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.
An erroneous tip called into law enforcement authorities in 2002 subjected Hasan Elahi to an intensive investigation by the FBI and after undergoing months of interrogations, he was finally cleared of suspicions. After this harrowing experience, Elahi conceived “Tracking Transience” and opened just about every aspect of his life to the public.
The Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf opens “The Gardener” with the declaration: “I am an agnostic filmmaker.” From anyone else, this might seem like a simple statement, but not from the complex Mr. Makhmalbaf. In 1974, when he was 17, religious and involved in a guerrilla group, he stabbed a policeman, for which he received a bullet to the stomach and a prison sentence.
When Behnaz Babazadeh was young, her family moved from Afghanistan to the US. She loved almost everything about her new home — especially America’s amazing selection of candy — but she also loved wearing her familiar pink-flowered headscarf, which she’d grown used to wearing as part of her school uniform in her old home.
For weeks, 14 giant balloons had been mysteriously parked in front of the Sidra Medical and Research Center, a hulking steel, glass and white ceramic building devoted to women’s and children’s health that is to open on the outskirts of this city in 2015.
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The nativity scene at Fellowship Congregational Church in Tulsa, Okla., looks a little different this year: There is a chain-link fence surrounding Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.
The display has been up since the beginning of December, but it drew news coverage this week after the church changed the message on its marquee to read, “The holy family was a migrant family,” and posted photos of the nativity on Facebook.
The Rev Lucy Winkett is having trouble sleeping. This is because her church on Piccadilly has decided to erect a full-size copy of the Israeli separation barrier to block off her Christopher Wren church. And because she lives above the shop, the grim presence of this temporary structure is with her all the time. "Politics aside, living beside the 26ft wall is having a curious effect on those who are here.
The Kiss of Love campaign in India is a non violent protest against moral policing. It started out as a Facebook page but gained momentum across India when a mob of conservative, right-wing party members attacked and demolished a coffee shop in Kozhikode, Kerala. Their grounds to do so was public display of affection by couples inside the coffee shop, which they saw as immoral activity.
Rights activists in Mozambique have marched through the capital Maputo to protest a colonial era law still included in new legislation that allows rapists to go unpunished if they marry their victims.
The "marriage effect" clause sees convicted rapists given a five-year suspended sentence if they marry their victims and stipulates that the perpetrator should stay married to the victim for at least five years.
"The Shortest Way with the Dissenters;" Or, "Proposals for the Establishment of the Church" is a pamphlet by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1702. Defoe was prompted to write the pamphlet by the increased hostility towards Dissenters in the wake of the accession of Queen Anne to the throne.
A Femen activist, Sarah Constantin, is hanged from a noose-like rope from a Paris bridge to call attention to the large number of executions in Iran as she stages a protest against visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Paris, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. A near-naked woman hanging from a noose-like rope from a Paris bridge has sent a message to visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Yazan Halwani is a young Beiruti artist who paints murals of revered Lebanese and Arab figures on prominent walls in a bid to help overcome sectarianism in this fragmented city. “What I try to do,” he explains down a fuzzy line from Beirut, “is write the stories of the city, on its own walls – creating a memory for the city.”
Brick x Brick is a public art performance that builds human “walls” against misogyny. It is organized by the Public Displays of Affection, a collective of artists, designers, educators and organizers that engages in nonviolent direct art action. During the wall performances, participants wear brick-patterned jumpsuits adorned with colorful brick patches bearing statements of misogynistic violence made by US President Donald Trump.
Mansour began rapping in 2003 and has gained recognition in the Middle East, Europe and the United States for her own songs and collaborations with other artists. She performs wearing a traditional Palestinian thawb and has said that she considers herself to be part of a "musical intifada" against the occupation of Palestine, conservatism and oppression of women.
(NEWS 8) — A day after pulling double-duty as both the host and musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," actor-writer-comedian-musician Donald Glover was garnering attention on Sunday for another reason.
Social media blew up this weekend with reactions to Glover's new music video for "This is America," released under the name of his musical alter ego, Childish Gambino.
Thousands of people marched through Paris on Wednesday evening to protest the killing of a Holocaust survivor in her home over the weekend, in what investigators are treating as an anti-Semitic crime.
Mireille Knoll, 85, was stabbed 11 times and her apartment was set on fire in the attack, French authorities said. Two men in their 20s have been arrested, one a neighbor of Knoll's and the other a homeless man, a judicial source told CNN.
Amid ongoing protests and government repression in Iran, a group of artists at Michigan State University is raising awareness about the women fighting for their rights in the country.
The group hosted a packed crowd one January evening for a night of music, dance, and poetry performances. The pieces, inspired by Iranian stories and icons, show solidarity with the ongoing movement abroad.
The Creativity Movement (formerly known as the World Church of the Creater) is a self proclaimed white supremacist organization with factions across the United States. In 2004, a high ranking leader of the Montana based faction defected from the group, but not before donating over 4,000 of the group's bibles called the 'RAHOWA' (acronym for racial holy war) to the Montana Human Rights Network.
Last month Amina Tyler, a 19 year old Tunisian blogger, posted a nude photo of herself as a protest; she is now under death threat. In her defense, the Ukrainian group Femen [13] staged a global "topless jihad" [14] on April 4, causing widespread debate [15] about nude protests [16], freedom of expression, and Femen's politics. [17]
The story of the life and death of Jesus is arguably the most ubiquitous story ever told. Translated to every language, vastly circulated, taught in schools all around the world, conservative groups –except for some exemptions, like Liberation Theology- have held monopoly of this narrative for the longest time. However, like every other narrative, it is not totally closed to resignification and oppositional and negotiated readings.
In state capitals and street protests, women’s rights activists have been wearing red robes and white bonnets based on “The Handmaid's Tale,” the 1985 novel that is now a series on Hulu.
Silent, heads bowed, the activists in crimson robes and white bonnets have been appearing at demonstrations against gender discrimination and the infringement of reproductive and civil rights.
This is a series of paintings reflecting the struggle and sacrifices made by the Tibetan people for independence. The author is Tenzing Rigdol, who is a Tibetan and influenced a lot by the Dalai Lama and traditional Tibetan culture. The paintings are full of Tibetan cultural elements. For instance, the characters created in the paintings are Tibetan monks, who are the typical representatives of their culture.
In 1989, playwright, actor, and activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked by political thugs while performing a street play outside of Delhi. His death led to the founding of Sahmat, an influential artist collective that has taken a consistent stance against the threats of religious fundamentalism and sectarianism in India through a vibrant mix of high art and street culture.
Pam Geller doesn’t know much about Islam or Muslims, that much is clear. What she does know, however, is how to rally the troops to incite racism. From funding Islamophobic bus ads to maximizing offensive Muslim stereotypes, it’s clear that there’s only one thing on her agenda — and that’s hate.
Human rights activism relies on an ability to tell stories to diverse audiences that will inspire action toward justice. Distributing information through journalism, whether it be traditional or new media, is the standard method of raising awareness. Globalization and the movement of people means that activists and artists from affected communities may cooperate to mutual benefit and find new audiences in the process.