At a conference full of speakers, it’s appropriate to ask (in the words of Terike Haapoja), “Who is qualified to speak on behalf of someone or something?” I don’t have the perfect answer, but I came away with deep conviction that artists are translators. We help others understand what we/others see, hear, and feel. As each presenter crossed the stage, the gathered were invited into the story of another community, perhaps a world away but near in spirit. I was blown away by the scale of advocacy, from speaking on behalf of urban youth rewriting their narratives in Colombia, all the way to appealing for the rights of our entire environment. One lyric by JKE has particularly stuck with me: “We live like strangers in a land that is ours.” In all its forms, the homelessness of displacement is incredibly isolating. And yet it was in our communal discovery of creative border-crossing and bridge-building that CTS felt like a harbor for free and equitable speech.
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