Huff Post Latino Politics
The Huffington Post
While drug-related deaths continue to escalate as the Mexican drug war wages on, Mexican youth have resorted to peaceful and artistic forms of protest against the violence.
Last Sunday, activists met on Mexico City's Zocalo Square in an effort to demonstrate against the war. They covered the public space with chalk outlines of human bodies.
'Casseroles'protests, based on the tradition of 'cazerolazo,' consists of protesting by banging on pots and pans in the street. This took place in May of 2012 in Montreal and across Quebec, in response to the government's proposed tuition increases and the controversial "Bill 78" passed to control and dissuade dissent.
Chuu Wai Nyein felt an overwhelming sense of guilt when she first arrived in Paris from Myanmar at the end of April. “I was pushed to leave the country, but it was not how I wanted to leave,” says the 28-year old. As an artist working for the last ten years, mostly in the central city of Mandalay, Chuu built up an international reputation for her expressive paintings of women.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to the Oglala Lakota, designated as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. This land and its people have endured many tragedies at the hands of the United States government. Over 500 treaties negotiated in good faith with the U.S. government have been broken, changed or nullified to suit expansionist interests. Despite centuries of oppression, the Lakota people remain resilient, faithful, and strong.
In a visually captivating public art venture, the Audonon Mural Project seeks to raise awareness for species of birds threatened by climate change in a rather unconventional way—street art. A collaboration between the National Audubon Society and Gitler &_____ Gallery, scatterings of stunning avian themed murals are cropping up throughout John James Audubon’s old Manhattan neighbourhood.
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent.
From its inception, IVAW has called for:
#IfTheyGunnedMeDown Shows How Black People Are Portrayed in Mainstream Media. The hashtag demonstrates that the narrative the media continues to portray regarding black people isn’t always truthful.
Last Friday, on May 2nd of 2014, a group called The Student Debt Resistance @NYU hosted its first public engagement at Washington Square Park. The co-creators coined this event Chalk Day. The goal of this special day was to raise student awareness to the massive amounts of debt that they undertake as NYU students.
The project responds to the urgency that many asylum seekers and refugees have as soon as they touch a new country's soil: working and learning the language. The project, located in the former army barracks 'Caserma Piave' in Treviso, started as a grassroots initiative.
In August 2015, Weston-Super-Mare - a sleepy seaside town in Somerset, England - suddenly became the top destination for the metropolitan elite, welcoming celebrity guests like Brad Pitt, Jack Black and Mark Ronson. Overnight this quaint town, just 18 miles from Bristol, was transformed by anonymous street artist Banksy when he opened his very own dystopian Disneyland style theme park called ‘Dismaland’.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Activist and Academy-Award winning actress Susan Sarandon and Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning and Academy-Award nominated actress Cynthia Erivo starred in a new public service announcement (PSA) during the Oscars titled “Power to the Patients” which focuses on increasing awareness that hospital prices are now a patient’s right prior to receiving care.
In the Ukraine, a country where females are victims of sexual trafficking and gender oppression, a new tribe of empowered women is emerging. Calling themselves the “Asgarda”, the women seek complete autonomy from men. Residing in the Carpathian Mountains, the tribe is comprised of 150 women of varying ages, primarily students, led by 30 year-old Katerina Tarnouska.
In 1988, rap group the N.W.A from Compton, California released their second album, “Straight Outta Compton”. Without any radio play or media coverage, the album still managed to become an underground hit, and the notorious rap group successfully introduced socially conscious gangsta rap into the mainstream.
"The campaign for the neologism "santorum" started with a contest held in May 2003 by Dan Savage, a columnist and LGBT rights activist. Savage asked his readers to create a definition for the word "santorum"[1][2] in response to then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality, and comments about same sex marriage.
Spain’s most devastating environmental disaster took place 20 years ago, on the evening of November 13th, 2002. The Prestige oil spill occurred off the coast of Galicia, part of northern Spain. The spilled oil, in time, covered around 2,000 kilometers of the Galician coast.
Siempre Unidas is a feminist collective in the state of Quintana Roo (Mexico) that works partly through street art. In 2021, in response to the femicide of Victoria Salazar – a refugee from El Salvador who died in police custody – the collective began an anti-femicide mural project called RestaurAmoras.
At 12:00 noon (New York time) on November 19, 2016, Chinese artist Ning Kong, wearing a wedding dress with hundred dove, appeared at the 911 site in New York. Even though the theme of performance art is calling for peace, the police banned it and showed the handcuffs because doing performance art was not allowed at the 9/11 site. So Kong Ning turned to Times Square, New York, successfully completing her performance art.
Visual artist Alexandre Orion removes soot in an artful manner to produce skulls in the tunnels of the polluted city of Sao Paulo. Orion does so in an attempt to create intervention, raise awarenes, and decrease pollution. "From the ocular cavities of so many dead, his work looks out on the living and interrogates people passing by; it quietly criticizes our omission, our comfortable acceptance of pollution." ( Jose De Souza Martins)