The Acción Poética movement is a literary phenomenon that began in Monterrey, Mexico in 1996. It was founded by Mexican poet Armando Alanis Pulido and involves painting and intervening abandoned walls in cities with fragments of poetry. The content is usually love poems or optimistic phrases. Also, some phrases refer to the current situation in the cities (though one of their rules is to not talk about politics or religious beliefs).
The Green Belt Movement (GBM) was founded by Professor Wangari Maathai in 1977 under the auspices of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) to respond to the needs of rural Kenyan women who reported that their streams were drying up, their food supply was less secure, and they had to walk further and further to get firewood for fuel and fencing.
Blair Holt was shot and killed while he shielded another classmate from the bullets a gunman sprayed on a CTA bus in Chicago in 2007. His father is a police officer and his mother is a fire department chief, and that’s what they had taught him to do.
"The No Papers, No Fear ride for justice.
Riders are undocumented people from all over the country, including students, mothers and fathers, children, people in deportation proceedings, day laborers, and others who continue to face deportation, harassment, and death while simply looking for a better life.
Pink seesaws were installed along the United States/Mexico border. The project, created by two professors sought to unite both sides of the fence by creating an activity that required a participant on either side. The seesaws were installed so there is one seat in El Paso, Texas and one in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico with the border fence acting as the fulcrum.
From 1998 to 2004, pro-democracy activist Htein Lin was jailed for challenging the military dictatorship in his home country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Southeast Asia. Prior to his imprisonment, Lin acted in films and with a theater troupe. While behind bars, he continued to organize performance artworks with his fellow prisoners.
Public arts advocator, Creative Time, and the MTA Arts for Transit and Urban Design (AFT) partnered to present Heard NY, a public art dance and music installation facilitated by artist, choreographer, and fashion designer Nick Cave. Heard NY was created to instill a production of wonder in a quotidian landscape.
The slogan of 2015 is "Art changes Perceptions, Perceptions change people, People change the world". The organization has created an online community where anyone can post digital images of poverty existing in the Arab world. The action was created in response to the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit declaration to eradicate extreme poverty throughout the world by 2015.
Has the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, long a bastion of high-priced fun-in-the-sun escapism, finally sharpened its political teeth? A few of this year's art installations would say yes, as Coachella during this election year doesn't seem to be going quietly into the cultural void.
HeForShe is a solidarity campaign for gender equality initiated by UN Women. Its goal is to engage men and boys as agents of change for the achievement of gender equality and women’s rights, by encouraging them to take action against negative inequalities faced by women and girls.
Björk and the French artist Aleph have collaborated on an immersive, AI sound piece that recreates extinct animal calls, set to run at the Pompidou Centre, in Paris, from November 20 until December 9. It will play as visitors travel on escalators in the art museum, as part of its “Biodiversity: Which culture for which future?” forum.
"Amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes around the world, Singapore-based dancewear company Cloud & Victory posted a video on March 18 calling for a stop to the hate against the Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. It features prominent Asian dancers and allies, including former professional dancer Miko Fogarty, The Joffrey Ballet's Jeraldine Mendoza and Boston Ballet's Lia Cirio and Paulina Waski.
Facebook came under fire when its authentic-name policy led to San Francisco drag queen Sister Roma and others being barred from the social network. The policy allows users to report people they believe are using fake names. This caused a stir when a group of drag performers suddenly found that their Facebook accounts had been deactivated. Among them was Sister Roma, who had not registered on the site under her legal name, Michael Williams.
The US prison system is one of the world’s great shames. A quarter of the world’s prisoners are being detained in a country that represents only 5% of the world’s population. It is a system that has been compared to a modern-day version of the Jim Crow laws.
As an add-on to my 2010 book, Representing Disability in an Ableist World. Essays on Mass Media, I have created this online resource site.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Representing-Disability-in-an-Ableist-Wor...
The Quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by long-time human rights activist, author and lecturer Cleve Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring these men. While planning the 1985 march, he learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS.
"Small charities of today are in threat. Charitable donations are down. Fewer people are donating. Those that do donate are giving less. Whilst bigger charities are better equipped to deal with this flux (with money to spend on large advertising campaigns), smaller charities are facing a more uncertain future. For the Pilion Trust, a small frontline charity working with homeless and disadvantaged people in London, times are tough.
World Without Oil (WWO) is an alternate reality game (ARG) created to call attention to, spark dialogue about, plan for and engineer solutions to a possible near-future global oil shortage, post peak oil.
Tamms Year Ten is an all-volunteer grassroots coalition of artists, prisoners, men formerly incarcerated in Tamms, family members and other people of conscience. In 2008, at the ten-year anniversary of the opening of the Tamms supermax prison, the group launched a legislative campaign to call for its reform or closure. Men were originally supposed to be there for one year—but at that point 1/3 of them had been in solitary confinement the entire decade.