“NO US WITHOUT YOU!”: on recontextualizing border visuality

ABSTRACT

This essay explores border visuality as utilized by the Los Angeles based nonprofit “NO US WITH YOU!” for the sake of broadening pejorative conceptualizations of the Latina/o/x immigrant body. Through an exploration of the organization's social media efforts and through an analysis of the organization's visuals of border children, the visuality of food justice, and the visual of “coalition-inmotion” this article argues for the potentiality of visual rhetoric in the twenty-first century.

KEYWORDS:

• Latina/o/x
• Border Rhetoric
• Borderlands
• Visual Rhetoric
• Visuality
• Immigrant

Notes

1 Jill Cowan, “What Does It Mean to ‘Shelter in Place’ in California?” The New York Times, March 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/shelter-in-place-order-bay-area.html.

2 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “This week keeps getting better by the day!” Instagram, July 16, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CCtWlpfAsiF/.

3 D. Robert DeChaine, “Introduction: For Rhetorical Border Studies,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), 1.

4 Kent A. Ono, “Borders That Travel Matters of the Figural Border,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), 30.

5 Josue David Cisneros, “Looking ‘Illegal’: Affect, Rhetoric, and Performativity in Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), 135.

6 Nicholas Mirzoeff, “On Visuality,” Journal of Visual Culture 5, no. 1 (2006): 53.

7 Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 73.

8 Jo-Ann Morgan, The Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party in American Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, 2019), 366.

9 Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015).

10 Morgan, The Black Arts Movement, 358.

11 Ibid., 359.

12 “Immigration Reform Now! Prints,” Obey Giant, Last modified October 29, 2013, https://obeygiant.com/prints/immigration-reform-now-prints/.

13 Nouswithoutyou, “Our Dear Friend @ernestoyerena Created This Inspiring Logo as a Call to Action,” Instagram, March 20, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/B99vYiKDB5b/ (accessed July 2, 2020).

14 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “Thank You Everyone for Your Generosity This Past Week!” Instagram, May 31, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CA3b29_Aehk/.

15 “Our Mission,” “NO US WITHOUT YOU!,” https://www.nouswithoutyou.la (accessed June 6, 2020).

16 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “This Picture Was Sent To Us Last Night Directly by a Prep Cook,” Instagram, March 23, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-FtaXTlrMV/.

17 “Our Mission,” “NO US WITHOUT YOU!”

18 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “Life Comes Full Circle, This is a Beautiful Example,” Instagram, April 7, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-sUd23g7wN/.

19 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “A Little Compassion Goes a Long Way,” Instagram, March 31, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-bQIwNAtwh/.

20 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “This Week We Added These Beautiful @ceorbread Sourdough Loaves,” Instagram, May 20, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CAbqyAigSLS/.

21 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “This Week We’re Moving 81,622 lbs of Food,” Instagram, July 21, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CC4_yBFADbW/.

22 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “Thank You to Everyone Who Continues to Donate,” Instagram, June 25, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1xUQCgKG4/.

23 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “$33 Feeds a Family of 4 for 1 Week,” Instagram, June 24, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1xUQCgKG4/.

24 Lindsay Pérez Huber and Daniel G. Solorzano, “Visualizing Everyday Racism: Critical Race Theory, Visual Microaggressions, and the Historical Image of Mexican Banditry,” Qualitative Inquiry 21, no. 3 (2015): 223–38.

25 Huber and Solorzano, “Visualizing Everyday Racism,” 68.

26 No Us Without You LA (@nouswithoutyou), “You Gain Strength, Courage and Confidence by Every Experience,” Instagram, May 25, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CAnYlZFgh44/.