"Art can impact the social context of family dislocations and can serve as a powerful tool in encouraging an open national dialogue about Zero Tolerance in our country"
So (sew) America Cares is a participatory social art project with a commitment to raise awareness about the lives of the children separated from their parents at the border. All the faces stitched together strengthen the very fabric of our own society.
In 2018 a Zero Tolerance immigration policy was announced, requiring that all families who cross the border shall not only be separated but also charged in federal court with the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry.
This Project’s mission is to advocate for these children and to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to participate. Thread by thread, fiber by fiber, a participating community will increase its understanding of the circumstances of these children who never asked to be illegal aliens. The project consists of 10 different faces that will be repeated 100 times each to add 1000 faces. The faces had been laser etched on raw canvas to allow the participant to use any kind of thread, yarn, wool, fabric, paint etc. So (sew) America Cares has a plan: to "sew" them back, to never allow these children to be lost again, to create a quilt of 1000 faces representing a portion of these children.
We cannot allow these traumatized children to disappear and in time, be forgotten.People are encouraged to stitch, sew, knit, knot, crochet, embroider, or braid these drawings so as to symbolically recover these children’s faces and lives again.
​
So (sew) America Cares is an international call for people to participate and raise awareness as to the consequences of this immigration policy and its devastating effect on children. As citizen, artist, mother and a child that suffered being separated from my family for eight years, I am concerned about the hundreds of separated children across our country.
Do not cast your Pearls in a swine
neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos
St. Matthew assured us that swine will trample pearls and turn to tear you into pieces as well.
Thus the irony of the artist’s struggle with a public unable to understand the wisdom of pearls.
Fisherman casting their lines near a beach, finding swine in the shallows.
"Balseros" by Aurora Molina
"The Wet Foot Dry Foot policy is the name given to a consequence of the 1995 revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that essentially says, anyone who fled Cuba and entered the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a year later. After talks with the Cuban government, the Clinton administration came to an agreement with Cuba, it would stop admitting people found at sea. Since then, in what has become known as the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy, a Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (with wet feet) would summarily be sent home or to a third country. One who makes it to shore (dry feet) gets a chance to remain in the United States, and later will qualify for expedited legal permanent resident status and eventually U.S. citizenship."
These "balseros" are caught in the middle, adrift at sea between two nations, belonging to neither. With wet feet they fish for sustenance on their journey. Their lives are bait, catching only swine from both sides of the raft, while rowing forward to the land of dry sands.