OurStory Quilts: Human Rights Stories in Fabric

I opened the book to flip through the pages for a first look. When I came to the image for Jesus Wept, I stopped. And I just cried. 

The quilt made by Michelle Flamer of Philadelphia, PA, reproduces the 16th Street Baptist Church stained glass window after it was bombed in 1963, killing four little girls. The window was intact, save for the face of Jesus.

Quilts can tell a story with power and impact. It's not the first time a quilt brought me to tears. 

Quilts also inform and inspire.

I am currently reading a new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. This uninformed, damaged woman who accepted the status quo understanding of people of color self-invented herself and became a champion for peace, civil rights, and forgotten men and women. 

Gabriele Di Tota of Melbourne, FL, used Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the background to her portrait. The former First Lady chaired the United Nations commission that created this document.

Quilts create empathy.

Ryleigh was designated male but identified as a girl. Birgit E. Ruotsala of Green Bay, WS, portrays a joyful Ryleigh embracing her identity. 6% of the population identify as transgender, but they struggle to be "free to be me." 

Quilts celebrate iconic leaders. Meryl Ann Butler of Norfolk, VA chose to portray the 14th Dalai Lama, champion for peace and human rights.  Butler used an amazing fabric pointillism technique.

OurStory Quilts: Human Rights Stories in Fabric by Susanne Miller Jones is filled with beautiful and impressive art quilts that champion the struggle for inclusiveness, equality, and fairness. Today hard-won gains are being threatened at home and across the world. The fight to protect and expand human rights is an ongoing process. 

The book is divided into sections. 

The first addresses the basic needs, common to all people. 

The second spotlights basic rights. 

The third considers the disenfranchised whose rights have been denied. 

The fourth honors iconic leaders in the human rights movements. 

The fifth celebrates Human Rights Events that spurred action. 

The Sixth tells the personal tales of the artists and the seventh celebrates diversity and similarities.

I was thrilled to see so many of my personal heroes appear among the juried quilts. Each quilt is presented on a full page with a full page essay about its subject. I am always interested in learning more about the artists techniques in creating the quilts.

Like her previous book, HerStory Quilts, OurStory raises awareness of the struggle for inclusive rights and celebrates achievements through thoughtful and inspiring art quilts. 

I was given a free book in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

OURstory Quilts: Human Rights Stories in Fabric

by Susanne Miller Jones

Schiffer Publications

115 color photos

hardcover $34.99

ISBN 13: 9780764357978 

from the publsher

Today’s renewed interest in our basic rights has become part of popular culture and breaking news. From the Mexican border to the #MeToo movement, these images made in fabric are amazing, colorful, and thought provoking. The images offer a new perspective and answer the new demand for attention. These 65 quilts focus on the history of the battles for human, civil, and political rights, and the continuing developments today. They also celebrate the heroes. The heroes who fought for rights, as well as the events that have drawn the attention of news media and the public. Personal stories offer moving reminders and encouragement for future rights successes. The quilts are created by 47 artists from six countries.

About the author

Susanne Miller Jones has been creating art all her life. Fiber art opened many doors and introduced her to fiber artists around the world who have become friends through the magic of social media. Her work is in private collections, has been exhibited in national shows, and has been featured in several books. She is the author of Fly Me to the Moon: An Art Quilt Journey and HERstory Quilts: A Celebration of Strong Women. Jones is a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates and of the Quilt Alliance and serves on the Sacred Threads committee.

Whose Water Is It Anyway? Taking Water Protection into Public Hands

I have read the headlines and news articles:

In Detroit, surviving without water has become a way of life, 2018 Bridge Magazine article headline
ACLU Petitions State to Stop Detroit Water Shut Offs, 2019 Michigan Public Radio story
Water Shut Offs Could Reach 17,000 Households, 2018 Detroit Free Press article
According to the EPA, an affordable water bill costs about 4.5 percent of a household’s monthly income, but metro Detroiters are paying around 10 percent. 2019 Curbed Detroit article 

My own water/sewer bill in the Detroit suburbs has doubled over ten years. We have installed low water toilets and appliances and we don't water the grass in summer. We have four rain barrels to water the gardens.

Luckily, we can pay our water bill. I can't imagine how people survive without reliable, clean, tap water. People who can't afford water like thousands in Detroit--and across the world. People like those in Flint and Oscoda other Michigan communities whose tap water is polluted with lead and PFAS.

In Michigan, surrounded by the Great Lakes, and embracing 11,000 lakes, we still don't provide clean water to all. In Osceola, Michigan Nestle pumps out our water for $200 a year, but our citizens in vulnerable communities suffer. Where is the justice in this?

Author and water activist Maude Barlow has fought for water justice since 1985 when NAFTA gave Americans access to Canadia's water resources. Alarmed at the implications, Barlow questioned, who owns the water?

In Whose Water Is It Anyway? Barlow celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Blue Communities Project. She describes her personal journey as an activist. She explains how water became privatized and the impact world-wide. Finally, Barlow presents the Blue Communities Project which has been adopted across the world, putting water back into the hands of the people, with sample documents to help local citizens begin their own campaign.

Companies have bought water rights and pumped the groundwater dry across the world. And all those plastic bottles have created a nightmare. Not just as trash--Barlow shares that bottled water testing shows most contain micro-plastic!

I was surprised to learn that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights did not include access to water as a basic right because seventy years ago it was assumed all people had and would have access to water. Today we know that water is not limitless. Barlow tells how privatization of water takes local water away from citizens to be sold for a profit. In 2015 the UN finally addressed the human right to water. Included is the statement that governments must provide clean water to people, "must refrain from any action or policy, such as water cut-offs," and are obliged to prevent businesses from polluting a community's water.

But to fulfill that promise, citizens must claim the power over their water. Barlow's book tells us how to do that.

I received access to a free ebook through the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. With its simple, straightforward approach, the movement has been growing around the world for a decade. Today, Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Montreal are just a few of the cities that have made themselves Blue Communities. 

In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world. Concluding with a step-by-step guide to making your own community blue, Maude Barlow’s latest book is a heartening example of how ordinary people can effect enormous change.

the authorMaude Barlow is the international bestselling author of 19 books, including the bestselling Blue Water trilogy. She is the honorary chair of the Council of Canadians and of the Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is on the executive committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and a councillor with the World Future Council. In 2008–09, she served as senior advisor on water to the 63rd president of the UN General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN. In 2005, she won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, the “alternative Nobel.” She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Whose Water Is It, Anyway?: Taking Water Protection into Public Hands
Maude Barlow
ECW Press
Publication September 2019
$19.50 CAD
ISBN: 9781770414303

Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times

I was attracted to Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times because of the outstanding contributors, including Junot Díaz, Lisa See, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jane Smiley, and Celeste Ng. A firm believer that writers are the key to maintaining society's highest aspirations, I hoped to find inspiration and affirmation in these pages.

The letters are written to leaders of the past, to real and and to imagined future children, to strangers and to the known. Each contributor speaks of their personal journey and agony. They share a fear of our government's agenda that threatens hard-won rights and protections.

The letters are divided into three sections: Roots, which "explores the histories that bring us to this moment," and Branches, considering present day people and communities, and Seeds, considering the future who will inherit the system and world we will leave behind.

Frankly, many of these letters were hard to read, confronting us with the pain and misery inflicted upon people because of their color, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. I could only read an essay or two a day. Yet there is also in these letters a strength, a commitment, a vision of hope.

The message, says Katie Kitamura, is that this is not a time for complacency, and yet we must be open and not mired in certitude, to think and not be compelled to "ideological haste."

"Beware easy answers," warns Boris Fishman, "Lets get out of our comfort zones...let's lose our certainty--perhaps our arrogance."

"Be kind, be curious, be helpful...stay open," Celeste Ng writes to her child.
"Please promise me that you will, insoar as any person can, set your fear aside and devote yourself to a full, honest life. That, my child, is the first and most important act of resistance any of us can undertake," advises Meredith Russo to her child.

The struggle for human rights is ongoing, continual. We have seen the backlash against hard gained protections and equality. The battle continues.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Radical Hope
Edited by Carolina De Robertis
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
May 2 2017 publication
$15.95 Paperback
ISBN: 9780525435136

John Quincy Adams, Champion of Human Rights, Gets a Quilt

When Sue Reich called for quilters to make a small presidential quilt I jumped at the chance to ask for John Quincy Adams. I had just read a biography on Louisa Catherine Adams. I had read about JQ in Bunker Hill, the John Adams by David McCullough, and in other books on American history.

People don't have a very clear image of JQ. He was raised for public service by his parents, Founding Father and president John Adams and Abigail Smith Adams. They expected superhuman achievements and JQ endeavored to meet the task.

When John Adams became Minister to France, 12-year-old JQ accompanied him. He was beloved by Thomas Jefferson. JQ traveled across Europe, studying under his father and at the finest universities. Back in the US he attended Harvard and followed his father into law.

George Washington chose JQ to be Minister to Holland. After his father left office he returned home and became a US Senator. Party politics intervened, and he left to teach at Harvard.

Then he was chosen to be Minister to Russia. He had married the London born Louisa and together they learned to navigate the Czarist court. Louisa became the pet of many a grand lady. He was called to France at the end of the Napoleonic Wars to represent America in forging the Treaty of Ghent. Louisa stayed behind to sell off their household, pack up, and travel with her child,  a dangerous winter journey of 3,000 miles to join him.

James Monroe asked JQ to be his Secretary of State, and he accomplished his greatest achievements. He forged the Monroe Doctrine and treaties incorporating Florida and Oregon into US territories.

The disintegration of the Federalist party left only the National Republicans, which had four candidates. None received a majority electoral college vote and the vote went to the House. JQ won because of Henry Clay's vote.

As President JQ focused on infrastructure to facilitate trade, education, and scientific research which he deemed needed to support a growing nation. He made sure the Smithson money went to create the Smithsonian Institute and was involved in the creation of what became the US Naval Observatory.

A one term president, JQ did not leave public service for long. He was called by Massachusetts to the House of Representatives. Never popular, a fierce independent and true to his own values, JQ was an eloquent spokesman for lost causes. He did not support President Jackson's removal of Native American peoples. He fought the "gag rule" against discussing slavery and finally ended it, as described in America 1844.

"Old Man Eloquent" was an abolitionist, as were his parents. When a ship of captured Africans mutinied and took over the Spanish ship Amistad, JQ was approached to represent the Africans at trial. He accepted, pro bono. In a seven hour presentation he argued that the Africans were not merchandise, but free men taken by pirates. JQ won the case and the grateful Mendhi men wrote letters of thanks.

It was reading these letters that was my "ah hah" moment. I had been struggling on how to present JQ, using quilt methods of his time, broderie perse in particular. What about JQ would reach and move a viewer of the quilt? I knew it had to be the Amistad case, representing JQ's deep dedication to liberty and Civil Rights.

The same day I had my breakthrough I learned that Sue Reich was offered a contract by Schiffert Publishing for "Patriotic and President Quilts" and it would include the Presidential Quilts Project!

All afternoon yesterday I worked on the quilt in a creative heat.

We had pizza for dinner.

Learn more about Sue Reich at
http://www.coveringquilthistory.com