The Folded Map Project is a project by Tonika Lewis Johnson, a photographer and community activist from Chicago. The project aims to investigate and change the racial and economic segregation that affects the city and its residents.
Both Johnson and Lewis recognize that the personal is political, and vice versa. By making connections between storytelling and activism, the two young women are using creative approaches to achieving justice and equity.
The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners, a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests.
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.
Taxi is a car with a digital advertising sign attached to the roof. Linked to a global positioning system, the message changes relative to the car's location, addressing specific neighbourhoods, addresses, and audiences. The technology can target an area as small as a square block. Haha solicits messages through email list serves and through direct contact with various groups throughout the city.
After promising to consider legislation that would immediately fund services to homeless youth, Gov. Rauner, through his policy director, told CCH, youth, and providers on Tuesday afternoon that his office would not support the bills at this time.
Black Cinema House hosts screenings and discussions of films by and about people of the African diaspora, and offers video classes to neighborhood youth, teaching the next generation to make their own films and tell their own stories.
Born to Heal, a documentary exploring the life of Native American healer, Russell FourEagles, and a handful of the lives he has touched.
Growing up in a tarpaper shack in the north woods, Russell FourEagles was born to be a healer. His grandmother chose him to learn the accumulated wisdom from over 200 generations of family healers.
The Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area.
Two children stand back-to-back, but they are facing two very different Chicagos. One child blows bubbles in a park under blue skies. The other wears a gas mask against a backdrop of scrap metal and billowing smokestacks.
Before Chance the Rapper performed at sold-out concert venues, he practiced his rhymes in front of an intimate crowd of roughly a dozen people at Harold Washington Library. Now the rapper is trying to return the favor, one open mic at a time.
In 2020 Noname, a Chicago rapper, activist, and poet, released the single titled "Song 33" to address racism in America and the Black Lives Matter movement. She specifically raps about the killings of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau, singing, "A baby just 19/I know I dream all black/I seen her everything immortalized in tweets, all caps/They say they found her dead," she raps.
Students from Colombia College teamed up with Greenpeace and The Yes Men to take on the Chicago coal industry in an elaborate, multi-layered hoax. The group created a scheme to announce that a new coal plant was planned—but instead of going in a poor neighborhood (like the two coal plants that already exist), this one would be built in a rich one.
'Gun-sharing' stations in Chicago use art to make a point about gun violence.
Users can’t actually grab a gun from the stations, but its creators hope the installation will send a message about how disturbingly easy it is for a citizen to acquire an assault weapon—as easy as renting a bike. They can also make a donation to the Brady Center and learn more about the campaign's gun safety efforts.
As the Yippies prepared for protests at 1968 Democratic National Convention, Yippie Paul Krassner rattled Chicago leaders by suggesting that the Yippies were planning to put LSD in the city water supply. As Abbie Hoffman said at the Chicago Seven trial: "I read in the paper the day before that they had 2,000 troops surrounding the reservoirs in order to protect against the Yippie plot to dump LSD in the drinking water.
Kokumo, pronounced "koh-koo-mah", is a trans gender activist whose very name embodies her bold path of resistance. Taken from the West African dialect Yoruba, Kokumo means "this woman will not die." Kokumo chose her name in response to constantly being told that she would die of AIDS while growing up.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, two Chicago-based organizations, For the People Artists Collective and Chicago Community Bond Fund, worked together to create Decarcerate Now, a virtual quilt honoring individuals who died of COVID-19 while in the custody of the Cook County Jail (CCJ).