Artists

These Artisans Built A Co-op Alternative To Etsy

December 13, 2024 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Artists, Cooperatives, Etsty, Worker Rights

In 2022, Etsy’s earnings topped $109 million in consolidated net income. “Despite significant macroeconomic headwinds, we maintained the vast majority of our pandemic gains and delivered double digit revenue growth and excellent profitability for the year,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in a press release. Days later, Silverman announced that the marketplace platform would raise the transaction fee Etsy takes from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. In response, some 14,000 Etsy sellers closed their shops and went on strike for eight days.

A Collective Mural Calls For Neighborhood Reflection

April 1, 2024 Laura V. Mar and Victor Villalba Gutiérrez, Resumen English. Resist! Artists, Cuba, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

Artists and cartoonists carried out an urban intervention in the central Paseo Avenue of the Cuban capital, on the occasion of the Palestinian Land Day, that commemorates the first general strike against the theft of part of the Palestinian territory by the Zionist regime. Now, 176 days after the unprecedented massacre in Gaza, world solidarity is increasingly necessary. The solidarity cannot slow down it needs to grow in many ways. This was the understanding of the renowned cartoonist Ares, National Humor Prize (Cuba 2020) and Grand Prix UYACC Anticoronavirus (China 2020), when he called others to join in on this collective mural.

Artists, Speakers Pull Out Of SXSW Over US Army Sponsorship

March 15, 2024 Madaleine Rubin, The Texas Tribune. Resist! Artists, boycott, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, South By South West (SXSW), Texas, US military

More than 80 music artists and multiple panelists have canceled appearances at South by Southwest Festival over the U.S. Army’s sponsorship of the event. Gov. Greg Abbott’s response is “Bye. Don’t come back.” Bands, musicians and speakers slated to appear at the festival — which runs from March 8 through March 16 — are pulling out in protest of the U.S. military’s support for Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. “It is done in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to highlight the unacceptable deep links the festival has to weapons companies and the U.S. military who at this very moment are enabling a genocide and famine against a trapped population,” Ireland-based rap group Kneecap said in a statement on X.

Why The Hollywood Strike Matters To All Of Us

August 19, 2023 Ethan Marcotte, WBUR. Strategize! Artificial Intelligence, Artists, ChatGPT, Hollywood, Media, SAG-AFTRA, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Writers' Strike

Over the last decade, the entertainment industry has shifted away from legacy distribution models like film and television and embraced a streaming-first model. The move has been a lucrative one, bringing billions of dollars in revenue to the industry. But those profits haven’t reached working actors and writers. Some 87% of actors earn less than $26,000 per year; many writers have to work second jobs to make ends meet. And so, for the first time since 1960, members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) are on strike simultaneously — and Hollywood has effectively shut down.

Artists Respond To Climate Crisis With World Weather Network

July 21, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Educate! Artists, climate crisis, weather

A library at the top of one of London’s oldest skyscrapers; the rainforest, mountains and coastline of Peru; a Canadian island in the Labrador Current. All of these are weather stations, but they won’t necessarily be reporting temperature changes or barometric pressure. Instead, they are among the 28 international locations from which writers and artists will work to make sense of the climate crisis as part of a first-of-its kind collaboration called the World Weather Network. “We want to see what happens when artists and writers start to use their imagination and lateral kind of abilities to think through something which is difficult to think about,” project organizer Michael Morris of Artangel in the UK told EcoWatch.

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