Wheels of Justice

David Johnson, 26, is an professional artist, teacher, and activist from Denver, Colorado. A recent graduate of Princeton University where he majored in Philosophy, David believes that art can be one means of expressing the human struggle for Social Justice of the poor, exploited, and marginalized. Art has a unique potential to affirm the humanity of those who have been stripped of it. David also loves to use local, eclectic religious symbolism in his murals, seeking the essential nature of love central to all the three of the Abrahimic religions.

In pursuit of this goal, he took years away from Princeton in 2002-2003 in order to paint murals with children and with professional artists in rural El Salvador. The largest project he worked on there was a large mural that depicted the Massacre of the River Sumpul. The massacre happened in 1980, in which at least 600 farmers, women and children were forced into a ravine and gunned at from both sides by an army that was trained in the United States and was receiving millions of dollars of funding from the US government. Only four people survived this massacre, but their story could not be suppressed. David was pleased to be supported in his work by the generosity of the local community. In this mural and others, David incorporated the unique and beautiful style of local artisans, interviewed locals, and painted with youth. These youth went on to paint murals of their own.

David was part of the Peace movement at Princeton during the build up to the Iraq war, and he was also a member of the Palestine-Israel Dialogue Board. In the summer of 2007 David lived with Palestinian family in Beit Sahour and studied History and Arabic at Bethlehem University. While there he had the chance to direct the painting of a few murals in Beit Sahour, Aida Refugee camp, and the town of Al-Khudar. David’s projects in Palestine sought to capture the beauty of the people and their diverse culture, and to emphasize clearly the fundamental human rights of education, safety, self-determination, cultural expression, economic freedom, freedom of movement, and the Palestinian refugees Right of Return. Also these wall paintings attacked The Apartheid Wall, and the illegal occupation that has stripped away and continues to deny the Palestinians’ fundamental human rights. His experience in Palestine was life-changing, and he will to continue to speak out about the injustice inflicted upon Palestinians. David is a student of the history and the root causes of the system of oppression in Palestine. His study attempts to fearlessly uncover the criminal exploitation, from the US and elsewhere, of the ideological conflicts apparent within the Palestine/Israel conflict and the conflicts of the larger Arab World, a world that has been systematically destabilized and divided for a very specific, and dangerous kind of economic and political gain.