It was September 1738, and Benjamin Lay had walked 20 miles, subsisting on “acorns and peaches,” to reach the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Beneath his overcoat he wore a military uniform and a sword — both anathema to Quaker teachings. He also carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, two Chicago-based organizations, For the People Artists Collective and Chicago Community Bond Fund, worked together to create Decarcerate Now, a virtual quilt honoring individuals who died of COVID-19 while in the custody of the Cook County Jail (CCJ).
STONY CREEK, Conn. — Last year we saw images of farmland underwater everywhere. And, according to the USDA statistics, median farm income earned by farm households was forecast to be in the red, i.e., underwater. Bren Smith’s operation started out underwater and will remain there for the foreseeable future, because he farms the sea.
Earth Quaker Action Team's five year struggle offers important lessons for those wanting to organize and win campaigns.
After five years of action by Earth Quaker Action Team, PNC Bank announced a shift in its policy on March 2 that will effectively cease its financing of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.
In the mid early 2000s, religious advocates tried a new strategy: promoting the theory of “intelligent design” to be taught in schools. As the Kansas School Board considered the argument, Prophet Bobby Henderson saw an opportunity. His now famous, “Open Letter to the Kansas School Board” began:
Destin from the Youtube channel Smarter Every Day has started the "Hunstville Fighting Covid" website in order to mobilize and teach those who have 3D printers how to print Personal Protective Equipment to aid medical professionals fighting the COVID-19 epidemic.
Opponents of military rule in Myanmar have marched, observed "flower strikes" and sought alternative ways to communicate after most users were cut off from the internet, undaunted by the bloody suppression of protests during the past two months.
Grandmas diving for seafood while immigrants wrestle with identity. Scrambling for self-worth in the face of suicide. Rock music in the face of fear. A noir murder mystery. Musings on death.
The large crowds and brightly coloured placards of the school climate strikes became some of the defining images of 2019.
“There would be lots of chanting and the energy was always amazing,” says Dominique Palmer, a 20-year-old climate activist from London who has been involved with the strikes for more than a year. “Being there with everyone in that moment is truly an electrifying feeling. It’s very different now.”
"Owning a vehicle, you could drive by and with the pressure of your foot on the accelerator and with your eyes on the road you could pass it quickly … The images of poverty would lift and float and recede quickly like the gray shades of memory so that these images were in the past before you came upon them. It was the physical equivalent of the evening news.” — David Wojnarowicz.
On his way to work on a construction site, Khaleel Seivwright surveyed the growing number of tents lining an intercity highway and in parks with increasing discomfort. How would these people survive Toronto’s damp, frigid winters, let alone the coronavirus, which had pushed so many out of overcrowded shelters?
He remembered the little shanty he had once built out of scrap wood while living on a commune in British Columbia.
Elina Chauvet’s red shoes are worldly. They’ve been in Milan, Italy, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not just one pair, but hundreds — red boots, red heels, red toddler shoes. They’re not there to see the sights, but to take up space. Especially when the women or girls who would have worn them no longer take up any space, except in the lives of their loved ones.
The Yes Men join Reclaim the City in their fight against unjust housing policy. On September 30, 2019, a horde of zombies attended a "#natsneverdie rally" at the Cape Town Civic Centre in order to celebrate Mayor Dan Plato and the Mayoral Committee and to support their policies, which are increasingly similar to those of the National Party under Apartheid.
In Tunisia, a country gripped by economic uncertainty and still in the midst of rebuilding its identity after the Arab Spring, hip-hop culture is viewed as part of an ongoing dissident movement. Just a few events, such as the recent Mafia Wallitili Festival in the heart of downtown Tunis, offer the local hip-hop community an opportunity to share their values with the broader population.
Chen Boer's first heroine film, which she co-wrote and directed, was "Daughter of China," about female soldiers in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. They didn't have much filmed material at the time, but as a feminist, Chen Boer clearly wanted to record the sacrifices and contributions of Chinese women in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
It’s been a historic year for women. There are more serving in Congress than ever before, and a record number are currently running for president in 2020. But even with these significant gains, women—both in the U.S. and around the world—can still find gender equality elusive.
The group Art Not Oil did a campaign to raise awareness about the oil industry, and their funding of Art. "Art Not Oil has campaigned against Big Oil cultural sponsorship since 2004.
The aim of the action is to create a fractal network of poets, where their poems will be recited, recorded, set to music, will be activistically acted as performance material in order to resist the censorship of art.
The field of action is the poets who will be born and the network that will be created by the restless artists.
Per os is a research-based art project about the pharmaceutical companies' role in our society, psychiatry and healthcare. Using surveys I have conducted over the past three years and a large amount of anger at how wrong and corrupt the system is, I would like to interpret this research artistically in order to develop material for an exhibition and interventions.
On April 26th, 2012, Zheng Churan, a feminist activist who was a senior at Zhongshan University at the time, brought 500 letters of advocacy to the school post office on a bicycle.
Fridays for Future strikers around the world shared their demands for bold climate action online Friday as many youth activists heeded public health experts' recommendations in the face of the coronavirus pandemic by eschewing public protests in favor of digital demonstrations.
The online displays followed the call earlier this week from school strike for climate pioneer Greta Thunberg to #ClimateStrikeOnline.
On Feb 17, 2020, the official account of The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League on Weibo announced the launch of its virtual idols "Hongqiman" and "Jiangshanjiao", and set up a new official microblog, and called on people to "come and support the League Idols".
Three months ago, when New York government officials ordered nonessential businesses closed to slow the spread of coronavirus, high-end retailers sheathed their stores in plywood barriers, as though readying for civil unrest.
Anti-opioid activists unfurled banners and scattered pill bottles on Saturday inside the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which is named for a family connected to the powerful painkilling drug OxyContin.
The protest, which was organized by a group started by the celebrated photographer Nan Goldin, started just after 4 p.m., when several dozen people converged at the Temple of Dendur inside the wing.