BIO
Tracey
Luszcz is obsessed with George Bush. Both of them. As a political
artist, she’s had more material than she knows what
to do with since the Presidential selection of 2000. A poet,
photographer, teacher and activist, Tracey combines political
agitation with satire and passion through a wide range of
expression.
Tracey
considers her roles as artist and activist to be complementary.
Through her art and teaching, she inspires and empowers people
to understand they have the ability to challenge injustice
and win. She sees art as the most effective means of debating
and communicating ideas. One of her most successful moments
was when she was approached by a self-proclaimed Republican
who confessed that her anti-war poems made him cry.
For
the last 11 years, Tracey has been a community activist. While
a student at Livingston College, Rutgers-New Brunswick, she
became involved in campus politics in the Campaign for an
Affordable Rutgers Education (CARE). In her last year at Rutgers,
she was a prominent organizer in the United Students Coalition
to oust President Lawrence after his remarks stating that
African Americans were genetically inferior were leaked to
the press. The USC The USC held demonstrations that took over
Route 18 and organized campus-wide walkouts and protests that
shut down Board of Governors meetings. Her dedication to that
movement earned her a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As
a student at Rutgers, she co-founded and organized Sisterhood
and Struggle, a women’s zine that promoted women artists,
held forums, discussions and poetry events. It was also during
this time that she met and worked with Ras Baraka, son of
Amiri and Amina Baraka in his first bid for Mayor of Newark,
New Jersey. The influence of the Baraka’s and their
promotion of the arts as a vehicle for social justice made
its mark on her poetry. She became a regular at Verse for
Verse and Kimoko’s Blues People, reading with the likes
of Pedro Pietri, Amina and Amiri Baraka and Haleem Suliman.
At
the age of 25, Tracey left for Cuba and collected images for
her first collection of Cuban documentary photography. She
returned a year later bringing a delegation of artists and
writers to tour the island and promote a deeper understanding
of Cuba’s unique system and it’s extraordinary
promotion of the arts. On a return trip to solidify travel
arrangements, she attended a conference on neoliberabalism
where she had the opportunity to address Fidel Castro directly.
This meeting was published later with her photography as a
pamphlet, “Speak, Write and Transmit the Truth”.
In 1999, Tracey moved to Newark to become a schoolteacher.
Influenced by Augusto Baol, (Theater of the Oppressed), she
co-founded a drama club at her school to promote liberation
through theater. After its first year, Tracey won a Do Something
Community leadership award for her efforts. She wrote many
of the drama clubs plays which emphasized the contributions
of African Americans to American culture.
Tracey
combined her love of photography with her passion for teaching
and was a recipient the following year for a grant to establish
a dark room in her school. Her sixth grade students learn
to compose and print their own documentary work. Through the
mediums of literacy and photography, her students are allowed
to analyze the gang violence and drug abuse they endure in
their community while promoting a vision for change.
As
a resident of Newark, Tracey was active in the fight against
police brutality. She documented the demonstrations against
the brutal murder of Earl Faison in “The Blue Wall of
Violence” a short essay examining the chronology of
community activists to bring the police officers to justice.
In the 2002 campaign to elect Ras Baraka to City Hall, she
was a principal organizer. Although the campaign lost by 117
votes, Ras was appointed deputy mayor of education following
the election. Tracey documented the campaign in “Some
Fight and A Little Bit of Vision,” to provide a strategy
to other community activists to run their own grassroots campaigns.
Tracey
moved to Jersey City in 2000 to find a burgeoning art community
and a space for her art. She was featured in “Poet On”,
a series of readings organized by Amiri Baraka where she had
the opportunity to read with Sonia Sanchez and Anne Waldman.
She was also a featured poet with Tree at Arthouse Production’s
“National Poetry Day”.
Last
year, her exhibit Move/Meant!, a collection of photographs
documenting various demonstrations and street life in Cuba,
was shown at Ground Café and City Hall. Tracey’s
work captures the message of the demonstrators who clamor
for peace, a living wage, an end to war, or a new president
with a sense of humor and outrage that adds vitality to a
subject people usually don’t want to talk about.
In
an effort to promote poetry in Jersey City, she founded and
moderated “Write On!” a writing workshop that
is celebrating it’s first year anniversary and has brought
many poets to The Waterbug Hotel, Jersey City’s premier
poetry spot.
Tracey
is currently working on “Nothing’s Fair in Love
and War” her first collection of poetry that will be
available in September. She is traveling through Thailand,
Cambodia and Vietnam during July and August. Her next exhibit
focusing on the war in Indochina 40 years later, will examine
the ramifications of war but also the ability of people to
reclaim their national identity and sovereignty.
Tracey
is available for poetry readings, photography exhibitions
and lectures about Cuba and grassroots organizing. She can
be reached at traceyx@hotmail.com.
