Mayday is a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical thought and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people to work, learn, drink, dance and build together.
CultureStrike in partnership with Mariposas Sin Fronteras , End Family Detention and 15 artists from across the country, brings you Visions From The Inside, a visual art project inspired by letters penned by detained migrants.
The Black, Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes put George Floyd’s final words in a place where everyone could see them: the sky. Five days after Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 30th, Holmes’s piece took flight across Detroit, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. Airplanes carrying banners flew between the hours of 11:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. EDT.
Anthony Papa was arrested for a drug crime and with no prior offenses was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for violating New York's harsh drug laws. While in prison, Papa began to document his inner struggles via painting and ultimately earned a pardon from New York governor and has gone on to actively fight the drug war in his years since release.
A small group of gay rights activists gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Beijing on Valentine’s Day to protest Russia’s antigay laws.
Behind a rainbow banner that read “To Russia with Love,” a dozen activists cheered as three couples puckered up and kissed in front of a countdown clock for the Sochi Winter Olympics outside the embassy’s tall walls.
The group known as Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, which practices Mexican Nahua dance, song and drumming, is a frequent presence at Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Its dancers first took to the streets in solidarity with the movement after the death of Jamar Clark, who was shot and killed by Minneapolis police in 2015.
The enforcement of city and state law pertaining to graffiti, advertising, and other signage has enormous power to visually shape public space. In New York City, enforcement is heavily skewed to ignore illegal commercial advertising, while simultaneously aggressively targeting graffiti and, in some cases, symbols of dissent.
The ad agency Badger & Winters in collaboration with immigrant rights nonprofit organization Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) installed 20 cages with mannequins representing immigrant children inside across New York City. Each cage had a sign that said #NoKidsInCages and played audio of a child crying.
The two sources linked in this post are separate reviews of the incident currently occurring in Baltimore. It illustrates the factor of hindsight.... what supposedly began as a peaceful protest, in one article, is portrayed as clearly intended to fight back for #blacklifesmatter... however, "(CNN)The arrest and death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore has stoked protests and accusations of police brutality.
Mural artists add color and flavor on 800 South in the Granary District of downtown Salt Lake City. There’s an old-fashioned bar on the side of a locally-owned brewery, and a Southern Utah landscape on another building. Down the street, on the south corner of 800 South and 300 West, there’s a new mural that’s far more potent.
https://vimeo.com/114980972
"Probably one of the most important and timely shorts for America this year. Reinaldo Marcus Green's film addresses the upsetting aspects of New York City's stop-and-frisk policies with sensitivity and insight."
-Jeff Bowers, VICE (http://bit.ly/1mU7HHQ)
In an effort to prepare against chemical, biological and radiological attacks in the New York subway, the New York Police Department has announced plans to release harmless gases into the city’s streets and subway stations to better understand the pathways of airborne contaminants. Officials will use more than 200 sensors, set up throughout all five boroughs, to track these benign gases as they disperse.
In the south-western city of Chengdu, by all accounts a city on the edge coping with heavy pollution but also with authorities scrambling to put a lid on simmering discontent. That night police detained a number of artists who managed to stage a silent demonstration, while wearing face masks.
Few opera choruses are as moving as the one a group of prisoners sings in Act I of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” Released temporarily from their cells, the inmates almost whisper a hymnlike paean to liberty: “Oh, what a joy to breathe freely again in the open air.”
“As a Black woman, I can grow absolutely anywhere," Aiyanna explains. "I can adapt to any storm, any weather, any changes. In the Black community, that's something that we're really good at.”
So when Aiyanna, 25, was asked to contribute the first L in a Black Lives Matter mural made by a group of artists in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, she knew her letter would include a flower person.
"This Ain't a Eulogy" is both a staged performance and a durational, outdoor, public performance that reclaims and takes public space. The artist statement is as follows:
A group of clergy members wanted to change the conversation when they heard that a Florida police department was using mug shots of young black men as targets for shooting practice.
“#UseMeInstead,” the religious leaders said, tweeting photos of themselves in hopes that their solidarity would cause cops to “think twice” before pulling the trigger.
But the well-intentioned hashtag is provoking mixed responses.
The project consists of a double-sided, hand-drawn 8.5" x 11" quarter-fold sheet available to print and distribute freely.
It features such topics as basic information on police tactics (kettling, LRADS, tear gas or pepper spray), ways cops might try to get you to talk to them, and your rights as a student.
"This project was launched in the wake of the police shooting of 16-year old Brooklyn resident Kimani Gray. Blue NYPD barricades left in piles around the city were spray-painted with the names of people killed by police, then re-deployed in public space."
A group of Chicago youth staged a “die-in’ at City Hall to demand that the city defund police and fund marginalized communities instead. The youth, all members of #NoCopAcademy, also announced that the organization is suing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for withholding critical emails regarding construction of the proposed $95 million building for a Police and Fire training center in West Garfield Park.
Li Wei, 18 (not her real name), doesn't seem like a dissident. She is more focused on her accounting studies, her friends on the social networks and chatting with her sister. Nevertheless, she took part in a demonstration last month in front of the Chinese Communist party offices that degenerated into violent clashes with police.
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a revolutionary, writer, social activist and founding member and Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, and member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. At 18 years old, in 1990, he was convicted of murder, which he has consistently challenged on the grounds of misidentification.