Do protests work? Certainly they can make the participants feel that rather than passively accepting injustice they are doing something about it. But do they actually create change, or do they just enrage the opposition, which traditionally paints protestors as the equivalent of spoiled brats in mid-tantrum? While protests can be little more than acts… Read more →
Tag: Protest
Liberty Poles and Popular Protest in the Founding Era
As the Trump presidency begins, many Americans are considering how to oppose the harmful federal legislation that will likely follow his taking office. Some are bent on revamping the Democratic Party in the hopes of creating a robust opposition at the state and local levels, and retaking Congress in two years’ time. But others fear… Read more →
Protesting the ERA
Like many of my fellow Americans, I was glued to the television on election night. After months of the media and politicos enumerating the many reasons why Donald Trump would never win, I watched in shock as he became president-elect of the United States. The following morning, I learned that 42% of American women who… Read more →
The Black Panthers’ and Tom Hayden’s Lessons to the White Left in an Age of Trump
I often receive inquiries from white and non-black folks about how they can get involved in anti-racist organizing, especially after high-profile police shootings of African Americans. The requests for advice increased after Donald Trump’s election. I usually oblige because I always want to help, and I consider answering such questions to be part of political… Read more →
Why Stonewall Needs Compton’s
One night in August 1966, a group of trans* women and queer youth rioted against years of stigmatization and routine police harassment. It started at a popular all-night hangout, Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a chain restaurant in the Tenderloin and one of the few places trans* women could relax. In 1966 dressing as the “wrong gender”… Read more →
Visual Campaigns against AIDS, Then and Now
Once upon a time, AIDS was a focal point for artists in the United States. My design students and I recently read Maud Lavin’s Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design, in which she discusses the rise of political art and design in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan.1 The Eighties —… Read more →