The Minnesota Independent

RNC DIY! - Latest Stories

Liberty Parade: Missile Dick Chicks meet Ron Paul voters

By Peter S. Scholtes | 08.31.08 | 8:12 pm

Polar bear puppets, zombies and Ron Paul supporters carrying a giant copy of the Constitution were among the marchers down Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis today as part of the nonpartisan Liberty Parade, a demonstration “for freedom…

Deconstructing Dumbo: 100 GOP logos

By Paul Schmelzer | 08.22.08 | 3:45 pm

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.”

RNC DIY: Rock some sense into the Republicans

By Paul Schmelzer | 05.29.08 | 5:06 pm

“The Republican National Convention is coming to the Twin Cities in September, and wouldn’t it be a shame if there was no one to play deafening power chords just up the street?” So reads text at the website of ProVention,…

RNC DIY: Yard sign project encourages citizens to stake a claim on democracy

By Paul Schmelzer | 05.28.08 | 2:52 pm



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,…

RNC DIY! Democracy: ‘I’m mellllting!’

By Paul Schmelzer | 05.23.08 | 11:39 am

Even John McCain has acknowledged things are worse in America today than they were eight years ago, and according to artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, democracy agrees. The duo who brought us “Contract with…