[2] By the age of 17, his cartoons had been published in the Los Angeles Free Press and the Black Panther Party newspaper, and he had printed a (pre-Watergate) street poster, proclaiming, "Evict Nixon!".

Paul Von Blum said in the Journal of American Studies of Turkey: A key figure in Southern Californian socially conscious art is Los Angeles-based Mark Vallen, a renowned Chicano artist-activist whose works have addressed pressing social and political issues for more than three decades.

[6] As a response to racial profiling after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Vallen made a pencil drawing of a Muslim woman, titled I Am Not the Enemy; prompted by the Iraq war, he reproduced the drawing as a poster for wide distribution, with the title at the bottom in bold upper case.

[5] He deplored the increase of racial hate crimes following 9/11 and stated, "Moslems, Arabs, and people of Middle Eastern descent are not the enemy.

Still some years before Robbie Conal gained fame for his scathing caricatures of Reagan, Vallen's piece appealed not only to the aesthetics but the pragmatics of activism in Los Angeles.

Vallen modeled his figure in part on Wonder Woman, and with its obvious nod to Lichtenstein’s pop art, his piece was both aesthetically familiar and initially non-threatening to the viewer.

The deceptively brief text undercut the familiarity of the image with a deeply ironic commentary on the priorities of the average American citizen.

[17] Vallen also stated that Ross and his followers "are not incorrect when noting the follies of modern art, but their total rejection of it is beyond the pale and thoroughly reactionary.

[18] He now publishes the web site Art for a Change, which promotes the socially transformative role of his own and other artists' work, and acts as a forum and resource facility;[19] he is a "popular arts blogger",[20] In 2004 he campaigned against the threatened closure of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, calling Mayor James Hahn's budget team "vulgarian accountants and hack bureaucrats" and "gray-suited Philistines.