Welcome Home, Brittney! - Poster of the Week

Bring Brittney Griner Home!

Nontira Kigle (@nontirakigle)

Digital Print, 2022

Augsburg, DE

Almost ten months after her detention in Russia began, Brittney Griner returned home to the US on Friday, December 9th.The Biden administration exchanged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Griner’s release.

Griner was arrested in Moscow in February of this year after customs agents found a vape canister containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She was found guilty of “drug smuggling” and sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison. The substance is legal in some US states, but illegal in Russia.

Efforts to free Griner began with the We Are BG campaign and #BringBrittneyHome campaign by advocacy organization Black Feminist Future. The collective power of organizing, amplifying her arrest, and putting pressure on the Biden administration by Black, women-led orgs helped make her release possible. But dynamics of race and gender complicated public recognition of Griner’s case.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the discrediting of Soviet Marxism, Russian elites have been using homophobia to create a religiously conservative national identity that is different from US influenced western secular culture. Brittney Griner, a stan