Giant puppets, colorful quilts, live music and dancers all sound like they belong at a festival. But this year, on the Central Coast, they were part of protests against the Trump administration.
At a Watsonville No Kings march in June, the group Estrellas de Esperanza danced to honor immigrants. Founder Ruby Vasquez introduced the performance to the crowd as an act of protest.
“Dance is resistance,” she said through a loudspeaker. “Dance is a political statement.”
The performance was one of several examples of local art in activism this year.
In Santa Cruz, the October No Kings protest included a large group of ukulele players made up of members of the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz and the Bonny Doon Uke Group. One of the musicians, Steve Cray, said the group had been playing on a street corner downtown for hours.
They rotated through songs about hope, and some of the passing protesters stopped to watch or join the singing.
PUPPETS
As the ukulele players sang, five protesters carried a huge dove past, swaying to the music.
It was one of six giant puppets at this march. Five were made by local artists and volunteers as part of the group Indivisible Santa Cruz.
Artist Maureen Davidson volunteered her studio for the creation of a Lady Justice puppet.
“ This has been an honor and a privilege and so much fun,” she said. “I recommend making art with friends for a purpose.”
There were two giant “doves of peace” at the march. Both had outstretched fabric wings and took five people to operate.
Janet Fine, who was helping opperate one of them, said the art made her proud of her community.
“ As soon as we got her up and the wings took flight all the hair on my arms just went up,” she said.” There was kind of this power and this sense of hope that we all need right now.”
The other dove was not affiliated with Indivisible Santa Cruz. Puppet maker Grant Wilson found it on the street more than 20 years ago.
”We don't know who made it,” he said. “It was at anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco, and it got abandoned there. So it's an orphan dove.”
He added that seeing the puppets and other art forms in local protests gives him hope.
“ There's a lot of handmade signs, which is also wonderful.”
QUILTS
Not all of those handmade signs were paper. A group called the Pop Tarts has been quilting in protest.
Lori Camner was holding a quilt with ice cubes on it that said, “Stop tyranny, cruelty. Melt ice.”
“ It's my most recent one,” she said. She’s made six so far. “I thought that was the message that we needed to hear this particular week, was to stop the tyranny and stop the cruelty and to melt ice.”
Pop Tart co-organizer Cate Munch has been quilting for 50 years and hosted a workshop to teach other local fabric artists how to make the signs. Now, the Pop Tarts pop up at marches, overpasses and street corners.
At the Aptos library, she and two other Pop Tarts lay out several of the quilts.
“ Most of them look like traditional quilts with a colorful border around them, and the center has whatever the message is,” Munch says. “We make it as clear as possible and as big as possible, because that's the point of a protest sign.”
The quilts say things like “stop the cruelty” and “we will not be silent.”
Suzanne Shaw points out her favorite that she’s made, which says, “vaccines cause adulthood.”
“ I was a pediatric nurse practitioner seeing the benefit of vaccines when I first started in the '70s,” she says. She’s concerned about the attack on science.
The women say they want to stand up for immigrants and people who feel afraid to leave their houses. Munch says approaching the situation with quilts softens things.
“ How non-threatening is a group of old ladies with quilts,” she says. “I think that's valuable right now… we don't play into anybody's fantasy of a riot.”
Some of the Pop Tarts have been protesting for a long time. They talk about the '60s and '70s, but they say this is different.
“ This is not comparable,” says Shaw. “Never have we had so much damage done to our institutions. This is way over the top.”
Munch agrees. “Yeah, that was the kiddie pond.”
The Pop Tarts will have several of their quilted signs on display at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds in February as part of the Pajaro Valley Quilt Guild’s annual show.
