Using Art to Stop a Pipeline

BlueTrees

Using art to stop a pipeline : How do you halt the construction of a gas pipeline? This is a question that environmental activists and concerned citizens alike have been asking for decades, without any satisfactory answers. In June, ecological artist Aviva Rahmani and a group of activists just north of New York City launched “Blued Trees,” a project that attempts to stop the expansion of the Spectra Energy Algonquin Incremental Market pipeline by using an unexpected legal tool: copyright.

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Positive Change Effie Awards: Rewarding shifting consumer behavior towards sustainability.

Effie WorldWide Logo

Positive Change Effie Awards: Rewarding and celebrating the brands that are effectively shifting consumer behavior towards sustainability. From the “Award Overview” section:

The Positive Change Effie Awards recognize and celebrate the most effective marketing programs that have measurably shifted consumer behavior toward more sustainable choices, and/or grown demand for more sustainable products and services by incorporating sustainability as a part of their marketing communications.

Improv Everywhere: “We Cause Scenes”

Improv Everywhere

Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents. A documentary was produced which is now available on Netflix. Why do you do this?  Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. Our missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants, those who happen to see us live, and those watch our videos. We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life. In the process we hopefully bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a unique experience and a great story to tell. We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.

The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking

The Demon-Haunted World (book) by Carl Sagan

The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking: “Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood”. Although not “activism” per se, I consider this an important skill that is absolutely required for effective activism.

Carl Sagan was many things — a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era’s greatest patron saint of reason and common sense, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan’s timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 — Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society’s most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda.

The OLB : OverPass Light Brigade / Wisconsin

Overpass Light Brigade

The Overpass Light Brigade (established 2011) was forged in the activist climate of the Wisconsin Uprising. Our messages shine over highways at night. We believe in the power of communities coming together in physical space, as well as the importance of visibility for grassroots and progressive causes. We are a loose and inclusive affiliation of people dedicated to the power of peaceful and playful protest. See the PBS piece (about 6 minutes) showing OLB in action.

A Movie Theater Got Its Audience To Use Their Phones …

Texting While Driving PSA

[Posted 6/8/14]: A Movie Theater Got Its Audience To Use Their Phones…: What a way to make a statement. I would have reached for my phone too. Also, it’s a movie theater — come on, people.

Reverse Graffiti: Street Artists Tag Walls by Scrubbing Them Clean

Reverse Graffiti

[Posted 6/2/2014] Reverse Graffiti: Street Artists Tag Walls by Scrubbing Them Clean When is cleaning the sidewalks a crime? When you’re doing it to create art. Obviously. A number of street artists around the world have taken to expressing themselves through an innovative practice known as Reverse Graffiti.

Artist Stops Oil Pipeline Cold

Arist Peter Von Tiesenausen

[Posted here on 6/2/2014] Artist Stops Oil Pipeline Cold Alberta artist, Peter von Tiesenhausen, has effectively stopped oil corporations from putting a pipeline through his 800 acre property by covering it with artwork and copyrighting the top six inches of his land as an artwork.

Realizing that mining companies can legitimately lay claim to any land underneath private property to a depth of six inches, van Tiesenhausen contacted a lawyer who drew up an intellectual property/copyright claim that said that if the oil company disturbed the top six inches in any way, it would be a copyright violation.
~ Terry Dawes, Cantech Letter

Lily Cole on The Gift Economy

Lily Cole One On One

Lily Cole on The Gift Economy (article at the HuffingtonPost).  [Editor’s note: anyone who is under 30, is already a successful entrepreneur, has gone to Burning Man, and is backing her own utopian vision with real effort & cash deserves our attention!]

See her site at  “impossible.com” for more detail on her project.

Article excerpt: At just 26, Lily has already carved out an incredibly successful career as a model and actress and graduated from Cambridge University. On top of that, she’s just launched Impossible.com, a website and app that encourages people to do things for others for free. It’s based on the idea of a gift economy, a mode of exchange where things are not sold but given. The site encourages people to post wishes of things that they want or need help with, and offer what they can give. Lily says she hopes the site creates a community that fosters giving and receiving.

12-year-old Madison Kimrey already fighting for right to vote

 

Madison Kimrey

12-year-old already fighting for right to vote. Interview by Melissa Harris-Perry of Madison Kimrey, a 12-year old North Carolina political activist. She’s really awesome: eloquent, intelligent,  passionate, and (I’ll say it, please pardon the implied sexism): “cute” (but VERY effective IMHO).

Besides this interview, which focussed on her work last year speaking on the right to vote (and voter suppression laws in NC), she also recently published a written response to a recent article by Phyllis Schlafly that is absolutely classic (see the recent Daily Kos article on this topic).

Hope she’s indicative of the style and power of the newest generation coming up the pike.  She also writes a regular blog entitled “Functional Human Being” (also quite impressive).