Arts

Fomenting The Radical Imagination With Movements

August 2, 2014 Max Haiven, www.roarmag.org Create! Arts, Movement, Theory

Our book, The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (Zed Books, 2014), is a set of reflections on an experiment. Our experiment began, as most do, with questions. What if researchers studying social movements understood their role as less about gathering reliable data to share with other scholars and more about catalyzing and convoking the radical imagination? What if, instead of distanced observers, researchers understood themselves to be integral, generative and critical parts of how movements reproduced themselves? What if researchers — and here we don’t just mean gainfully employed academics but something far broader — were committed to enlivening and empowering those most important forces for social transformation: the social movements which, though sidelined and belittled in mainstream history, are and have always been the motors of historical change? What if we saw ourselves and our work as borrowed from a future that we must, in turn, help usher into being? We began The Radical Imagination Project in 2010 with two key theoretical assumptions. The first is that social movements are, at their hearts, animated by the radical imagination. The radical imagination is not a thing one can possess, no matter how “outside the box” one’s own personal thinking is or how many clever books one has read (or written). The radical imagination is a collective process, it’s something we do together. It is a shared landscape of political refusal, a mutually reinforcing agreement to question the social order and the roots of exploitation, inequality and oppression. Beyond merely a feel-good slogan, the radical imagination emerges out of questions, conflicts, friction and debate.

Artist Sculpts Own Son Into Gaza Chaos: ‘If It Were Zack’

July 31, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Children, Creative Resistance, Gaza, Violence, Wars and Militarism

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. The Israeli assault on Gaza December 27, 2008- January 18, 2009, or “Operation Cast Lead,” resulted in hundreds of innocent civilians being killed and thousands injured and left homeless. The number of children who were killed ranges between 300-350. At that time, in reaction to the horrifying stories of children dying, I made an artist book, In Memoriam. During the last few days of 2009, in solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March, I made the sculpture If It Were Zack. I am chilled by arguments rationalizing the brutal, violent killing of innocents. I cannot fathom the wretched abyss of hatred that feeds such an intellect. When I hold my son Zack, my heart breaks imagining these hundreds of children. When he laughs, I think,”That child once laughed, too, delighting his mother.” My grief in this time feels near intolerable–and this is just pain imagined. I don’t know what the answer is to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But I do know that the military-minded adults on both sides of the Wall have to begin with the premise that there is no cause worth the torment of children–the children of Gaza live in fear, sleeplessness, boredom, frustration, anxiety, depression, hunger. And there is surely no cause worth the killing of children.

Palestinian Artists Call For Cultural Boycott Of Israel

July 30, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Arts, boycott, Creative Resistance, Israel, Palestine

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. A call has gone out from the representatives of the Palestinian cultural community to fellow artists worldwide to support the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. A statement published on the website of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin says: “We, cultural workers representing the majority of Palestinian performing art organizations, condemn the current Israeli attack and aggression on Gaza, and the indiscriminate killing and maiming of mainly civilians, among them many children and women.” It calls upon “fellow artists and cultural organisations” to campaign against the Israeli assault through petitions, protests and statements. It concludes: “Further to that, we urge you to act by supporting the Palestinian cultural and academic boycott of Israel (PACBI), thereby refusing to be complicit in the ongoing occupation and apartheid. Together, we can turn hopelessness into determination and the forces of division into unity. It is within our power.”

One Man Show Takes On Healthcare System

July 29, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Educate! Arts, Drama, Healthcare, Insurance

So, as I was saying, display was really inspired by your own personal experiences. Can you speak to that little bit? Yeah, yeah. I was after graduating from Juilliard, I was traveling around pursuing a career in regional theater, and I was in a relationship with someone who had a lot of medical needs. It of the course of time, I experienced, what it's like to be with someone who has needs like that. And what the experience was like that I've never seen anyone talk about in the news or comment in the movies or on an episode of Gray's Anatomy are the feelings of ambivalence and the darker feelings that people experience when a loved one is in a medical situation. And that medical situation, often you have to go up against the healthcare insurance industry. Is that part of it to? Well, yeah. I mean, and also she's an artist. So she was on and off with insurance and trying to maintain a career in the arts and stuff like that. So that eventually led me to question whether that was a good system or not. And I also had a friend from school was homeless for a while, and he showed up at the stage door of the theater I was performing at and he had some medical problems.

All Of Us Are Connected — None Of These Words Are Mine Alone

July 19, 2014 Henia Belalia, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Arts, Community, culture, Stories

The act of writing can be just as excruciating as it can be exhilarating — in this case as part of a process to explore interconnectedness and reclaimed histories as tools we can use toward collective liberation. How often I’ve sat in front of a blank page, the words tangled up in my gut, stuck between tears and broken memories. How often I’ve waited for that thrill when the words are unleashed, when the stories I’ve been dying to tell finally come out in narratives that can be heard and seen by those around me. In this era of media stunts, celebrities and executive directors, there’s something fundamental for us to recognize: that none of these words are ever ours alone. I’ve progressively centered more of my organizing and writing on intersectionality, to which many have contributed through their words and actions. There have been many people with whom I’ve worked through entangled ideas and identities, as we’ve attempted to better understand our undeniable connections and what that means within our social justice movements. A comrade organizing in the ‘hoods of New York City recently reminded me to show gratitude, to give credit to those who’ve shaped me along the way. In honor of that sentiment, I owe deep thanks… … to the undocumented sister who shows me bravery with every fiber of her being, with her unflinching integrity, with her every truth that she speaks to challenge the empire’s narrative.

Free Cooper Union To Take Board To Court

July 16, 2014 IndieGoGo, www.indiegogo.com Resist! Arts, Budget, Cooper Union, Education, Fundraising

The Committee to Save Cooper Union is pursuing legal action as a last resort after Cooper Union’s Board of Trustees and administration proceeded with their plans to abolish a 150 year tradition of free tuition enshrined in the Charter of the school, refusing alternatives that would preserve free tuition. A Working Group of faculty, students and alumni elected by their respective constituencies had developed a sustainable plan for preserving free tuition that was supported by the Faculty Union, the alumni association and students. The President and Board refused to accept this plan and chose to press on with their plan to charge tuition. After carefully evaluating all of the legal options for both legal and cost-effectiveness, the Committee to Save Cooper Union decided that the best approach is to seek an injunction against charging tuition in New York Supreme Court. This option also allows us to petition the court for formation of “The Associates of Cooper Union” as required by the Cooper Union charter. The Associates would serve as a check on the Board of Trustees since the Associates' elected Council can remove Trustees by majority vote. This route also allows us to petition the court for an audit, as provided for in the charter, to help provide more detail on the fiscal mismanagement happening at Cooper Union.

Another World: Film About Grassroots In Greece

July 15, 2014 Films For Action, www.filmsforaction.org Organize! Arts, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Inequality

"Another World" is a film about the grassroots initiatives in Greece that form another world right here and now, away from the crisis and beyond capitalism (Greek narration, English subtitles in captions). We live in an upside world. Right now in the planet there is a unjust distribution and accumulation of wealth, inflation of social injustice, restriction of basic rights and freedom, and an unprecedented depletion of natural resources. Although global GDP has quintupled since 1980, the gap between rich and poor is expanding, while also the number of people living below the poverty line constantly increases. 1% of the richest in the world holds 40% of the world productive resources, while the richest 10% owns more than 85% of global wealth. The constant economic growth of the past decades with emphasis on dirty carbon economy, proved to be unsustainable since intensified inequalities, reduced the living standard destroyed natural resources and finally transformed itself into an underdevelopment disconnected from social welfare.

Palestine-Related Songs

July 14, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Educate! Arts, Creative Resistance, Music, Palestine

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. Among the many unspeakable things that are being done with US munitions and money in the world at this moment, there is the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. Once again, Israel’s armed forces are very actively trying to destroy the few buildings left intact from the last time they bombed it. There will be more protests all over the world against Israel’s ongoing atrocities. If you’re having arguments with family, friends or coworkers on this sometimes confusing and controversial subject, why not play them a song? It’ll work better. You can download my entire set of Palestine-related songs here. If you have the right cable, you can stream the songs on your phone (Soundcloud is very mobile-friendly), plug it into the sound system at your nearest protest, and play them as people are gathering. You can send that link to people with radio shows and suggest they play one. And of course you can share them on social media or whatever else you want with them. (There is no choking hazard. They’re only virtual.)

WAT Guantanamo Poster Campaign

July 9, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Arts, Creative Resistance, Guantanamo, Torture

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. For the last three years, Witness Against Torture has presented short runs of posters featuring quotes from former and current Guantánamo detainees. This week, we are releasing five new posters designed by WAT member Justin Norman. These artistic renderings of the plight of the detainees will hopefully engage people in a new way. We hope you like them. Furthermore, you can purchase printed images of these posters on our website. These purchases help in raising funds for our efforts to shut down the detention center that continues to hold them. Got Five Minutes? We need your help sharing these provocative images on Social Media. On social media people are most likely to share a photo or a meme rather than an article – this is the most effective way to get the men’s message into the social media world. In the past, these posters have been highly effective. The “Imagine” poster has been shared over a thousand times on Facebook, and another, the “Begg” poster, which has been used by a former detainee as his profile image.

The Ebb And Flow Of Social Movements

July 9, 2014 David Rovics, www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com Educate! Arts, Mass Movement, Music, Occupy

I'm at the annual conference of the northwest branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation as I write. I've done a few songs so far, and have been very well-received. It's an easy audience for leftwing sentiment combined with acoustic music. These are mostly people a bit older than I, who came of age during the times of the movements against the war in Vietnam, and for civil rights. These movements had lasting effects not only on the politics of those in attendance, but on their taste in music. Also, they're members of an organization that has a culture of its own, to some extent, which has somewhat insulated it from the ebb and flow of social movements (though it has also undoubtedly drawn so much from those movements, too). Groups like FOR in places like western Washington feel slightly insulated from how things are in what you might call Middle America. A nice little bastion of sanity amid what often feels like the alienated drones in the “real world.” But what of the times when those drones come to life, and beyond the walls of the artificially-produced fortresses of progressivism, the regular people get motivated to think outside the box? Movements large and small can happen, and have broad and lasting ripple effects. Like the 60's -- the repercussions of which we'll still be feeling for many decades I'm sure.

See The Story Of Aaron Swartz Now

July 2, 2014 Takepart, www.takepart.com Educate! Aaron Swartz, Arts, Documentary, Internet Freedom

The Internet’s Own Boy follows the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

A New Play About Edward Snowden Opens In London

June 27, 2014 Richard Roques, www.waterlooeast.co.uk Create! Arts, Edward Snowden, Privacy, Surveillance, Whistleblowers

Edward Snowden is holed up in a hotel in Hong Kong. He has left his life in Hawaii, abandoned paradise for a life on the run. Tortured by thoughts of his girlfriend, his mother and father and the ghosts of other whistleblowers from Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement to Thomas Drake, charged with 35 years imprisonment, he waits. But will the CIA and the National Security Agency find him first? This story has not yet finished. The revelations of mass surveillance by the U.S. and British security services keep coming out. Never mind about Angela Merkel, are they listening to your conversations, reading your messages, checking your emails?

People’s Social Forums Planned Across Canada

June 24, 2014 Ana Collins, www.peoplessocialforum.org Organize! Arts, Canada, indigenous, Revolution

Indigenous histories teach us that we are all part of an intricate creation; where all beings carry their own bundle of gifts and responsibilities to creation. Our bundles help us at all times of our existence and give us tools in order to live a sustainable and fulfilling life. Creation is formed in a universal order that facilitates balance, interconnections, and happiness for all life. Essentially, creation is based on a relationship-making structure to maintain that balance and mino bemaadziwin: good way of living. The Peoples’ Social Forum, to be held in Ottawa, August 21-24, 2014, is about relationship building, bringing people together who don’t usually work together but who might be working on common causes, changing the nature of future relationships, honouring treaties, changing the structure of how things are done on this land, and respecting the teachings that the land has for us.

Save The Internet. Calling All Poets!

June 22, 2014 Staff, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Internet, Internet Freedom, Poetry

Right now the Federal Communications Commission is accepting comments from the public on its proposal for Net Neutrality. If passed, this proposal would allow corporations like Verizon and Comcast to cut deals with corporate websites in exchange for priority access to its Internet users. In other words, smaller websites, independent artists, musicians and social justice advocates who use the open Internet to reach audiences not accessible in a heavily corporatized and consolidated media would be relegated to a second-class Internet. Between now and July 15th as technical comments flood the FCC, we want to flood the Internet with Haikus. Join poets like Hakim Bellamy, Sham-e-Ali Nayem, Emmanuel Ortiz and others as we call for #InternetHaikus. Here’s how it works: 1. Write a Haiku about the Internet. What’s a haiku? Check this out! 2. Post your Haiku on Twitter and make sure to include the hashtag #InternetHaiku

15 Artful Ways To Improve Conferences

June 21, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Strategize! Arts, Community, Conferences, Creative Resistance

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. A few weeks ago I had the honor of joining a participatory art team working to integrate culture into CommonBound, a progressive conference on the new economy. Yes, you can assume I am a bit of a facilitation dork — getting excited about both a conference and the dubious field of culture integration. But stay with me. It’s true that in certain circles there is a lot of talk about integrating arts into social change work and harnessing culture in service of our activism. But it’s mostly included as an afterthought and nobody wants to pay for it. When the talking heads on the plenary are boring, someone will ask: “Can’t we just get someone to sing a song?” Of course, that’s a setup for failure, or at least a guarantee that the benefits of having arts and cultural approaches won’t be fully realized. However, if done well, integrating culture with common conference structures — or staff meetings, skill shares or organizing events — can become both metaphor and practice for the healthier, more fulfilling world we want.

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