The Magna Carta is known as the foundational document that established a rule of law that applied equally to king and commoner. It established rules that influenced and are reflected in the U.S. Constitution. Many countries around the world do not enjoy these basic liberties in law. There are more than 76 countries that criminalize non-heterosexual behavior. Gender, sexuality, and class intersect with ideologies of intolerance and laws that criminalize non-conforming behaviors, leaving more than a hundred individuals world-wide serving heavy prison sentences. Amnesty International partnered with Salisbury Cathedral to represent their shared goals of fostering tolerance, peace, and justice worldwide. The Prisoners of Conscience window was installed to symbolize all who are imprisoned for following their conscience: “anyone imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion, or political views or beliefs.” Christianity is at times used to justify intolerance, but can also be the inspiration to resist oppressive laws and to demand tolerance and understanding. 
The wealthy or even modestly well-off around the world are less vulnerable to multiple forms of oppression than are the poor. Marginalized populations in any country are more likely to be imprisoned in disproportionate numbers. This is an extreme example of intersectionality – but there are more ordinary examples as well. One cannot understand the life of a black woman in the United States by understanding the dynamics of being poor, being black, and being a woman separately. Living in the favelas in Rio is a different experience if you are a young teenage boy and if you are an aging mother, or an adult man or a young girl. Artist JR from Paris was drawn to Rio after hearing news of police killing the boys they arrested from one of Rio’s most notoriously dangerous favelas. Where one comes from can determine whether or not one gets a trial, or torture and murder. J.R.’s response was to go to the favela, talk to the people, and meet the mother of one of the boys who was killed. He created a global “Women are Heroes” art project in response. Intersectionality as an academic concept asks that we be aware of how multiple layers of identity and oppression intersect in ways that cannot be separated. It is also a call for more than awareness – academic understanding can also be a call for praxis – for a more evolved basis for creating laws and policies that are more humane.
Art can help us think differently, can open new windows of thought and consciousness, and begs of us to see – to shift our way of seeing.
JR wants to “turn the world inside out” and street artists like him poke fun at the law and at institutionalized power by putting their art in plain sight – sometimes in ways that make the art hidden because we are bombarded with the familiar every day, we have to look around ourselves with new vision to “see” what has clearly been there the whole time.
