Notecard - Freedom's Hummingbird

Jess X Chen, gouache on paper ©2015

More than a hundred different species and colors of hummingbirds have been migrating from Central America across the Sonoran Desert and back for thousands of years. The migratory journey of the hummingbird is an ancient cycle that outlives every border drawn by nation-states. Similar to the hummingbirds, the immigration of Black and Brown people is driven by the radical imagination of a future free of borders, incarceration and white supremacy. As migrants and refugees soar and sail on their ships across the border, their bodies transform into hummingbirds. The friction of their solidarity forms a monumental hummingbird - the migrant justice movement - a living community that breathes, soars and imagines together. Our heart is beating 300 times a minute. ~ Jess X Chen