The Dallas Liberation Center, located in Elmwood, was established this past International Women’s Day in March. The center provides a missing third space in Oak Cliff to connect without having to spend money.
Photography by Yuvie Styles
Raquelle Jac (left) and Marissa Rodriguez (right) in front of a gallery of art. The drawings and prints surround a poster advertising their last event, the Palestine Art Auction that took place Sept. 20. Photography by Yuvie Styles
“The liberation center is part of a larger project hoping to educate people on politics, especially with a focus on local events, like local issues and things that are kind of going on in the community,” says Marissa Rodriguez, manager of the center.
Rodriguez is also a co-founder of The People’s Art Collective, a Dallas-based, worker-led group that works as a separate entity from the center but often in collaboration for a variety of efforts. Her and co-founder Jasmin Flores modeled both the center and collective after the work done at The People’s Forum in New York City to have more of a political and activist focus for the group.
“We feel like art is a really powerful tool,” Rodriguez says. “And we wanted that to kind of have its own space and own component.”
TPAC often hosts events at the Dallas Liberation Center, using wall space for galleries and teaching workshops. Even though they are separate projects, they’re very much a natural fit, Rodriguez says.
The collective stems from another organization, the DFW/ Denton branch of The Party for Socialism and Liberation, which held an event called “Make Bad Art” to bring folks together for the purpose of community and learning new skills without expectations. TPAC does not have ties to PSL DFW, but has worked with the organization in the past. Flores formerly represented PSL DFW before shifting to only organizing through The People’s Art Collective and took inspiration for the event from the work of Artists Against Apartheid.
“We had a little jewelry workshop going. People were just making marks on paper, just coloring, creating, just doing anything, without the pressures that so much of us feel when it comes to making art, that it has to be good, that you have to be like a perfect artist, or you have to be a very academic artist,” Rodriguez says.
The reaction and turnout from that event inspired her to make something more permanent, an organized body that could facilitate opportunities like that event on a regular basis.
Raquelle Jac, a co-lead of the Collective, says she views the community learning aspect of TPAC as really important and beautiful for creating a space for art and education that doesn’t have the “academic expectation” or “elitist type thing” that art school has.
“The art world can be largely detached from the political reality and like the class reality of just the world and areas that we’re in,” she says. “It’s a great thing to have a group that grounds itself in the political and class reality of what’s happening because art is a reflection of the human condition and it’s important to be mindful of what’s going on around you and everything.”
One way in which The People’s Art Collective remains grounded in its surroundings is by educating the community.
Previous events have included a collaboration with the DFW Harm Reduction Education Access Movement and PSL DFW, where speakers presented on subjects ranging from overdoses, the origins and necessity of harm reduction and the history of the war on drugs.
“I spoke on medication for opioid use disorder, which is a medication that I personally take,” Jac says. “And I just went into the barriers to care and how difficult it is to access that medication … especially Texas in particular has many, many barriers to care, to seek help for opioid use disorder, any sort of substance dependency, and there’s a whole lot of old school stigma surrounding that.”
Providing free naloxone for all participants, DHREAM held a demonstration on how to administer naloxone/Narcan, a life saving medicine for overdose, to help community members in need. TPAC hosted a visual art showcase exploring themes of harm reduction, incarceration, loss, substance dependency and healthcare.
Other events TPAC has recently worked on include an Art Build for Palestine where community members had the opportunity to create for the Palestine Art Auction last month that went toward benefitting the Middle East Children’s Alliance.
For the future, TPAC hopes to keep using art to educate on topics they view as essential to the community and the world at large.
Rodriguez says they plan to continue to ground art and politics in the reality of today, speaking to a working class perspective for how they plan to move forward throughout their first year.
Correction/Clarification: A previous version of this article, which also appeared in the October print issue, misstated Jasmin Flores’s name and Raquelle Jac’s title. It has been updated to correct those errors and to clarify the difference between TPAC and PSL DFW. Apart from the idea of TPAC being made by individuals who were once in PSL DFW, TPAC has no ties to PSL DFW. The Oak Cliff Advocate strives for accuracy and clarity in all matters.
