Protest

Is it just me or are some of the slogans suggested for Tax Day Tea Party banners far from…. revolutionary? Attendees at next Wednesday’s Capitol rally are encouraged to download banners or make their own bearing mottos like:
“The sleeping giant is now awake”
“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop the madness”
“Sleep? I’ll Sleep When [...]

Americans’ anger over AIG’s publicly funded executive bonuses may make this the last “Why are we not rioting?” post. First, one more observer remarks on the stateside calm, blaming low levels of unionization while seeing sparks of resistance in hundreds of homeowners picketing a mortgage financier’s Connecticut home. But there’s union help in spreading the word about anti-AIG-themed economic [...]

Community members have organized a Thursday march in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood as a protest to last week’s suspected hate crime against Kristen Boyne. Police say Boyne was beaten unconscious after two men called her a lesbian and kicked her in the head and stomach.
The Queer Women’s March will take place at 9 p.m. on the [...]

Thousands of gays and lesbians, along with their friends and families, are “calling in gay” from work today. “A Day Without a Gay” is a nationwide economic protest against same-sex marriage bans passed in California, Arizona and Florida on November 4. Unlike “Un Día Sin Latinos,” the immigrant rights protests which inspired today’s action, people [...]

This morning, a group of journalists and activists held a press conference to raise awareness of what they see as a frightening trend: police, in the run-up to the Republican National Convention, increasingly targeting journalists. I’ll have video of the conference later today, but here’s a quick video on Vlad Teichberg, a member of the Glass Bead Collective, a New York new-media art group. He and two colleagues were detained by Minneapolis police this week without charge and searched. Police confiscated notes, computers and videocameras, exposing the film in one camera and finally returning the equipment days later. He says we’re at a cultural tipping point: With so many citizens toting cameras to events like RNC protests, police have little choice but to follow strict police protocols — or run the risk of being outted on YouTube.

As a part of the UnConvention, a sideshow to the Republican National Convention, next week Miami artist Steven Gagnon will drive his sculptural contraption to the Twin Cities and park it in a public spot near Intermedia Arts, a sponsor of the festivities. Gagnon’s “border cruiser” calls attention to the experience of undocumented people in the U.S.

A peaceful protest in Denver last night turned ugly as police in riot gear blocked progress of a march down a public street, turning tear gas and paintballs on the corralled crowd, according to the American News Project. In a city that looks to one observer more like a fortress, many protesters were demonstrating against [...]

Last time the Republicans had a national convention, New York-based designers Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell couldn’t pass up a chance to protest — only they did so in a medium they’re comfortable with: They reinvented the GOP elephant in 100 different ways. Sockwell distributed the logos — a Pepsi-sponsored GOP elephant, a trunk transformed into a gun aimed back at a soldier’s head, a pachyderm turned into a hunch-backed man with a cane — in a bicycle rickshaw throughout New York.

With another convention in the wings, I contacted the artists to see if they had any updates to their self-published book, GOP 100: Deconstructing Dumbo. While they said the book is still fresh four years later and doesn’t necessarily need updating, they had one: a retitled piece showing an elephant in prison stripes (reminiscent of this year’s convention logo). It’s now called “Larry Craig.”

A cacophony of voices and a one-(wo)man-one-vote policy on which messages get amplified: Sounds like the Republican National Convention, right? Not really.

As a stark counterpoint to the “scripted democracy” of this fall’s GOP nominating convention, a project by mnartists.org, the Walker Art Center and the UnConvention is inviting people of all political stripes and artistic [...]

If the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York — or just about any other major coordinated protest effort — is any barometer, demonstrators in St. Paul this fall will surely be using cellphones and text-messaging to plan their protests. But a battle going on in New York now might have implications on whether those [...]