There’s a storm brewing in the heart of the Mission that has repercussions far beyond its eye at 24th and Capp Streets. It revolves around a mural painted by Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth (HOMEY). The mural—about 40 feet long and 10 feet high—depicts the contemporary struggle over borders and immigration.
In the heavily Latino Mission district, an increasingly heavy US hand is hunting down immigrants — whether they are crossing the border from Mexico or have lived in the US for years.

Part of that increased heavy-handedness is evident in the wall being built along the US-Mexico border, and consequently the HOMEY mural has scenes depicting the effect of the wall.
Slogans such as “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” are part of the mural. So is a small section depicting three Palestinians breaking through the wall Israel has built on Palestinian land; a wall that the International Court of Justice found to be illegal in 2004, but which has continually been added to since the ruling.

After submitting a grant proposal and a sketch to The San Francisco Arts Commission, HOMEY was awarded a Community Challenge grant.

Though the section depicting Palestinians breaking through the wall was not in the original sketch, the basic idea was included in the written portion of the grant.

The youthful artists were to receive a stipend for their summer’s work. For these youth, many of them former gang members, all of them considered high-risk, HOMEY provides a number of important services. The program removes the youth from the temptations and hopelessness of the streets empowering them with, according to their mission statement, skills, relationship building and community involvement. The stipend the youth were to have received would provide much needed funds for the new school year.

The HOMEY youth fulfilled their part of the bargain. They talked to people in the community and more than 200 community members came out to participate in the kick-off event. They refined the sketches. They painted. They transformed a bare wall into a beautiful piece of public art with a strong political message of unity and equality. However, the HOMEY youth have not yet been paid for all their hard work and their contribution to the community.

The Arts Commission was approached by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a subsidiary of B’nai Brith, whose mission is “To stop defamation of the Jewish people...to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).

According to Nancy Hernandez of HOMEY, members of the ADL and JCRC expressed to the Arts Commission that they felt threatened and unwelcome in the community and that there was no correlation between the wall along the US-Mexico border and the wall built on Palestinian land.

Jill Manton of the Arts Commission said that one of the specific objections voiced by the ADL and JCRC was that the shape of the break in the wall corresponded to the shape of Israel.

Another aspect of the perceived threat was that the three Palestinians were wearing kaffiyas, the traditional black and white headscarves that have become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and that one Palestinian’s face was partially covered by the kaffiya.

Some Palestinians cover their faces to hide their identity as members of a resistance movement and that image has been used widely to depict Palestinian resistors as terrorists. It was this partial coverage that formed the nexus of that complaint, according to Manton.

Based on the ADL-JCRC complaint, the Arts Commission asked HOMEY to stop work on the mural and froze HOMEY’s approved funds until the issue could be resolved. Representatives from HOMEY and the ADL spoke at the initial meeting and HOMEY agreed to submit a new sketch for a revised mural.

HOMEY director Rene Quiñonez said that HOMEY was in solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere. He added that despite overwhelming community support, including the many Palestinians and Arabs who live in the Mission, the group did not have the resources to take on a prolonged battle.

Moreover, Quiñonez said that HOMEY’s main concern was that the youth participants be paid for their work and the staff reimbursed for the supplies they provided in anticipation of receiving the approved grant funds.
Just receiving funding is not enough to save the mural intact, however. Because it is painted on public property the mural must be approved by the Arts Commission.

Currently, the mural is unfinished. The youth are unpaid. And community activists on both sides of the Palestine-Israel issue have conveyed their concerns to the Arts Commission.

Manton said that the Arts Commission was optimistic that the issue would be resolved successfully, as it was at a Sept. 19 meeting, and assured El Tecolote that nobody was asking that the depiction of Palestinians be removed from the mural. “That’s not on the table,” she said. Accordingly, the Palestinian section will remain, however, the revised mural will enlarge the break in the wall, uncover the face under the kaffiya, and depict olive trees.

The compromise is a victory for HOMEY, which was just awarded the Agape Foundation’s 2007 Enduring Visionary Prize. HOMEY will host a block party at the site at noon on Sept. 30 to celebrate the mural’s completion. See the Tecocalendario for details. ♦