By Will Potter
Multiple states have considered “Ag Gag” bills that criminalize investigators who document animal welfare abuses on factory farms. Iowa and Utah are the latest to approve them. These bills, lobbied for by Big Ag groups, are part of a long line of attempts to blame activists for exposing abuses, rather than hold corporations accountable.
The community is invited to join with local climate activists in the “Earth Day Sing Out” from noon to 1 p.m. and 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
The event is designed to call for an economic stimulus to help prevent future climate crisis.
On April 15 in northern Nigeria, 200 school girls aged 15-18 were kidnapped by an extremist Muslim group called Boko Haram, whose name in the Hausa language means “Western education is a sin.” In hopes of viral pressure on Nigerian authorities to try to recover the girls, campaigns have started on the White House website, on Change.org and on Facebook to demand: “Bring Back Our Girls.” The campaigns quickly gained global attention, with Michelle Obama,
A watermelon filter on TikTok is allowing users to raise funds to support civilians in Gaza, where more than 11,000 people have been killed since Israel began an offensive military attack on the Gaza Strip in October, after a Hamas attack killed 1,400 people in Israel and saw roughly 200 civilians taken hostage.
Can Humor Topple Monsters?
An interview with Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum on his latest prank against Bank of America and why every protest needs some fun.
by Laura Gottesdiener
Mine is not Arts for the sake of Arts. It is a revolutionary INSGINA carved into the artistic plaque of my DNA to speak FREEDOM of expression and then freedom after EXPRESSION. The footprints of my revolutionary walk are dipped in the paths of RESISTANCE. My Ideological Swag -word is CREATIVITY. My spiritual birth mark is RESILIENCE. My revolutionary slogan is a nonviolent but a poetic fist of MASS INSTRUCTION. I am non-selfish believer.
Message to the world.
We are legalizing CANNABIS everywhere in the world, please support us.
We are making PICTURES showing us as cannabis smokers or growers, and supporting the legalization. In France, the movement becomes bigger and bigger, check this public profile of a french leader of the CANNABIS SOCIAL CLUBS to see how it looks :
https://www.facebook.com/dominique.broc
"We envision a nation that provides students from underprivileged backgrounds the same caliber of public education as students from privileged backgrounds.
Mounica Tata launched Doodleodrama as an online journal to improve representation for her body type in mainstream media. “I’ve always been an overweight person and bullied and shamed for the same. Only fairly recently I’ve learned to make my peace with my body. My own journey with my body inspired/continues to inspire me to talk about it.”
In May 2020, a team of artists, activists, folklorists, and people who lost loved ones to Covid-19 came together to make monthly memorial sites in New York City to remember victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. They continued installing memorials around New York City every month during the summer of 2020.
A photo project/online feed to increase visibility of sex workers and increase the sex workers’ sense of community of voice, in response to a spate of violence against the community in Ireland. The project led to a piece in The National, and increased area interest and conversation about violence against sex workers.
War Drags You Out is a project by artist "Saint Hoax" looking at the similarities between defining characteristics of Drag Queens and Political Leaders.
Text from St. Hoax's website:
"After attending a drag show for the first time, I was struck by the richness of this glamour oriented culture.
I took a minute to actually look at the faux queens and deconstruct their main components.
During a moment when the facade of social media seems to be cracking, it’s easy to look to Instagram stars and wonder what’s real and what’s fake. Last month, Essena O’Neill, the Australian teenager who racked up more than half a million Instagram followers, quit Instagram after claiming that social media is “not real life.”
Rapper Logic's song "1-800-273-8255" may have helped prevent a significant number of suicides around the time of its release, according to a study published Monday.
Artist Lauren McCarthy wants to challenge our obsession with getting followers on social media by letting you request a real-life follower, for one day at a time.
“I am very, very happy to announce that for the first time, Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site,” said the supposed Dow Chemical spokesman, Jude Finisterra, on Dec. 3, 2004, during an appearance on BBC World.
It's My Body! was initially a project for Stephen Duncombe's Media Activism class during Spring 2012. We designed and developed the concept for the class, but have yet to set up the actual website. The images below show the site's layout.
If, like me, you spent the days after Trump’s election in a depressed stupor wondering what – if anything – would change, look no further than Good Trouble. Set up by former Dazed editor Rod Stanley, it’s a new collective arts platform dedicated to celebrating the culture of resistance and grassroots activists promoting positive change.
Resonate, Reverberate, Roar (Re-Re-Roar) is a growing archive of original sounds that express an experimental, independent, and socially progressive spirit. The sounds on Re-Re-Roar include field recordings, interviews, songs, speeches, experimental music, and more. Re-Re-Roar is a site for research and activ[ist] listening, with the purpose of distributing sounds of resistance to eager ears around the globe.
Oh, the sweet irony.
Pete Peterson is the conservative billionaire who is a major financier in the effort to dismantle, cut and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Recently he and his foundation held a contest asking folks to submit videos on why it is important to “fix” the national debtof which, he and his foundation falsely claim, Social Security is a major contributor.
Global Citizen arranged a virtual concert to celebrate all those who are working during the COVID-19 epidemic, from the healthcare workers to essential workers. The lineup included Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Jennifer Hudson, and over 30 more artists. The concert took place live on Youtube and ran for around 6 hours.
In 1996, filmmaker John Akomfrah created the character of the Data Thief as a narrative device to offer an insightful study of Afrofuturism in his film The Last Angel of History, which links Black musicians including George Clinton, Derrick May, and Sun Ra to Akomfrah’s thesis about the role of technological fantasy in Black artistry across genres and mediums.