In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ».
What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
An event in support of the BDS movement( a "non-violent tool aimed at pressuring Israel to comply with international law and end its control over Palestinians") scheduled for FEBRUARY 7th, 2013 at Brooklyn college has been denounced by city politicians threatening to withdraw sponsorship funds.
See Alex Kane's Feb 1st article in MONDOWEISS below:
For the past few years around election time in Serbia, people have taken to the streets to protest government corruption, attacks on free press and voter suppression. This Spring, despite a nationwide lock-down to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, activists are finding new ways to protest the country’s increasingly-repressive government.
During the economic crisis of 2008, bankers in Spain took advantage of the economically disadvantaged, and the artwork La Fiera en Sevilla, or the Wild Animal in Sevilla in English, brings attention to this money-centric act from the bankers. La Fiera refers to the bankers at the time that used predatory methods in their actions to forcibly evict poor people from their houses.
Gender equality charity Women of the World (WOW) is launching a one-day festival of activism that invites people from all generations, genders and backgrounds to take part in conversations around sexual violence.
By Lauren Barbato, Ms Magazine Blog
“I find this onslaught of anti-women legislation repulsive,” says 23-year-old Amanda Velez. “These proposed laws condescend to a level where women are treated as something much less than human.” A resident of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Velez told me her feminist views are often met with hostility in her “typical Bible Belt” state.
But today, she’ll know she’s not alone.
“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.
Joining art institutes nationally, a film on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre will premiere at the UMass Amherst Arts Center. This is especially important given its will be the 100th anniversary of the tragic event of when "Black Wall Street" was burned to the ground. It is widely known as one of the most violent events, let alone racially charged ones, in US History.
The Yayoflautas, or Iaioflautas is an organized group of senior citizens from different cities and regions of Spain. Like many others, the movement started during the first months of life of the 15-M movement, in Barcelona.
In a single hour, Beyoncé's Lemonade re-wrote the textbook definition of what a visual album should look like. The genre-bending music it introduced will define the struggles a generation was enduring in 2016, specifically for black women. The project transcends every definition pop has ever had; blending R&B, contemporary rock, country, reggae, soul and hip-hop in its 12 tracks, occasionally fusing several of these into a single song.
Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson never guessed he'd be expelled for leading a gun control protest on the House floor after a deadly school shooting. Nor did he predict that he'd be propelled into the national spotlight, placing his state at the forefront of the conversation on gun regulations.
Following last week's powerful death-penalty spot with the melting wax figures, Amnesty International in France moves on to Russian dolls to symbolize the hidden political repression and social terror in that country. "We must not let Russia's charm hide its atrocities" is the tagline from ad agency La Chose.
The story of an artist. Laolu Senbanjo grew up surrounded by the culture and mythology of the Yoruba, an ethnic group from the southwest of Nigeria, but he never imagined how it would influence the artist he is today. After a career as a human rights attorney, Senbanjo moved to New York City to pursue art full time. “With my art, I like to tell stories, I like to start a conversation,” says Senbanjo, but life as an artist in New York was tough.
In the country formerly known as Burma, these free thinkers are a force in the struggle for democracy.
By Joshua Hammer
Photographs by Adam Dean
Smithsonian Magazine, March 2011
In order to raise awareness about the global issue of arranged child marriages, 21-year-old YouTube star Coby Persin decided to push the envelope by asking a 12-year-old 'bride' to pose with a 65-year-old 'groom' in the middle of Times Square. Child marriage is not only legal in 91 countries around the world, but even continues to be legal in the United States - with some having a cut off as low as 12 years of age.
It all started a few months ago, when the Minneapolis Institute of Art got a phone call from Valerie Castile.
Castile is the mother of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old black man who was shot and killed by a police officer in 2016. Valerie Castile has since founded the Philando Castile Relief Foundation, which helps victims of gun violence.
he Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is demanding Elon Musk turn over internal Twitter documents, including a list of the journalists who were behind the viral "Twitter Files."
The Wall Street Journal first reported Tuesday about more than a dozen letters the FTC sent to Twitter and its legal counsel as part of a probe looking into Musk's 2022 takeover of the tech giant.
A start-up has launched a line of clothing that confuses artificial intelligence (AI) cameras and stops them from recognizing the wearer.
Italian start-up Cap_able is offering its first collection of knitted garments that shields the wearer from the facial recognition software in AI cameras without the need to cover their face.
Called the Manifesto Collection, the clothing line includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts, and dresses.
In November 2015, Chinese LGBT activist Chen Qiuyan met with government officials in Beijing after months of campaigning to have the Ministry of Education remove textbooks which identify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders, after the Chinese government decriminalized consensual homosexual acts in 1997.
In 1930, the Indian National Congress adopted satyagraha (essentially, nonviolent protest) as their main tactic in their campaign for independence. Mahatma Gandhi was appointed to develop a plan of action; he proposed marching to the sea to make salt in defiance of the Salt Act of 1882.
In its thirteenth year, the annual Miss Talavera Bruce beauty pageant is held in unlikely surroundings: a women’s prison in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Instituto Penal Talavera is the only maximum-security women’s prison in the city with inmates serving life sentences for murder, fraud and drug trafficking.