The real video was taken down from YouTube. I picked this moment from the video because it matches the mood of the song. Wyclef is talking about what New York feels like to him, and this image shows how even after so many developments, after 15 years, we’re living in the New York he describes.

-Mark Eisenberger

Brooklyn’s Finest

267 × 350

One strong example of a New York based social justice artist is Kara Walker, whose work directly confronts the history of racism, slavery, and the representation of Black bodies in America. Her most popular art piece is called “A Subtlety”, made in 2014, at the abandoned Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. This installation featured a massive, 35 foot tall, sphinx like figure covered in white sugar representing both the purity associated with sugar and the exploitation behind the sugar industry. Around the room, there were smaller sculptures of children carrying baskets, their forms melting and collapsing from the heat, symbolizing the brutal labor of enslaved people who helped build the wealth of industries like sugar production. She used the entire factory space as part of the message, the sticky smell, the decaying walls, and the sugar dust in the air, all reminded the viewers that history isn’t distant, it’s something you can still feel. Her installation was a way for people to confront the connection between consumer goods, racism and the bodies that paid the price for them. Walker uses her art as a way to expose the realities that are usually hidden or softened in textbooks and museums. Her art exposes reality with raw honesty that refuses to be softened or simplified.