VISIBILITY Magazine Issue 02. (April 2017) | Page 2

Swarthmore College Intercultural Center 500 College Avenue Swarthmore, PA 19081 USA (610) 328-7353 SPRING 2017 VISIBILITY MAGAZINE ISSUE 02 The central theme is transforming oppressing through knowl- edge sharing. The outer layer represents the brutality of the mining industry, and especially the blood diamond trade in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other Afri- can countries. It also represents the attempt to bury systems of violence under a facade of nicety and economic development -- in this case literally. The bodies in this image are humanoid, but many of the products we dig up are the compressed remains of previously living organisms. There are many kinds of death involved. Diamonds represent greed... but they also represent transformation under pressure, clarity, and the ability to cut through the hardest substances. There is no way out of systems of oppression by burying and ignoring the past. There is no ground we can walk on where there are no dark secrets under the surface. What we can do is remember the people whose sac- rifices enabled the rest of us to go on living. We can make light with what we have and hold our lights high so that others may find a path or construct their own lights. -Yona Yurwit i