosotras Te Vemos (We See You)’ will momentarily hover above 80 locations — including detention facilities, immigration courts, prisons, borders and historic sites like Ellis Island — before dissipating into the atmosphere. And some of the messages will be skytyped in nearly 20 languages, including Hindi, Kurdish, Lakota and Punjabi.

The project started a year ago when the artists Cassils and rafa esparza teamed up with a goal of forming a coalition of artists and activists determined to address the ills of mass detention. The initiative’s members include the lawyer Chase Strangio; a founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors; and the artist Hank Willis Thomas — alongside 10 partner organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Raices and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.”

Click the link at the top of the page to read more about “In Plain Sight.”

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