Last Saturday on Balmy Alley, a street entirely devoted to local mural art in San Francisco’s Mission District, the latest work to grace the backside of a building on the block-long street was finally unveiled: Women of the Resistance was conceived and painted by a collective of women artists, many of them local to the neighborhood and trained at the San Francisco Art Institute. I had the opportunity to speak to three of the painters, Lucía Gonzalez-Ippolito, Fernanda Parker Vizcaino and Michelle Williams, and to learn the story of how they chose the 38 women of the resistance to paint into the mural. Pictured here is the mural just before the unveiling and blessing ceremony, but you can read my interview and to see photos by the Aperturist of the mural in all of its full color glory at CurrentSF.
One of the central figures in the mural is Judy Brady, a local activist I was acquainted with from my own work in the district. Brady was known to locals for her participation in neighborhood demonstrations, particularly those against the tech buses which block the way for school children and people with disabilities, of which she was one. But what most people didn’t know about Judy, otherwise known as the terse, silver-haired lady in the motorized scooter, was that she was a pioneering feminist and one of the first writers for Ms. Magazine: Her essay “Why I Want a Wife,” published in 1970 is still used in women’s studies courses to this day. Had I known this about Judy, we would’ve enjoyed talking more than we did, I’m sure. As it was, we brushed past each other regularly in the bookshop where I worked, we spoke just a few times and briefly: The bookstore closed in 2016 and Judy died the following year. Writing about this mural, I learned that there are everyday women of the resistance in our midst: I wish I’d had a chance to thank Judy for all that she did for us. Read the entire article now:
Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, new article, San Francisco News, "Why I Want A Wife", Judy Brady, Ms. Magazine
Denise Sullivan 