Creative Activism Thursdays
The Revolution Will Be Debated
All lectures are at 7pm at 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor, unless otherwise noted.
Come meet the revolutionaries who have changed or are changing the world, and those who study them. We’ll be meeting many Thursdays for a series of lectures, workshops, and other events focusing on the potential for societal change, and what we can do to bring it about through creative tactics and strategies.
Revolutionaries Live! (aka Creative Activism Thursdays) is co-sponsored by NYU Dean for Social Science, the Hemispheric Institute, the Yes Lab, the Humanities Initiative at NYU Working Research Group on Artistic Activism, CAA, and Not an Alternative. Speakers also attend following Yes Lab Friday.
April 19 | Steve Lambert
Steve Lambert made international news after the 2008 US election with The New York Times “Special Edition,” a replica announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other good news. He has collaborated with groups from the Yes Men to the Graffiti Research Lab and Greenpeace. He is also the founder of the Center for Artistic Activism, the Anti-Advertising Agency, Add-Art (a Firefox add-on that replaces online advertising with art) and SelfControl (which blocks grownups from distracting websites so they can get work done). He is on the faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Steve will discuss making engaging, funny, relevant art and how it can help effect change.Past Presenters
September 22, 2011 | Ivan Marovic
Introduced by Bryan Farrell from WagingNonViolence.org
Ivan Marovic is one of the founders of Otpor, the student resistance movement that played a critical role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. After Milosevic’s fall, Marovic began consulting with various pro democracy groups worldwide and became one of the leading trainers in the field of civil resistance. Ivan will speak about the role of humor and creative activism in the struggles he’s helped to guide. Due to limited space, please RSVP.
September 29, 2011 | Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic
Srdja Popovic is founding member of Otpor, the student resistance movement that played a critical role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. In late 2003 he co-founded the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), a group that supports nonviolent democratic movements through the transfer of knowledge on strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle.Slobodan Djinovic is an innovator in democracy and technology, founding Serbia’s first wireless internet company and a founder of Otpor. He has since become a leader exponent of sharing strategic non-violence training for democracy movements and peaceful opposition groups in the world’s remaining dictatorships.
October 20, 2011, 7pm | Leónidas Martín
Leónidas Martín is a Professor at Barcelona University where he teaches New Media and Political Art. For many years he has been developing collective projects between art and activism, some of them well known internationally (Las Agencias, Yomango, Prêt a Révolter). He writes about art and politics for blogs, journals and newspapers, has created several documentaries and movies for television and internet, and is a member of the cultural collective “Enmedio” (www.enmedio.info). Last but not least, he is an expert telling jokes, often using this divine gift to get free beers and avoid police arrest. Leo will tell stories about the current upheaval in Spain, among other things. Introduction by Beka Economopoulos of NotAnAlternative.
October 27, 2011, 7:30pm | John Jackson
This lecture will take place at 7:30pm at 34 Stuyvesant Street, Room 105. John Jackson is co-author of Small Acts of Resistance, a collection of stories showing how humor, tenacity, and ingenuity can change the world. Currently Vice President for Social Responsibility at MTV Networks International, John was a founder and Director of Burma Campaign UK, and has been involved in major international campaigns on fair trade, landmines, child labor, and climate change. See John's article in the Guardian, part of that newspaper's series of commentaries by speakers in this series.
November 3, 2011, 12:30pm | Working Research Group on Artistic Activism luncheon
"Efficacy. How do we know if artistic activism works?" Discussion facilitated by Stephen Duncombe. This is one of a series of lunch meetings where academics, artists and activists will come together to discuss topics germane to the study and practice of artistic activism. Lunch will be served, so please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
November 3, 2011, 7pm | John Stewart and Dan Class
John Stewart and Dan Glass were key organizers in the UK Climate Campaign, the successful decade-long campaign to stop the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport. Stewart was named Britain’s most effective green activist by the Independent, and Glass was named national youth climate leader by the Guardian, is one of Attitude Magazine’s 66 new role models for helping bridge LGBTQ and environmental justice movements, and is perhaps best known for having superglued himself to the Prime Minister to draw attention to communities impacted by aviation climate change.
November 17, 2011, 7:30pm | Mark Rudd: "Grampa Was a Terrorist"
Introduced by Jeremy Varon, author of Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies
Mark Rudd led the legendary 1968 occupation of five buildings at Columbia University, a dramatic act of protest against the university’s support for the Vietnam War. As charismatic chairman of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the largest radical student organization in the United States, Rudd became a national symbol of student revolt, and went on to co-found the Weathermen faction of SDS, which helped organize the notorious Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969 before going underground. Mark will speak about the intended and unintended humor of ‘60s activism.
December 1, 2011, 12:30pm | Working Research Group on Artistic Activism luncheon
"Education. What are the pedagogical possibilities and limits of artistic activism?" Discussion facilitated by Dipti Desai. This is one of a series of lunch meetings where academics, artists and activists will come together to discuss topics germane to the study and practice of artistic activism. Lunch will be served, so please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
December 1, 2011, 7:30pm | Gabriella Coleman
This event will take place at 7:30pm in Room 105, 34 Stuyvesant Street.
Gabriella Coleman is a professor in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study. Her book, Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press and she is currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism. Gabriella will speak about the revolutionary humor the hacker group Anonymous uses as one of its key tactics.
December 8, 2011, 7pm | Timothy Patrick McCarthy
Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Ph.D., is Lecturer on History and Literature and on Public Policy at Harvard University and Director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he hosts the monthly public conversation series, “The Activist’s Studio,” convenes an annual spring conference on “Gay Rights as Human Rights,” and co-chairs the Regional Working Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. He will speak about the ways that humor is crucial to cultural transformation, and specifically the role of humor in the LGBT movement.
January 26 | Carne Ross
Carne Ross is a former British diplomat who resigned in 2004 after giving then-secret evidence to a British inquiry into the war. He has since founded the world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat, which advises marginalized countries and groups around the world. His new book is called The Leaderless Revolution: how ordinary people will take power and change politics in the 21st century.
February 9 | Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn: "Occupy this and that! Revolution here and there."
Introduced by Sam Green, director of The Weather Underground
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are two former leaders of the Weathermen, a splinter faction of Students for a Democratic Society that eventually turned to violence and went underground. This talk is especially apropos at a time when many in the Occupy movement are debating the strategic value of "non-violence" versus "diversity of tactics."
Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the founder of the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, and has taught and written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is married to Bernadine Dohrn.
Dohrn is a Professor of Law at Northwestern University, the founder of the Children and Family Justice Center and co-founder of the Center on the Wrongful Convictions of Youth, serves on the Board of the National Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and is working to abolish the sentence of life without possibility of parole for juveniles in Illinois.
February 16 | Frances Fox Piven
The author of Poor People's Movements and a prominent target of the lunatic right, Frances Fox Piven has, among many other things, written extensively on how movements of the poor and oppressed—the 1930s unemployed, the Civil Rights movement, etc.—have engaged in disruptive tactics to achieve change. She is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center.
February 23 | What is Revolution? Richard Schechner, Yotam Marom, Nelini Stamp,Chaia Heller; moderated by Richard Kim
This will be at 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor, as usual
What is revolution? Is OWS a revolution? Must we get involved in electoral politics? Must we not? Stay tuned for all the definitive answers!
March 8, 12:30pm | Working Research Group on Artistic Activism luncheon
Room 601, 1 Washington Place
"What is the role of play, pleasure and humor in artistic activism?" Discussion facilitated by Stephen Duncombe. This is one of a series of lunch meetings where academics, artists and activists will come together to discuss topics germane to the study and practice of artistic activism. Lunch will be served, so please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
March 22, 7pm | Matt Smucker
Jonathan Matthew Smucker is a grassroots organizer, trainer, strategist, and writer. He is the director of Beyond the Choir and has been working with Occupy Wall Street since early October. He will discuss how community and identity intersect with strategy in activism. Social movements (like OWS) require a strong sense of group identity in order to foster commitment amongst participants, but this same cohesion can also inhibit a movement's ability to connect with a broader public. Smucker will discuss this "political identity paradox" and ideas about how to navigate these tensions. This will be an interactive workshop that will introduce practical organizing concepts and tools.
March 29, 7pm | David Graeber
This event WILL take place at 20 Cooper Sq., 5th Floor. Please RSVP.
David Graeber is an eminent anthropologist and anarchist who has been politically active for a long time, and active in the Occupy movement since its proto-beginnings in June 2011; he has called Occupy "the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire." His most recent book is Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. David teaches at Goldsmiths College, London. He will discuss culture as creative refusal—how what we think of as primordial "cultures," historically, can just as easily be conceived as social movements which were to some degree successful in achieving their aims.
April 10, 7pm | Ivan Marovic
This event will be at the Barney Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant Street, Room 105.
Ivan Marovic is one of the founders of Otpor, the student resistance movement that played a critical role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. After Milosevic’s fall, Marovic began consulting with various pro democracy groups worldwide and became one of the leading trainers in the field of civil resistance. Ivan spoke Sept. 22, five days after OWS began, and will speak today about humor, revolution, and the new (?) shape of the world.
April 12 | Religion and Revolution: Michael Ellick and others
Michael Ellick, recently promoted Minister of Judson Memorial, and Rabbi Michael Feinberg, Director of the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, are integral members of Occupy Faith. Susan Valdés-Dapena and Chris Knight are members of thePeace and Restorative Justice Community of the Church of the Holy Trinity. The panel will discuss the intersection of faith and revolutionary activism today.
