Anjali Mullany/News A crowd of protesters and police officers swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday. Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters swarmed the Brooklyn Bride Saturday, shutting down car lanes and setting up yet another tense showdown with the NYPD. Roughly 700 people were arrested after standing in the roadway, blocking the Brooklyn-bound lanes. Traffic …
Author Archives: The Center for Artistic Activism
Moving Planet Rallies Prompt Global Climate Action
More than 2,000 “Moving Planet” clean-energy demonstrations took place on Saturday, September 24th – at UN Headquarters in New York, in all 50 U.S. states and in 175 countries. “The planet has been stuck for too long with governments doing nothing about the biggest problem we’ve ever faced,” said Bill McKibben, founder of the nonprofit …
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Embodied
On September 16th, fifty women wearing mini skirts and tank tops stood in the middle of a major roundabout in Jakarta, the capital city of the world’s most populous muslim country. The women were protesting comments by the city’s mayor, who called on women to stop wearing revealing clothing on public transportation after insinuating that …
Trader’s Goldman Sachs comments spark BBC hoax claims
Alessio Rastani, who claimed on BBC News ‘I dream of another recession’, is not a ‘Yes Man’ – but he could be an honest trader. He caused outrage with his comments on the global economic meltdown claiming “governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world”. But is independent stock market trader Alessio Rastani, …
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Tim DeChristopher speaks from prison
Letter from prison: Tim DeChristopher speaks The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. If I had ever doubted the power of words, Judge Benson made their importance all too clear at my sentencing last month. When he sentenced me to two years in prison plus three …
#OccupyWallStreet Bleeds and Leads
Here is an interesting article from Waging Nonviolence about Occupy Wall Street. A bit after 10 p.m. on Saturday night in occupied Liberty Plaza, there was a celebration around the media tables. Photocopied facsimiles of Sunday’s New York Daily News were being passed around and photographed. After having held the plaza with hundreds of protesters at any …
Serious Fun
Tens of thousands of Chilean students resumed marches last week in Santiago, demanding a systemic overhaul of the country’s education system. President Sebation Pinera has promised limited reforms and $4 billion in extra funding, but student leaders claim that the offer does not go far enough. The movement returned to the streets after talks broke …
Art Hoax Unites Europe in Displeasure
This is a beautiful example of how activist-pranksters can exploit bureaucracy’s Achilles heel. The artist commissioned for this work, David Cerny “is notorious for thumbing his nose at the establishment,” says the article. I mean, just look at his website. The man once painted a tank, part of a a soviet war memorial in the …
Utah Student Wrecks Federal Land Auction
This guy is great. He saw an opportunity and jumped on it, disrupting a corrupt auction, costing major corporations money, and drawing attention to an issue that easily could have been buried under the mountain of year-end top 10 lists and countless other examples of Bush Administration corruption. What started out as a spur of …
Candy Raver Russian Revolutionaries
Not everyone has much faith in art-activism, but you can’t please ’em all. Do symbolic protests accomplish anything more than raising morale for the protesters? If not is it enough to simply raise morale? Or do actions like this War prank create temporary autonomous zones and manifest, albeit briefly, the type of reality the activists …
A Kinder Gentler Empire
Sinfest is both incredibly dark and refreshingly soft-hearted. The author, you can tell, is earnest. He doesn’t hate the US, he loves its ideals, but he also has no illusions about its past crimes and current hypocrisies. Check out Sinfest daily. via: Sinfest
Politics as Product
Happy Spokesmodel Selection Day to one and all. I am certainly not the first to comment on the commodification of American politics in general and this race specifically, but a little more can be said before we’re on the next distraction tomorrow. This election has been primarily a contest between the values of experience and …
Mark Fiore's Subversive Cartoons
Mark Fiore is a political Flash cartoonist who cranks out a new short almost every week. He is clearly a liberal Democrat and his cartoons slant that way, but even when I find the ideas annoying or simplistic, or superficially critical, the cartoons are still funny. There are objectively funny moments (if such things can …
Larry Flynt Producing 'Palin porno' political parody
I think the key line here actually comes at the end. “Whatever you think of Larry Flynt, the man knows his First Amendment,” Kelly concluded. Seriously, that smut monger is a true champion of the First Ammendment, and we should all remember that the freedom of speech is the freedom to be offended. Now is …
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The State: Free Market Store
For those not fortunate enough to remember watching The State, it was a brilliant comedy show often surreal or scatalogicaly political. This skit rolls with a black comedy to match the best Monty Python, and gets the viewer with a brujtally funny depiction of Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell. No doubt, the Soviet …
I met the Walrus
In 1970, a fourteen year old boy named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Montreal room during their “peace in.” The following animated short, I Met the Walrus, is based on a recording of their conversations. It was nominated for an Oscar for “best animated short” at the 2008 Academy Awards, and …
Get Your War On: Terrorist Watch List
This is a new video from 23/6.com a political-ish comedy site. The video is about a serious issue, but treats it in a comical-ish way. Which is a fine strategy if done well, but I there’s just not quite enough substance here. All you really get from the video is that there’s a terrorist watch …
Kurt Vonnegut Interview Mashup
I read Timequake (one of Vonnegut’s last books) recently and was surprised to see how often it related to the How to Win project. The novel isn’t about any one theme, but ideas of art and affecting change are woven throughout. Vonnegut seems to be reflecting on how his literature has connected with his politics. …
E Waste
The winning entry for the environment category in this year’s Media that Matters Film Festival was a short animated film about the dangers of electronic waste. And what consumers can do to help the problem. I’m not sure if I find it effective or annoying. You decide.
The Changing Face of the U.S. Consumer
via: Ad Age NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The marketing community, already dealing with a slumping economy and an increasingly consumer-controlled media marketplace, must confront another new reality: The face of the American consumer is changing dramatically. It’s not news that the nation is aging, but the fact that the average U.S. head of household is …
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