Above graphics, and all graphics throughout the piece, provided by Ronise Doss.
Ronise Doss, creator of Ronnieprints, an independent Black art and fashion company, is a Black artist and activist from the Southside of Chicago. She strives to represent where she’s from in everything she does. Her experiences as a Black woman navigating the world have shaped her life-long work to mixsocial justice and art. Ronnieprints currently sells hoodies, t-shirts, masks, prints, paintings and custom designs focused on giving life to Black culture and liberating all disenfranchised folks. The art of Ronnieprints creates a platform for the voiceless to speak.
Ronnie was kind enough to speak with DXCEGAME’s Aviv Hart, Bobby Rone and Chunghwa Suh for a few hours about her work, social justice, race and their intersections.
You can purchase her work at https://www.ronnieprints.com/
Follow her on Instagram @Ronnieprints
We kindly ask that you take the time to visit and donate to her GoFundMe aimed at raising funds to alleviate COVID-19 hardships for her brother, Berton Brooker, and all incarcerated peoples at Danville Penitentiary.
You can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/covid-and-finacial-relief-for-inmate
Note: Interview has been edited for clarity. Interview conducted by Aviv Hart and transcribed by Chunghwa Suh.
Aviv:
All right. Ronnie. You ready to get started? Yes. Okay. So my first question for you is, you know, obviously you make clothing, but you also paint. You’re also a writer. Uh, where do you think your artistic journey sort of started? Like where, when, when in your life did you sort of have that realization that you were maybe more, more of a creative than, than anything else?
Ronnie:
Yeah, I would say, um, I feel like I knew I was into creating art in a sense of writing when I was like a little kid, getting book fair books and journals. So my mom gave me one or bought me one and I remember writing a poem having to do with my mother or something. And then I would say now looking back, I think it even started before the, on like a, on a more visual arts level of like nail art specifically. And like the once again it was book fair type, coloring books and stuff. And with the nail art, I feel like that was my first time liking art in general. Cause I would go to the salon, my mom and see how they would do the design, like the little fan designs. And I was like, ‘Oh my fucking gosh, that’s so cool.’ And I just asked my mom to get me some of that stuff. So she would buy me the brushes and stuff and I would do it all myself.
Aviv:
So you would say that from a young age you were inclined towards being artistic. So it’s no surprise looking now at how prolific you are with all the different mediums and arenas you’re in. So I want to talk about the messaging in your paintings and your clothing. What I like about it is, I think in the dual worlds of both art in general and in things like painting and fashion design, subtlety has become, has become very, very popular, you know, subtlety, minimalism and metaphor. And one thing I really appreciate about your work is how direct it is. There is an unmistakable message in all of your paintings and all of your clothes. Why is it important for your messaging to be direct?
Ronnie:
I was talking to my mom recently about just like where I’m at, like my career and stuff. She was just like, at first [my mother] was like, yeah, yeah, I know you’d be an artist. That’s what I’m trying to do in life. She was like, beyond that, like what I really see you was just the passion for social justice beyond any career. I choose whether that’s writing, teaching art, artistry or anything. And I feel like that’s really a portion. That’s really like a part of it as well, too. I would say like, I’m so bold more so because like I have, I have a fiery personality in general, I’m a Scorpio and the youngest child. So I’m a fiery kid anyway, and then that mixed with, I think my understanding and learning of just like the trials and tribulations and the resistance and beauty and creativity of Black folks all together has to pop. A mixture of social justice and my personality and the actual techniques of art and has culminated to this, because as a person I’m fiery and bold and then social justice makes me more fiery and involved because I get mad. Like I just be like, Oh hell no. That’s why I fuck with people like Malcolm X, because I never had the want to be like too subtle or laid back or like in the middle when it comes to my people, especially when it’s, to the extent that people are dying and suffering.
So it’s like, I take it there all the time because it’s like white supremacy takes it there. So I’m going to just be just as bold and unapologetic and black within everything I do. And with the niggas matter clothes, that’s me making a statement the clearest way I know how. I got that phrase from a friend I met at a protest, his name’s Caleb. He had that phrase over an image of a Black woman that he made into a shirt, and it really struck a chord with me.
And also my understanding and dislike for respectability politics grew to where it was like, I didn’t know, they went in line like that, but they did because it’s like, I don’t fuck with that notion that black people have to be respectable or pull up their pants or talk with certain way to get respected in society or to get like a human. So I’m very much so against that. So when I say niggas matter, I’m talking about the people who they dog in society, and not just black people, because even black people, there are people where it’s like, you need to be a certain type of black. We respect that. And I’m more so you ain’t gotta be shit to get respected. That should be given, period. Like, no matter how you wear your hair, no matter what dialect you use, no matter how many kids you got or anything, they try to say about black people, that’s ratchet or ghetto, or allow any of that. I say honor that, respect that, because that’s part of the culture, that’s who they are. And what does that have to do with their humanity? Nothing. So when I say niggas matter, like I’m saying it from a point of view of like, we all matter.
And even the ones that try to say are the lowest of the lows and the ratchet is other rashes. And when Caleb said it, I don’t think, I don’t think neither of us knew how much it was, like stick with me, but it did. And then before I started making hoodies a home, I used to put this on hoodies. And I was like, Hm, because I had different designs similar. And I was just like, I don’t know. But then I, before I started making them and selling them, I hit up Caleb. And I was just like, can I get your permission to use this like term, this phrase, because I would’ve heard it from you, yada, yada yada. And he gave me the go ahead. He was like, we use this word around his friends. And I was like, that’s right. But I also wanted to check in with you because that’s where I first heard it from him. And then he just gave me full support and I shouted him out and made a whole puzzle about him and my art page, because like, that’s the beginning of this major phase for me.
Aviv:
What you were saying in terms of respectability, I feel like it has power, not just in the way of simplifying black lives matter, which as a movement is already within mainstream America kind of taboo. And the N word is possibly even more taboo, but that’s still how a lot of white people associate with black people. So by recentering the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ with the N-word, you’re both making a statement affirming that movement, and attacking the biases of people against the movement.
Ronnie:
Yeah. I think it’s to the extent, because I think in general, it’s always good to start with the people who are the most oppressed and most disenfranchised. And for me, that’s who people type casts in the community as ‘niggas’, as no. good. As the baby mamas, all these types of things they try to say. So I feel like, yes, I’m uplifting black people in general. When I say it, it’s just the same extent to when people say, when you free black women or black transgender women, or both, you start with the people who are the most oppressed, because everybody else gets liberated from that.
So when I say niggas matter that already is inclusive to all black lives period. Cause we started with the people who are the most disenfranchised. And I feel like in black society, theres a way of thinking that ‘niggas’ just means dudes. And I will say, when I be selling it to some of my cousins and stuff, they be super hype and a part of me is like, they be hyped because they think I’m talking about niggas as in black, straight dudes. And I’m not thinking of it in gendered terms. Niggas are black. The only category is black. It’s not specific to gender.
Bobby:
It’s weird, because white people don’t gender the word.
Bobby and Ronnie (simultaneously):
We do though!
Chunghwa:
It’s interesting because I think about your work and non-black people’s performance of allyship. I especially think about this in terms of Breonna Taylor, whose image has been aestheticized to a really disturbing point (think: the Vanity Fair cover), and people who wear Black Lives Matter shirts or Breonna Taylor’s face, or sell merch. Like, who is that money going to? Or even, what does it mean? Like imagine a white dude wearing one of your hoodies? I mean–that would be super weird.
Ronnie:
I don’t need allies. To be honest, I appreciate solidarity, but solidarity is just part of being a human. I don’t need you to relate to the movement to support it. You should already wanna do that, period. You ain’t gotta wear that, dress a certain way, nothing. For Black people, we come to a lot of these things we hear in the news, like Breonna Taylor–bless up Breonna Taylor and all the angels–and find healing in different ways, whether that’s saying their name, wearing their faces, protesting, or resisting. For me, I have lines that I won’t cross in relation to people who have died as a result of white violence or racism. Like for example, I won’t sell anything about somebody else’s story, like how they died, out of sensitivity to their loved ones. Being Black, there’s a lot of stuff that I can’t read or take in because I can only take so much. I want to live a life where I’m aware of the shit we go through, but I also want to celebrate who I am and celebrate my Blackness. I can’t digest or see everything I hear about Black death. I need to pause. When I hear or read the news about someone dying, you know, I’m empathetic. It breaks my heart. I’ll keep you in my prayers. That stuff be so heavy, I can’t even imagine getting to that point of commodifying or selling these stories.
I have a piece of these Black women who died and got killed by white violence and the police. To make that piece, I looked up all these stories during art class. It was so many stories. That was an emotional day, because it was so many stories, but I was sad that I couldn’t read more. To know that it was so many Black women, specifically, because I feel like a lot of the times Black Lives Men is only framed as in terms of Black cis men, but it’s all these folks in the Black diaspora. So I made this piece to honor these Black women; I did not know how much of this was happening to Black women. Shoutout Jamilia– in highschool, I remember hearing about Laquan McDonald and saying, “how can they be doing this to our Black boys?” And Jamilia was like, “to our Black women, too. Do you know about Rekia Boyd?” At the time, I didn’t. I began to do some more research, and that was when I also became more associated with Kuumba Lynx. So that’s why I made this piece, because I wanted to honor these Black women. For this project, I read how they died and on the back, I wrote their names. When I presented it, I read their names out of respect. And I was going to give it to Kuumba Lynx, but because the piece is so big, it was just too expensive to pay for shipping and all that. So now I just bring it with me wherever I live. Something like this piece, I can’t even sell it. It’s not my story. It’s not my face, or my story.
Bobby:
That’s a lot of integrity.
Ronnie:
Yeah, I can’t sell this and keep the proceeds because it’s not my people. Yes, it’s my people in terms of black women, but it’s not my family. If I ever sold things with folks who have passed away, the proceeds would have to go to the families. I’m not interested in selling things on that level. I made this piece more so to raise the mic to these stories that are not being told. I can’t sell certain stuff. It’s too personal, it’s not mine to sell.
Aviv:
So it’s interesting hearing you talk about that, because I feel like especially in Chicago now, the art world and social justice world are very linked. Art leads people into social justice, or you see artists come up as artists in their own right, realize the means that they have, and pivot to social justice. But I think what’s so cool about you is that it went the other way around: your activism and acumen for social justice led you into art.
Ronnie:
Exactly. I like art, like it’s cool. But I never thought I was gonna be no artist. My two older brothers are tattoo artists, and that’s what I thought of as art: y’all raw as fuck, y’all can draw. And then in highschool, one of my best friends, Clark Lowry was also raw as fuck at drawing. So I was looking at visual arts just in terms of painting and drawing, and then the more I got into art classes, I learned techniques in drawing. And it was cute, it was fun, but then college happened, and that’s when I was like, “Oh shit, I can be an artist with printmaking, with graphic art, with Photoshop,” and that made me look at art in more mediums. It’s just creativity. Whatever means you have, make your vision come into fruition. I feel like that’s when I knew I was an artist. But the social justice stuff, I’ve been passionate about since high school. But before high school, I didn’t know.
Chunghwa:
I mean, before high school, you’re like, barely a person..
Ronnie:
Yeah, but before high school, I was definitely on some opp shit [laughs]
Bobby:
I’m glad you brought that up though, that you recognize that trajectory in your life, your coming of age. There’s three people in this room who are colored and went to a PWI in Southern California–so I’m curious how that experience influenced your artwork and your ideas around social justice.
Ronnie:
That’s so interesting, because I do not be concerning myself with white people. Like, I’ve to not give a fuck about the white gaze. My point is not to make you understand, to agree with me, to come on my side, to appease you, to make you comfortable, I really don’t give a fuck. They really do not be on my mind. Unless they do something that makes me mad. And it’s not like any person can be totally irrelevant, but being at a PWI, I’ve learned to treat white people like, y’all are not finna be a factor to me, period. Y’all cannot be a factor to me. Because it’s easy to get sucked up into that white world of just wanting a seat at a table. For me, I would look at my family like, “oh my god, y’all so ratchet, y’all so ghetto”–I told y’all I used to be on some opp shit. But being away from my family drew me closer to my roots, the neighborhoods I’m from, the people, how we talk. That stuff is so beautiful! And all these white people tryna be just like us! Like, I didn’t understand “niggas matter” as a kid. So growing up and having a reappreciation of where I come from, the people who look like me and how we talk and all this and stuff, got strengthened by being at a PWI. I had never been around that many white people before; I came in with this innocent mind, like, “yeah, they cool, they just wanna be friends.” But then after being friends with them, it was weird. Like, it was too many compliments. Too many compliments to be true. Everytime I would walk up to them, it would be like, “I looove your outfit!” Everytime! And it just seemed like some fetish shit. Cuz I know I’m a bad bitch, but y’all saucin’ it up every time.
Chunghwa:
And it’s always only about your appearance!
Ronnie:
Yes! It’s never beyond my exterior! And that’s when I learned the word “microaggression.” And I was like, “oh, that’s what the fuck they doin.”
Bobby:
That’s what they do all the fucking time [laughs]
Ronnie:
This one white homie stay talkin to me about hood shit! Stay talkin to me about Chief Keef. And I’m just like, we was cool, but you’re putting a hood type mindset–or what you think is a hood-type mindset–onto me. And yes, I’m very hood, but not in the way that you think. Like you think I’m only hood. And you think that Black people only come in certain packaged ways, like Chief Keef. But Chief Keef has more duality than you’re giving him!
Aviv:
He’s truly a Renaissance man! So obviously I don’t have the experience of being Black and going to a PWI, but I fell you about the experience of going from Chicago to a small college town. I went to Illinois State University, and what’s so crazy is that despite being a white Jewish kid, just because I grew up in Chicago and used Chicago slang when I talked, I had the same shit happen to me. People would ask me if I knew Chief Keef. They would start asking me out of pocket questions glorifying violence: “have you ever seen someone get shot?”
Bobby:
Like, yes! It was traumatic!
Ronnie:
I hate when people only think that about Chicago.
Aviv:
Right? So now I want to focus more on your pieces–tell me, what was the inspiration, the process, the story behind this piece? [referring to Ronnie’s collab w Vania, purple print w the butterflies]
Ronnie:
This was a collaboration between me and my friend Vania, make sure to follow her @cornsilkbaby @luna..beadz, Vania and I have been best friends since high school, since we met through Kuumba Lynx. We bonded heavily through our trip to Morocco, but also when you’re doing poetry with other people, you’re gonna show your vulnerability, you’re gonna be open. So we connected on that level, and that friendship grew. I have a lot of sisters in my life, and Vania is one of those sisters I hold close in my heart at all times. Then, we ended up going to school in California together, which was so cool. We started talking about doing a collaboration because I had started Ronnie prints, and we were thinking about doing it on a level of kinship and solidarity between different things that impact Black and Brown people. So we were thinking about doing a “fuck __” line, like fuck this, fuck whatever. But I don’t remember how we got to this [referring to piece], I think it just came from us talking about our kinship, our sisterhood, and what that means to us. We were on the phone brainstorming, and Vania suggested something like, “the ___ to your ___.” And I was like, “ayee that sound raw. What about the wind to your wings?” So I had basically tweaked what she said on facetime, and we tried connecting ideas, to see if we wanted to go more realistic or more abstract, and then the butterflies just came instantly. Vania and I both have dope relationships to butterflies: to me, they just make me relax and remind me of everything that is beautiful, that everything’s gonna be okay. For her, butterflies are signs from ancestors, and that’s fire too. Then, we used the mycelium, which is really important. People think they’re shrooms, and we kinda made them look trippy like that, making them purple, but it’s mycelium. Mycelium, Vania taught me, is important because it represents how trees get nutrients, how the whole ecosystem works like a community. That describes me and Vania’s relationship, working together and being there for each other in this life journey. We used the soil because we both love nature, and the galaxy was Vania’s idea. We took this to a spray paint artist in the basement of this T-shirt shop at 47th and Ashton, and we had somebody spray paint it for us, because we was goin for an early 2000s look. Cuz that’s part of our culture, too! And this generation loves throwback stuff, so we had to fuck it up. We put in work to get it done.
Chunghwa:
So did you guys make a stencil together and bring it to this dude?
Ronnie:
It wasn’t a stencil actually, it was like a digital collage. Vania got really into PixArt and I got really into collaging digitally, I usually do political collages of stuff I want to say, but this was just like, layers.
Aviv:
This next print is what I was really drawn to in terms of your straightforward imagery [referring to cop mugshot]. The mugshot format over the newspaper is telling the audience that these people are regularly in the news, filmed, murderers. The news is their mugshot. I would like you to talk about your process behind this print, why you chose to print it on newspaper, where you were at during the creation of this piece, specifically.
Ronnie:
A lot of my art starts from class assignments. I think of Langston Hughes when it comes to art and he has this essay called “The [Negro] Artist and the Racial Mountain.” And he said that Black artist should be free to choose what they want to do, but not afraid to basically talk about their people and where they come from. So it’s like being bold enough to include your race, if that’s what you want to do, but you’re free to create beyond your race, as well. I always just feel like, “damn, there’s so much going on, how can I not talk about it?” In class we were learning about wood-cut prints and I decided to do it [the police mugshot] as just a drawing, and I remember the face my professor made when she first saw it. And I could tell by her face that this was something bold. But for me, I do a lot of stuff and then the world calls it bold, but for me, I’m like, I’m just telling the motherfucking truth! Like it’s bold cuz y’all think it’s bold, but it’s just what’s going on. And I remember after my professor made this face, and this goes back to what I said about not trying to engage with white people in mind as far as who I’m hittin, I try not to do that because I don’t care about the shock value of who gets offended or not. I don’t care about shock value. But my professor was cool with it. That’s the one thing about my art, if you not cool with it as a professor or as someone critiquing it, I’m gonna think you’re a racist or at the very least, you’re giving racist vibes. She just kept her commentary to my technique, and suggested that I draw it over again. And she suggested that I use this super thin material called shinkolite paper. Different backgrounds, I guess, with different materials. We had a lot of old phonebooks in the classroom, and I honestly think I just thought, ‘this would look cool.’ And that’s the reason why I printed it that way. Sometimes the art I make is just for pure aesthetic value, but I like your reason. The image itself, I had to put them on the mugshot because them hoes are criminals. It just makes me sick to think that so many police officers do fuck shit and are the first people to criminalize people or put people in jail. It be making me upset even more now because I have a brother in jail for a weakass weed charge and armed robbery–mind you, no one got hurt. They sentenced him to 20 years. He only has to serve 10, but they gave him all that fucking time for some weed. And now, I see people killing other people on camera who are free. Y’all just saying that people can get away with it. I’m not gonna look at nobody as no hero just because they got a badge. Hero for me is when you save lives. When you do something for somebody. Police officers be hurting lives, Black lives, specifically. So I’m gonna hold y’all to the image y’all act like. Which is that of a motherfucking criminal.
Chunghwa:
You mentioned that this was for a printmaking class; I’m curious about your use of the mugshot and the mugshot as a genre of image. Why draw a mugshot instead of using, for example, Photoshop to create a mugshot using an actual photo of an officer?
Ronnie:
It’s so funny because I’m not the best at drawing, so when I have to draw something, I’ll look up the cartoon of it and draw it from there.
Chunghwa:
Did you look for a cartoon of a cop?
Ronnie:
I found a cartoon image of a cop, but I did have a general idea of what a mugshot looked like–shoutout to all those 101 cartoon artists who upload their stuff on Google images. I have respect for all my art, but I will say that I have more respect for forms that take more time and processes. If I’m taking the time and putting effort in, having to redo sketches to make something look better, it’s a lot more time and energy. Graphics are cool, but I like graphics because they’re quick and I can do whatever. Printmaking deserves a lot more respect, because it takes so much time. And everything is a print, from T-shirts to posters.
Chunghwa:
That’s interesting what you say about time and value, because I do feel that in sense when I can see all your little strokes, how you’ve literally labored over this piece: it feels a bit more personal, a bit more evocative. But I also want to know how that relates to prison and what it means to “serve time.” What are your thoughts on abolition?
Ronnie:
When I first heard of prison abolition, I was in Kuumba Linx, and this white dude who was the photographer identified as a prison abolitionist. I was like, “woah there, that’s bold, what are you talking about.” But over time, I’ve gotten to learn more about social justice and restorative justice. I wrote a paper going into college explaining that prisons should be rehabilitation centers. A lot of the crime that people are doing are results of other things. This is not to excuse the things that they’re doing, but there’s healing that could be done before or after a crime has been committed that can prevent recidivism. Some of the stuff does not deserve prison. Some of the stuff deserves therapy, or some kind of treatment. I’m not for prisons, or at least not for this prison system. It’s very racialized, it’s not helpful. The thing about penitentiaries is that they say you go to repent. But that’s not how this is working. When I think about my brother, it don’t take you 10 years to learn that you don’t want to do that shit no more. A lot of the shit is excessive. And y’all are picking and choosing what to make a crime. Y’all too picky with what laws y’all choose, y’all too picky with who you wanna arrest, too picky with who gets what sentence. It’s not even real. It’s not about justice or a system where bad people go to jail. A proper justice system would leave it up to the harmed people to decide next steps, whether there needs to be some kind of punishment or not. It needs to be about community and helping whoever was impacted, preventing what happened from happening again.
Aviv:
The system in America is so carceral and so based on incarceration that it’s difficult for transformative justice to exist. It’s hard for us to separate the ideas of accountability and punishment. The way justice should work, it should be linked to action. You took this action, you are taking responsibility for that action. While other countries focus on care and growth, our system here just sets up this loop.
Chunghwa:
Once you go to prison, everything gets harder.
Ronnie:
The prison system is another form of slavery. I have a piece titled “Same Shackles, Different Decade.” I was supposed to make a political poster for my art class, so I took a silkscreen of my brother’s mugshot and made it look like an old slavery ad. And after I saw the image, for a moment I was like, ‘oh shit, is this too bold?’ Because when it comes to telling the trials and tribulations of Black people, some people tell it to the point that it removes their subjects’ humanity. I have to be careful to navigate that line between being striking and being humane.
Chunghwa:
Definitely, it takes us back to our discussion about Breonna Taylor and her image.
Ronnie:
Exactly.
Chunghwa:
So walk us through the process a little. I noticed his eyes are crossed out, does that have some kind of meaning?
Ronnie:
I crossed my brother’s eyes out, cuz as everybody who does art knows, sometimes mistakes happen and you just gotta make the mistake the piece. I put the orange bar on. Fuck it. So initially I crossed out his eyes for aesthetic purposes, but it also changed the symbolism of the piece to represent anyone who’s in jail right now–everyone who’s Black or Brown in prison for some fuck shit.
Chunghwa:
How did your brother feel about being represented in your art in that way?
Ronnie:
I asked him about it, like, “Is this too bold for you?” And he was like, “Nah, not at all.” My brother has a rebel spirit–I don’t mean this like, Black people tryna break the law or whatever, but you know how some people just have rambunctious spirits? Like he gets into shit. But as Black people, we’re not allowed to be rambunctious and embrace that side to the tenth power. The chips are stacked against you.
Chunghwa:
And how was it for you, using your brother’s mugshot? Did you use his actual mugshot?
Ronnie:
Yeah, I used his real mugshot, because you can find his picture if you look up his name. My brother’s story is a big part of my work; he inspired me to recognize that prisons should be rehabilitation centers, the injustice of the prison-industrial complex.
Chunghwa:
So is this piece and the one with the cop the only two mugshot pieces you’ve done?
Ronnie:
Nah, I’ve been doing a lot with the mugshot. Sometimes I feel like I need to push myself to be more creative, but the mugshot just be tellin it how it is. I do have other pieces though: I have one that has to do with the school to prison pipeline. It was a five series print where I related each of the images to one another: so for one of the prints, I drew crumpled up paper and broken crayons to illustrate underfunded schools. That leads to students dropping out, so the next print was a fishnet with a hole in it, and a graduation cap falling through. Then, you go into gangs, another print with gang signs, boom. Then you start selling drugs, until you end up in jail. That’s when I used my brother’s mugshot again, but with his whole face blacked out. The system itself is so fucked up that you can see the direct link from schools to prisons.
Chunghwa:
And it’s so counterintuitive! Students underperform because they don’t have resources; you would think that in order to remedy that issue, you would give those schools more funding, but again, it’s purely punitive. Students at these schools don’t do well on these (asinine and racist) national metrics of testing, then they’re further punished by receiving even less funding the next year.
Ronnie:
It’s fucked up. And I just wanna plug my brother’s GoFundMe–for people who don’t know, the pandemic has been fucked up period, but especially so for prisoners. At my brother’s prison in Danville, there have been over 900 cases total. And that shit was sick. Each time I talked to him, the numbers were going up. My brother has asthma. His cellmate ended up getting it, and even my cousin up there ended up getting it. And at the same time, it felt like no one was talking about it! So I set up a GoFundMe, for anyone who follows my art page @ronnieprints, go to www.ronnieprints.com and check out the GoFundMe link for my brother. He needs money for just basic necessities, like toiletries, paying for his school–because he’s trying to get his degree for college while he’s there–
Chunghwa:
Wait, they make you pay to take classes in prison?
Ronnie:
Yes! And he doesn’t have his job anymore, but they still have him cleaning all the facilities with a tiny cup of bleach. And people don’t talk about this, mainly because I think people just don’t know, but people also just think it’s easy to say that they don’t give a fuck about prisoners: it’s that mentality, if you’re in prison, you’re a bad person. But that’s not the truth! While there are some people in there who have done some fucked up shit, most of the people haven’t committed any harsh crimes. And even when someone receives a prison sentence, they’re not signing to be in a prison in the middle of a pandemic. They’re not signing up to die.
Bobby:
I don’t know if this is still true, but I remember at some point Cook County Jail had the highest rate of positive cases in the country.
Ronnie:
And it’s not like they’re giving it to themselves, it’s the guards! It’s the people coming in and out! That’s why we needed to set up this gofundme; my brother is also just such a great person, he has two kids, Keyon and Keyoni, and he’s still trying to send them money home, because he’s a father, he feels the need to provide.
Chunghwa:
We’ll definitely boost the GoFundMe in every way we can. But going back to your art for a minute, what does a mugshot mean?
Ronnie:
Mugshots work as a very to the point, explicit image. A mugshot basically says, “this person did a crime and they fucked up.” And I think in some cases, like when I see the mugshot of my brother, or Malcolm X, and I recognize that some crimes are not that bad. Crimes are contrived from the society we live in and the government. It’s made up. So I’m not trying to glorify mugshots in any way, but I just find the mugshot a striking, to-the-point image that sums up the prison system and the duality of criminality. It’s the same format, but there’s a distinct difference between my brother’s mugshot and the one I did for the cop. When I use it [the mugshot] for the police, I mean criminal. I mean killer. I mean fucked up shit in terms of prisons. But when I use it for other people, it’s just the bullshit of the system.
Chunghwa:
So when you mean “criminal,” do you mean that term in the sense of punishment? Does restorative justice apply to cops, as well?
Ronnie:
When I think of restorative justice, I still think of it in terms of the person who was harmed. And it’s from their perspective and their right and if they want to do something where it’s a different process and stuff. Some shit for me, it’s like, I’ve never been a victim of police brutality like that, so I can’t say, ooh I want these motherfuckers to do time, but no, I don’t want to give the systems that have now created more of a population of people who go out and kill Black people and then give them a badge for it and then not give them time for it. That’s not deserving of a second chance. I don’t even think about restorative justice in that context so its like when they be talking about reform or defund, im like fuck all that shit. I’m reimagining beyond the police. I’m thinkin of who the fuck out here hurting and harming people? I don’t even think about it like specific entities anymore, I just think: who is doing the harming, and who is being harmed. As a system, the cops have fucked up too much. How are you gonna be a good representation of a bad system?
Chunghwa:
Definitely. And if we’re thinking of justice in terms of our carceral state, that begs the question, how do you conceptualize sending an entire system to prison? It doesn’t work.
Ronnie:
Like Malcolm X said, “We can’t win in Uncle Sam’s court.” So if America wants to be held accountable, that accountability needs to be displayed and litigated on a global level. That’s why I get mad when white people try to say things like, “Oh, wasn’t Malcolm X violent?” You can’t name me a more violent people than white people. You can’t name me a more thieving people than white people. Sure, motherfuckers loot. Motherfuckers steal. But motherfuckers don’t steal humans?!
Chunghwa:
And violence is thought of in such a reductionist manner, as one person enacting violence on another, but violence is perpetuated in so many other ways.
Bobby:
Primarily by the state.
Ronnie:
That’s why I be like, when they be talking about illegal immigrants, they try so hard to make it seem like these people don’t “belong” here. If we’re going to talk about rights to any kind of land, we’re gonna be talking about the indigeneous people who were residing on this land to begin with, and the people who you enslaved to work on this land. And then y’all are the type of immigrant that colonizes. A colonizer talking about “illegal immigrants.” Y’all the worst kind of immigrant there is! Y’all came over here with no permission, then fucking shit up, killing people, enslaving people. It baffles me when white people talk their shit.
Chunghwa:
And they set up that tradition of violence with the “model minority myth”–I mean, I’m thinking of this in terms of my identity as Korean American–a label I used to hate honestly–but if we go back even deeper into history, with every new group of immigrants coming into this country, there was this idea that you had to kick down and enact violence on whoever was at the bottom of the totem pole. It all comes back to the way race works in America–yes, there are all kinds of minorities, but race in this country is primarily Black and White.
Aviv:
The two most disenfranchised groups in New York were Jewish people and Black people. But Jewish people were granted a greater degree of humanization because they could more easily assimilate into whiteness. So what happened was that the government systematically enfranchised the Jewish community so that they could buy establishments and become entrepreneurs. And the governmental purpose of that was to make Jewish people the ruling class of these two marginalized groups to curb Jewish participation in civil rights. The goal was always to keep Black people as disenfranchised as possible, but they used other minorities in order to achieve this goal. So when you come to America, you read Black culture as American culture, because that’s what’s most prominent, and you read antiblackness as American culture, because that’s also what’s most prominent.
[cacophony of naming antiblackness in different minority groups, many of whom are Black themselves – think: Dominicans]
Ronnie:
And that’s why I say “Black and Brown” specifically, or sometimes even just “Black.” Because we live in a country that operates on color, first and foremost. It’s color, not just race.