“Not In Our Name / No En Nuestro Nombre” A Collaboration between Muralist Juana Alicia with Poetry by Genny Lim
Program Highlights
- Francis Wong – composer, saxophonist, activist, and educator
- Alexandro Murguía & devorah major – former San Francisco Poets Laureates
- Chun Yu – Chinese/American poet and translator (reading in Chinese)
- Mo Sati – Palestinian American poet
On-site Activation: The San Francisco Poster Syndicate will live-print and distribute free political posters, facilitating community engagement through art as activism.
This inaugural event unites poetry, mural art, and community solidarity into a powerful public statement. Not in Our Name / No en nuestro nombre calls on individuals to witness, engage, and amplify a message for peace, justice, and human dignity.
Our mural and poem, Not in Our Name, is an urgent call to demand a permanent Cease Fire to end the genocide in Palestine. The large scale poetic mural (15 feet by 25 feet) by internationally renowned muralist Juana Alicia and Genny Lim, SF Poet Laureate, is mounted in San Francisco’s celebrated Mission District’s Clarion Mural Alley Project in Clarion Alley at the Valencia corridor between 17th and 19th Streets. The mural stands alongside a length of vibrant, global social justice murals, created by artist activists. Since the October 7th attack on the Nova Music Festival almost two years ago, there has been no let‑up in the bombardment of Gaza and the West Bank, with over 60,000 Palestinians killed, more than half of whom were children and women. With hospitals and schools destroyed, starvation looming without any sufficient food or medical supplies allowed access, famine and disease, is inevitable. To date, there is no significant movement towards a cease fire and, in fact, the war threatens to spread with Israel’s attacks on Iran, Syria and Lebanon, which elicited retaliatory attacks.
As artists and poets, we use the tools of our craft to help raise social consciousness. Our crew of dedicated volunteers, led by activist, David Solnit, former SF Supervisor, Eric Mar, peace activist, Catherine Cusic and Tirso Araiza, among others, with the generous moral and material support support by CAMP, is a labor of love in tribute to all the victims of this horrific genocide. We believe that all war is an aberration, an abomination and a sign of moral decay. We believe that dialogue and honest cooperation are the only way to achieve true and lasting peace. Not in Our Name is a plea for peace and hope. It is a call to action. A message to all individuals with a moral conscience to defend the human rights and dignity of all human beings and the sovereignty of all nations by speaking truth to power and injustice.
Installation Team
The mural was installed by volunteers under the leadership of David Solnit, with support from Eric Mar, Catherine Cusic, Tirso González Araiza, Jade Mar, Yasmin Madriz, Yano Rivera, Denisse Ogata, Christopher Statton, Megan Wilson, and others. Poetry translations were provided by Carmen Hynds May & Alan Hynds (Spanish) and Carol Khoury (Arabic). Graphic design and video documentation by Andi Wong.
About Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP)
The Mission of Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) is to support and produce socially engaged and aesthetically innovative public art, locally and globally as a grassroots artist-run organization based in San Francisco’s Mission District. CAMP is a community, a public space, and an organizing force that uses public art (murals, street art, performance art, dance, poster projects, literary events) as a means for supporting social, economic, racial, and environmental justice messaging and storytelling. Over the past 30 years CAMP has produced over 900 murals and worked with many talented artists and community-based organizations and activists. In addition to its overall mural programming, CAMP’s projects/programming has included 1) the Redstone Labor Temple Project, highlighting San Francisco’s labor history (1997); 2) international exchange & residency projects with Yogykarata, Indonesia – Sama-Sama/Together (2003-2006) in collaboration with Intersection for the Arts and Bangkit/Arise (2018-present) in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum; 3) In Honor Of …, drawing attention to political prisoners in Iran in collaboration with Artists’ Television Access (2019); 4) Wall + Response, featuring 16 Bay Area poets responding to the social, political, and racial justice narratives of four mural projects on Clarion Alley (2020-22); and Manifest Differently, working with 38 artists & poets to interrogate the doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’(2023).
Poetry Reading
