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Waking up to news of the police killing of Daunte Wright, 20, in a town near Minneapolis sent my emotions through the spin cycle. These events are both regular and unpredictable. As a rapid response, I created a jersey design within Instagram’s stories feature.

Later in the day I learned that the artist Karine Varga, who often uses the New York Times as fodder, created a Daunte Wright jersey out of my recent Times cover, mashing up the one from the story with a physical copy of the Times.

One of the most difficult parts of working on Unarmed is that the jersey designs themselves are reactive. As someone who prefers to be proactive, who prefers action over inaction, this lack of control is the worst part. Still, several people wrote to me and one called yesterday, each echoing a phrase I’ve heard many, many times, “keep going.”


© 2006 – 2024 Raafi Rivero.