Oakland-based artist and activist Nicolás González-Medina was among the nearly 1,000 protesters who gathered to advocate for immigrant, LGBTQ+, and women’s rights in San Francisco’s Mission District for a Day of Resistance on January 18, ahead of the presidential inauguration. And he had come prepared with his woodcut printmaking supplies.
“Ninety percent of being a political artist is showing up to things,” he told Hyperallergic.
For the march protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump — who has again vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants — González-Medina chose his design “Somos La Resistencia (We Are the Resistance),” which he printed on picket signs and approximately 150 shirts worn during the event.
The print features a half-portrait of a long-haired figure wearing earrings that say “resist” and holding a hand up in defiance. The artist gives his artwork out for free at protests, but typically sells it online.
“This art piece has Aztec designs because we live in a time when people forget their history,” González-Medina said. “The resistance means that we are still going to be here — you cannot erase us.”
Trump’s threats became a reality in the days after his inauguration, when he signed orders to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented parents and greenlight immigration raids in hospitals, schools, and churches. On Sunday, January 26, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported close to 1,000 arrests, the highest single-day statistic since the agency began sharing numbers on X, according to CNN.
González-Medina was also asked to paint the protest’s leading banner with the phrase “Somos La Resistencia” written in large, bold letters. A week after San Francisco’s protest, another of González-Medina’s designs, “Juntxs en la Lucha (Together in the Struggle),” depicting a masked person wearing braids, graced the cover of San Francisco Mission District’s free bilingual newspaper El Tecolote in an issue that included a spread on what undocumented immigrants can do if confronted by immigration authorities.
Long before González-Medina’s work became a Bay Area emblem of the struggle for immigration rights, he was a name in activist circles. “The reason why I started making art was because I was tired of arguing with people all the time,” González-Medina told Hyperallergic. “I focus on myself, do the work, and at the end of the day, if I’m doing something good, it’s gonna show for itself.”
In 2010, the same year he lost his mother to cancer, González-Medina “came out” as undocumented during National Coming Out of the Shadows Day in Chicago, an event organized by the Immigrant Youth Justice League. “I’m not afraid anymore. My name is Nico and I’m undocumented,” he said in a speech revealing his status that day.
González-Medina was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. When he was just five years old, he moved to Chicago, where his mom worked in a factory. He remained in the city until 2013, when he moved to the Bay Area.
He was one of five undocumented activists who set out to walk from San Francisco to Washington, DC, in 2012 to advocate for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would establish a path to legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants and has failed to pass US Congress numerous times. The artist said he also helped organize a hunger strike at an Obama campaign office in Denver, Colorado, in June 2012. Soon after, the Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Though he fought to pave a path to permanent status for children of undocumented parents, González-Medina said he’s not eligible for DACA because he did not finish high school or complete a GED, as required by the action.
González-Medina didn’t call himself an artist until he moved to Oakland, though he had painted banners for protests before. At one of his first jobs in the Bay Area, González-Medina saw former Black Panther Party Minister Emory Douglas, who created political art using woodcut prints, at work.
“He carved so deep into it, it was very sculptural,” González-Medina said. By the following year, he was making his own large-scale woodcut prints.
Now mobilizing his own art for change as reports of ICE spread across the country, González-Medina said he’s used to highly anti-immigration moments like this one and has been since he was a kid.
“The feeling is of uncertainty, there is a lot of fear being spread,” González-Medina told Hyperallergic. “But we can look back and remember, ‘Okay, we’ve been through this already.’ I also know that during these next four years, it’s gonna really push people to make art and to get involved.”
