We release Shadows then Light with the expectation of a new year, and the common backdrop of tragedy. We remember lives lost at home and abroad, lives we are responsible to because we are the only witnesses they have. It serves, then, to acknowledge our common bonds & confront terror together.

We present to you a tribute birthed from struggle, hoping that it may point to a new freedom guided by stories. Shadows then Light, honors the movement of undocumented youth coming out of the shadows in an effort to not only to claim human dignity, but, also, to shine light back into the shadows, where the majority of community members remain, facing the dehumanizing threat of discrimination, detention and deportation.

This is Dedicated to All

Who in Divine Obedience

Commit Civil Disobedience

Based on over two years of activism and research with undocumented youth, Shadows then Light explores the meaning and practice of the diverse forms of civil disobedience. Through photographs, ethnographic data, poetry and essays, we offer a critique of a loveless American society that reduces human beings to corpses while they live. The question before us now, “Is another America possible?”

Illuminated by the light of these lives, we are confronted with the complicity of our participation in a hegemonic political-economic system that begets darkness, generating a shadowed oppression. The questions, now, for us, for America, we the jailers: Are we free? Are we fully human? Having seen the light, might we also be born again?

In hopes that the Initial Breath of Life

Through the Word

Awakens us all from Dust

Steve & Marco