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Photo © Jane Weissman When Women Pursue Justice, 2005
498 Greene Ave. at Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn
45’ x 72’, acrylic on concrete Rikki Asher (Margaret Sanger), Leola Bermanzohn (Emma Goldman), Janet Braun-Reinitz (designer, Shirley Chisholm), Maria Dominguez (Dolores Huerta), Lady Pink (Alice Paul), Nina Lasky (Angela Davis), Lucy Mahler (Audre Lorde), Kristi Pfister (Dorothy Day, face of Shirley Chisholm), Kristin Reed (Fannie Lou Hamer), Rochelle Shicoff (Guerrilla Girls), Tova Snyder (Wilma Mankiller), Nina Talbot (Betty Friedan & Gloria Steinem), Susan Togut (Clara Lemlich), Jane Weissman (project director)
WHEN WOMEN PURSUE JUSTICE
When Women Pursue Justice takes the form of a political demonstration, populated by women who over the past 150 years have worked for social change in the United States. The ninety women in the mural often risked life and liberty to achieve voting rights, civil rights and racial justice, health and reproductive rights, environmental justice and protection, and rights for workers, immigrants and gays.
The mural is dedicated to Shirley Chisholm, the late congresswoman and presidential candidate, and is located Bedford-Stuyvesant—her birthplace and the district that she represented. She is joined by placard portraits of “movement leaders” painted by the 12 principal artists.
Small portraits of seventy-six women activists appear throughout the mural. In the top left corner are nine nineteenth-century ancestors who inspired twentieth-century activism. Their accomplishments give truth to the words Susan B. Anthony penned shortly before her death in 1906 at age eighty-six: "Failure is impossible."
When Women Pursue Justice, led by Janet Braun-Reinitz (mural designer and lead artist) and Jane Weissman (project director and participating artist), was a collaboration with the 12 principal artists, five high school girls who worked as paid apprentices, and over 30 volunteers and community residents.
In 2006, Artmakers sponsored three different exhibitions based on the mural and published the 48 page illustrated catalog When Women Pursue Justice. The catalog contains an interpretive essay by Julia Watson, a key to the mural, and short biographies of the mural’s 90 women and the lead artists.
The Women of Nostrand and Greene, a film by Dave Reinitz (H2F Comedy Productions, 2008) documents the creation of the mural.
The catalog and video can be ordered from Artmakers and cost $7 and $15, respectively.
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