Cancel the Rent (2020)

Art by Rini Templeton, Design by Melanie Cervantes
11″ x 8.5″ 3-color screenprint on Astrobrights paper, Printed in my kitchen, San Leandro CA, December 2020

As we get to the end of the calendar year I worry about the way we are inching toward a dangerous cliff as we move closer to the expiration of the moratorium on evictions in California and the rest of the country.

What is going to happen? Will we see a massive expansion of the already growing homeless encampments? Will we see another temporary extension of the moratorium? But at some point it will expire and months and months of rent and mortgage payments will come due. What will happen then? What will we do? How will we fight?

I took a graphic Rini Templeton drew and altered it to fit Covid times (adding masks to all the characters) and printed a small poster that I will be giving away in all orders until they are gone. I have done a couple of these in the past few months (see additional photos to check them out). Rini’s life and art practice were phenomenal.

“For 20 years, Rini Templeton made drawings of activists in the United States, Mexico and Central America while she joined them in their meetings, demonstrations, picket lines and other actions for social justice. She called her bold black-and-white images “xerox art” because activists and organizers could copy them easily for use in their banners, signs, leaflets, newsletters, even T-shirts, whenever needed. “(Check out more of her work at website Dignidad Rebelde supports- RiniArt.com)

This piece is part of a series of small prints we have created to give away for free. Because of Covid we drop them into orders or share them with folks when there is a way to do so safely.