Refugees Welcome | I See My Neighbors | Everyone Is Welcome Here, by Micah Bazant

Signs of welcome, hope, and refuge—that’s what Jewish trans artist Micah Bazant creates: posters and images for public spaces that make a claim on them as welcoming. Bazant’s images claim the public libraries, community centers, religious organizations, and urban storefronts where they’re placed as spaces of shared responsibility for engaging and truly seeing others. The welcome and advocacy of Bazant’s posters are far-reaching, with images and text around Black Lives Matter, disability justice, indigenous rights, trans justice, and environmental justice. Micah focuses largely on “developing ethical models for collaboration with grassroots community organizations.” Everyone Is Welcome Here was created in partnership with Bay Area Muslim and South Asian organizations. As Bazant notes, the difference a poster like this can make is profound. One Muslim student in a public library literacy program said that the prospect of seeing a welcoming poster at her library makes her feel “good, happy, safer.”