Montezuma Hall | March 9, 2026
4:30 pm: Doors Open. Gathering in Montezuma Hall.
5:00 pm: Presentation and conversation with David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi.
What to expect from Screening Circle?
This event invites SDSU students to explore how unsheltered individuals are represented in today’s media landscape through a conversation with artists and political cartoonists David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi.
David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi recently published a comic book, Sweeps Kill, that explores the impact of city policies on homelessness and unsheltered individuals (you can see a pdf of their comic book here). The comic is comprised of political cartoons they had been publishing over the previous years.
As JMS is committed to inclusive storytelling and critical media literacy, this event offers an opportunity to reflect on how representation shapes perception. On this page, you'll find a brief introduction to political cartoons as well as how unsheltered individuals have been portrayed within the media.
What are political cartoons?
Political cartoons are illustrated commentaries that use satire, caricature, symbolism, and humor to critique political leaders, policies, or social issues. Their power lies in saying a lot with very little—often in a single image. A History of Visual Satire While the printed "cartoon" is a modern invention, the practice of visual satire has been around for thousands of years. In ancient Rome, people would etch caricatures on walls (like the example on the right) to mock political figures or religious authorities. Long before social media, common citizens, and even children, used graffiti to express their dissent. Watch the short video below to see how long humans have been communicating visually.
Photo on the right: The Alexamenos Graffito (c. 200 AD), found carved into plaster at a school near the Palatine Hill in Rome. It depicts a boy worshipping a figure with a donkey's head on a cross.
Birth of the Modern Political Cartoon
England: The Turning Point
- The modern political cartoon emerged in 18th-century Britain.
- William Hogarth used sequential engravings to criticize moral decay and politics.
- James Gillray perfected exaggerated caricature—huge noses, bloated bodies, symbolic props.
Gillray’s cartoons attacked:
- King George III
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Parliamentary corruption
This era proved cartoons could influence public opinion.
The cartoon on the left is The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation! (1802). Produced after Edward Jenner administered the first vaccine, Gillray's work satirized the ridiculous claims of the anti-vaccine movement—exaggerating their warnings that patients would sprout cow-like appendages
The Political Cartoon in the United States
Thomas Nast (1840–1902) was a German-American cartoonist widely regarded as the father of American political cartoons. Working primarily for Harper’s Weekly in the late 19th century, Nast used sharp caricature and clear symbolism to expose political corruption, most famously helping bring down New York City political boss William “Boss” Tweed and the Tammany Hall machine. His cartoons demonstrated the power of visual satire to shape public opinion and hold leaders accountable. Nast also cemented enduring political symbols—creating the Republican elephant and popularizing the Democratic donkey—that remain central to American political imagery today.
Watch the video below to hear a discussion of the cartoon on the right, "Worse Than Slavery," in which Nast criticized the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of racial violence after the Civil War.
The meme as modern political cartoon
Political cartoons and memes serve similar purposes—commenting on politics through humor and imagery—but they differ in form, context, and impact. Traditional Cartoons Political cartoons are traditionally hand-drawn or illustrated and published in newspapers or magazines. They are usually created by professional cartoonists who rely on symbolism, caricature, and satire to make a clear argument. Because they are tied to journalism, political cartoons often aim for depth and context, sometimes remaining meaningful decades after their publication. The Digital Shift Memes, by contrast, are digital, rapidly produced, and widely shared on social media. They often remix existing images, pop culture references, or templates and can be created by anyone, not just professionals. Memes tend to be more immediate and informal, prioritizing speed, relatability, and viral appeal over nuance or lasting significance. In comparison
Ultimately, political cartoons are more structured and authoritative, reflecting a single, deliberate viewpoint. Memes are participatory and democratic; they evolve collectively as users adapt and reinterpret them. Together, these forms illustrate how visual political satire has shifted from print-based, elite platforms to a fast-moving, crowd-driven digital culture.
David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi
David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi are a creative team from Seattle who have published extensively in publications across the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle Magazine and Real Change. Best known for their comic series "Pen & Eye," much of their work combines journalism and art to critique the impacts of city policies on unsheltered individuals. Below is an example of their work.
Representation of unsheltered people in the media
The media are very powerful in shaping public opinion around groups of people and the policies that impact them. It is therefore important to consider how the media depict those from traditionally marginalized communities, as these groups often have the smallest voice to share their own stories. The media have typically focused on four "frames" related to unsheltered people:
1. Victims of Tragedy
- Unsheltered people are often shown as helpless, suffering, or hopeless.
- Stories focus on extreme hardship, illness or death.
- While this can evoke sympathy, it can also strip people of agency and complexity.
2. Public Nuisance or Threat
- Coverage sometimes frames unsheltered people as dangerous, criminal and responsible for public disorder.
- Headlines may emphasize crime, drug use or sanitation issues without context.
- This framing often supports punitive responses (policing, sweeps, criminalization).
3. Moral Failure or Personal Choice
- Media narratives may imply homelessness results from laziness, addiction or bad decisions.
- Structural causes—like housing costs, low wages or lack of mental health care—are minimized or ignored.
4. Invisible or Dehumanized
- Unsheltered people are frequently discussed about, not with.
- Their voices are missing; officials, residents, and business owners speak instead.
- Images may show bodies without faces, reinforcing anonymity and stigma.
Sweeps Kill
Sweeps Kill: Seattle's Policy Failures and Crimes Against the Poor—and How to Do Better is a comic book compilation of the work of David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi.
Seattle is actively making worse the already dire humanitarian disaster of homelessness, and failing to reign in a hostile, out-of-control police department. Drawing on interviews, research, and field work, these comics tell stories of our most vulnerable residents, and how they are being harmed and killed by the policies of Mayor Bruce Harrell, the Seattle City Council, and the Seattle Police Department. These comics, which originally appeared in Seattle Magazine and Real Change in 2022-2024, tell a story of almost incomprehensible cruelty and incompetence—and the humane solutions we could enact immediately if we chose to.
Join artists David Stoesz and Marie Bouassi in a conversation about the power of art to help us have hard conversations about harder topics - like homelessness.
Reflection Questions
1. In what ways have you seen unsheltered people portrayed in mainstream media, and how have those portrayals shaped your understanding of those communities?
2. How can media representation influence public perception of marginalized groups? How can that perception then drive public policy decisions?
3. How have you seen political cartoons, including memes, to challenge social norms or ideologies?
4. What impact could a comic book like Sweeps Kill have on public perception or public policy?
5. How can storytelling help humanize communities that are often misrepresented or underrepresented in the media?