Guest Opinion | Jose Madera: On Pasadena’s Night of Art, Day Laborers Share the Beauty in the Struggle

This Friday night across Pasadena, the arts will shine, and people will crisscross the city soaking up the glow.

They will take shuttles east and west, north and south, sampling the best of Pasadena’s visual art, dance, music and theater. Paintings and photos, sculptures and posters, the whole range of ways that humans express their gifts of creativity and truth.

ArtNight Pasadena will be beautiful. It always is.

I’m especially excited because this year for the first time, my organization of day laborers, NDLON, is participating. ArtNight will include a stop at our Pasadena Community Job Center, which has served the community at Villa and Lake for more than two decades.

You may not think of a hiring site for day laborers as equivalent to a museum, gallery or theater. But wait till you see. We’ll have things to share that will fill your heart, move your soul, knock you flat — and get you up on your feet dancing.

There’s a brilliant new mural on our outside wall. Inside you’ll see photos, sculpture installations, banners, fabric and poster art on display. Live music will be ringing out from our day laborer band, Los Jornaleros del Norte. You will see and hear how artistic and cultural expression is at the heart of all we do at NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

We call our ArtNight exhibition “Pasadena Rising from Ashes and Raids.”

Another way to put it might be “From Fire to ICE.”

Much of our art relates to present-day events. It is timely and lives in the moment. But it is timeless, too. It expresses the people’s spirit of love and unity against hatred and oppression. It shines a light on a struggle that is as old as humanity, and as current as this week’s news.

Is it political art? Not in any partisan way — we’re not telling anyone how to vote or pushing any parties or politicians. But yes, our art is political in the way that all art is political. It is engaged with our society. It comes from a particular place and position and point of view. It tells the truth as we know it, in all its ugliness and beauty.

We are an organization dedicated to advancing the rights of day laborers, low-wage workers and immigrants. And every day, in southern California and across the country, those rights are under violent attack. Our lives and safety are in danger. Our very existence, even our humanity, has been dismissed and denied.

Art is how we respond. We use visual art and music to unite and to send a message. To summon our allies to join us and to tell our adversaries to back off. To inspire hope and bring about peaceful change.

Art has power, and we harness that power in everything we do.

Power is not always pretty. Men with masks and guns are brutalizing innocent people. And so we show it and denounce it. An anti-immigrant campaign of dehumanizing language and violence is causing widespread suffering and death. And so we expose it and fight it, with all our power.

We persuade through images, sound and symbols that turn language and argument into something vivid and ferocious. Our posters and banners, our songs, shirts and bandannas, richly drawing on Indigenous art forms and color palettes, summon emotions untouched by  lectures and speeches.

The news around us is grim and terrifying. But for our weapons of resistance and defiance, we choose harmony and beauty.

And we succeed through joy.

This Friday night, when you hear Los Jornaleros del Norte denounce la migra’s raids and cruelty, when you hear our singers Omar León and Loyda Alvarado tell ICE to go straight to hell, you might find yourself singing along. You might move your hips and add your energy to the joyful mix of migrants and citizens dancing together, unafraid, getting the fear and sorrow out of their system.

Songs like “Cumbia de la Migra” do more than entertain – they educate, inform and actively shape the tone of the spaces they fill. They connect people. By drenching the streets with music— from cumbias, corridos, to folk songs and rap – Los Jornaleros del Norte create an atmosphere that is joyful and inviting, even in moments of tension and anger.

Throughout history, we have seen the importance of arts and culture in mobilizing communities and shifting public narratives. Every battle to end oppression comes with its own soundtrack and visual record.

The images we make, the songs we sing and the art we display are essential for advancing the struggle for justice.

All this will be on full display on Friday night at the Pasadena Community Job Center. Come join us. Witness the eternal bout of joy versus hate. (Spoiler alert: Joy will win.)

Jose Madera is director of the Pasadena Community Job Center.