The two seasoned activists worked together for eighteen months, visiting their respective communitie

P ostcode Criminals is a response to racial profiling in the East New York, Brooklyn, and Liverpool, England communities. What are the origins of their connections? According to the press for the show, in 1996 New York City Police budget hotels new york usa Chief William budget hotels new york usa Bratton conferred with his UK counterpart Ray Mellon to form a "zero tolerance" method to control their lower-income hoods. This "policing" is not only based on the color of the victim's skin, but also on their zip codes, or postal codes in the UK—hence the title, Postcode Criminals .
Installation Photo And just as Bratton and Mellon came together, filmmaker Joann Kushner of Liverpool approached Rush Arts Gallery with the idea to create a project that would draw parallels between the youths of Liverpool and their counterparts in New York City, who are consistently being harassed and degraded by their respective public servants. Eventually Brooklyn-based visual artist Dread Scott was contacted and he began working budget hotels new york usa with young people from East New York's Man Up! organization.
The two seasoned activists worked together for eighteen budget hotels new york usa months, visiting budget hotels new york usa their respective budget hotels new york usa communities two times each, and the young artists in turn communicated via Skype, meeting each other and sharing their experiences. Joann and Dread guided the two groups to a collection of insightful series: Street budget hotels new york usa Photography —digital budget hotels new york usa photography and collages of scenes from Liverpool; poetry; budget hotels new york usa a wall of posters from college-age UK students; five photo portraits of four Liverpool budget hotels new york usa and one East New York youth—collaborations between Joann and her students that recall the amber-toned paintings of the Renaissance, illustrating the rich, stately humanity that the police fail to see and trample on; and Urban Revolt Media , in which Dread worked with six East New York artists budget hotels new york usa to print 11 by 15 inch digital photos shot from cell phones. During that process they discussed the Arab Spring and how cell phones enabled the protestors budget hotels new york usa to send images of struggle within their communities around the world. Some of those images, like Shem Dixon's, were shot while the police were jacking people up. And there were two videos: Postcodes , a montage of short interviews by Joann featuring East New York members of Man Up!, and Stop , a video installation by Dread.
budget hotels new york usa Stop is an effective installation comprised of life-sized video panels of three young black men from Liverpool budget hotels new york usa on one side of a room and three from East New York on the other side; each man stands alone, life-sized, and separate from the others. They were saying how many times they had been stopped: "I've been stopped sixty times." "I've been stopped twenty times." "I've been stopped over eighty times." Their profound silent gazes were striking as they met the eye of the viewer. One minute would pass before another man would state the number of times he was stopped. After making those statements their intense expressions demanded a solution: "An' what you gonna do 'bout it?"