connected

Sunny Taylor was born in Tucson, Arizona, my hometown. She lived near Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which was the reason my military family was in Tucson. She was born with a muscle development condition that has her in an electric wheelchair. Many children in the neighborhood are born with disabilities, and people suffer from an increased rate of cancers.

The mostly Latino and Chicana neighborhood's drinking water is toxic because of military waste.

Sunny Taylor is a painter and writer. Her subject matter includes disability, environmental racism, the military's free pass to pollute, and factory farms. She is a disability rights activist, a vegan animal rights activist, an anti-military activist, an environmental and anti-racist activist. Though the media likes to focus on her painting with her mouth and toes, what is much more interesting is how she so easily connects the impacts of war and industry on human and other animal bodies.

I've never been much of a fan of classical oil painting, but Sunaura Taylor has proven that it can still be radical, and very moving. The painting pictured here is "Chicken Truck", from this year, and is a ten and a half foot wide glimpse of hundreds of broken bodies.