Occupy Chicago Rebel Arts Collective

Listening to Molly Meacham’s incredible poem reminds me of...

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:27:39 -0500

Listening to Molly Meacham’s incredible poem reminds me of the power of words in this fight for educational justice and quality learning environments. As the CTU strike continues and the mayor seeks an injunction, we will hear more and more propaganda and bogus attacks on the teachers-words that will aim to confuse, to blame, to demonize, and to win a swell of misinformed public support for the mayor 1%.

It’s important to listen to the teachers explain what drove over 90% to vote for this strike. It’s not about the money.

Please, please, take a moment to listen to this:

Rock For Teachers September 22nd

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:45:24 -0500

Rock For Teachers

September 22nd, 7pm

Wellington and Lincoln (under the Observatory)

$8 entry, proceeds go to Chicago Teachers Union solidarity fund!

Schools and teachers around the country are under attack from politicians, pundits and “reformers” (read: privatizers). According to these people, education is only as good as its service to the bottom line.

But Chicago’s teachers are fighting back, and serving up inspiration for anyone who believes that education and culture are absolute rights for everyone. This benefit, sponsored by the Rebel Arts Collective, will highlight and celebrate the importance of strong teachers, strong unions and well-funded schools.

Come support your teachers as they demand the schools that the students of Chicago deserve!

$8 suggested donation at the door, cheap cash bar and revolutionary art and music all through the night. Proceeds go to benefit the Chicago Teachers Union.

RSVP on Facebook.

artsyrabbits: View of a mural depicting Democracy breaking her...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:00:21 -0500

artsyrabbits:

View of a mural depicting Democracy breaking her chains

David Alfaro Siqueiros 1934

lornebair: A Brief Tour of the amazing Chicano Murals at...

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:00:15 -0500

lornebair:

A Brief Tour of the amazing Chicano Murals at People’s Park, Barrio Logan, San Diego. Shot on my iPhone 4 in June, 2012. 1/15

Photo

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:56:11 -0500

thezenzone: Via @occuprint: KEEP CALM AND CAMERAS...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:56:39 -0500

thezenzone:

Via @occuprint:

KEEP CALM AND CAMERAS ON

#OCCUPY

(Mark Miller, LA Based Artist)

Check out Occuprint here and make sure you follow them on Facebook and Tumblr. Thanks AM for sharing this gr8 space. All sales of Occupy Art, Graphic Design and Posters go towards the OWS Print Lab. This is a product you can feel good about.

Here’s another about May 1st AKA Occupy Spring

Jesus Barraza

Photo

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:55:27 -0500

Tonight: Rebel Arts Collective ARTIST MEET-UP

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:39:00 -0500

Tonight: Rebel Arts Collective ARTIST MEET-UP :

When: Tonight Monday, August 6, 7pm-10pm

Where: Multi-Kulti 1000 N Milwaukee 4th floor

Tonight is the first in a series of monthly artist’s meet ups - anyone who has ideas for projects, is looking for collaborators or just wants to meet other artists/creatives who are down should definitely come out. Feel free to bring examples/inspirations for projects, as well as your own art/instrument/chapbook. Tonight is for meeting, discussing, creating, planning, and doing!

Solidarity With Chicago Teachers: For the Schools (and Art) Our Kids Deserve!

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:05:32 -0500

We, the artists, activists and cultural workers of the Occupy Chicago Rebel Arts Collective, wish to state our full and enthusiastic support for the Chicago Teachers Union. We offer our solidarity to the teachers of Chicago in their struggle for their jobs, and to provide the education that Chicago’s kids deserve. As artists, we understand that education can play a crucial role in the creation and evolution of art. Without teachers and well-funded schools, there is no education.

Recently, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) released next year’s budget. It is little more than a scorched-earth policy that declares war on a unionized workforce and, despite all of Rahm’s pious rhetoric, the children of Chicago. Arts and music programs? Gone, or at the very least severely whittled down. Libraries in schools? Suddenly a luxury.

This goes hand-in-hand with the overall attack on teachers’ basic rights and the quality of our schools. If Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard have their way then tenure for teachers will be abolished, along with any job security. The insulting offer of a two percent raise—which won’t even compensate for inflation—will be standard. And the turnarounds and charter takeovers will continue apace, in essence placing our schools and our children’s schooling into the hands of private education companies.

How is it that, in Emanuel’s words, an eighteen percent pay raise is “not tethered to reality,” and yet the notorious Tax Increment Financing schemes that drain untold millions from the city’s coffers is reasonable? How is it that the city of Chicago was with one hand willing to move every mountain for the NATO summit and shut down libraries, field houses and arts programs with the other? It is Emanuel who has become “un-tethered,” not the Chicago Teachers Union.

As artists, we believe in unconditional defense of people’s right to art. Nobody can deny that a lively and robust artistic scene is crucial to any healthy society. This is reflected in the CTU’s own words and actions. In their pamphlet “The Schools Chicago’s Children Deserve,” the union names the arts as a crucial part of education:

A report of international studies on the impact of arts education revealed several benefits from arts programs. Arts education was found to:

• Improve students’ aesthetic development and appreciation of the arts

• Enhance children’s self-awareness, self-confidence and acceptance of others

• Increase class attendance and significantly lower drop-out rates

• Promote enthusiasm, motivation and engagement in learning

• Improve student behaviors in terms of greater motivation to read, awakening of student interest and emotional growth

• Develop interpersonal skills such as teamwork, tolerance, and appreciation of diversity in people and ideas

• Enhance academic attitude and aspiration

And yet, the suits who run the Chicago Public Schools have shown time and again that they believe the arts—as well as education itself—to be a privilege more than a right. In the administration’s attack on public school teachers over the past several years, arts and music teachers have often been the first laid off.

Currently, there are roughly 140 schools in Chicago lacking an arts or music program. This number is already unacceptable, but it’s even more criminal when one considers that 120 of them are on the South Side! This puts on display not only the brazen contempt that Emanuel, Brizard and company have for poor and working people, but their utter indifference to combatting racial inequality in our city.

This is, once again, part of a broader set of shameful disparities in our public school system. It is impossible to separate inadequate access to arts from the over-crowded class sizes, from the extreme segregation between student bodies, from the fact that a grand total of 202 school nurses are expected to take care of the kids in 684 schools!

By contrast, the CTU are demanding that our schools be given decent funding, that they not be placed in private hands, that education not be chalked up to skewed and biased standardized tests. They are demanding that teachers be given the resources (including decent pay) needed to make sure our kids have smaller class sizes, adequate supplies and a safe, healthy learning environment. They have also, to the Rebel Arts Collective’s great pleasure, launched a campaign demanding arts and music teachers in every school!

To us, the formulation is simple: if you want your kids to have arts and music in schools, you support the CTU. And so, we wish to enthusiastically and emphatically restate our steadfast solidarity with the teachers of Chicago in their fight for a decent living and better schools. We reject the base attacks on teachers and the opportunistic manipulation of our children’s futures.

The Rebel Arts Collective will do everything within its reach to support this struggle. We will put on events and fundraisers publicizing the cause. We will work with arts and music teachers to make sure the real facts continue to reach the public. And if there is a strike, we will proudly walk the picket lines and urge our fellow artists to do the same. As always, the question remains: which side are you on?

There are 1000 ice men sitting on the steps of Opera House in...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:56:13 -0500

There are 1000 ice men sitting on the steps of Opera House in Berlin against Global Warming. See them before they melt…

mastreacheval: credit

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:57:47 -0500

mastreacheval:

credit

Photo

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 09:48:12 -0500

Playing Politics by Jules Odendahl-James

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:53:37 -0500

Playing Politics by Jules Odendahl-James:

An article that contextualizes ‘political theatre’ in relation to the Civic Practice that Michael Rohd wrote about in the previously posted article.

Polly Carl tweeted a question that brought the issue into sharp relief. She asked: “Should we make more urgent and politically relevant theater?”

While considering Polly’s query, I was struck by a question that is perhaps even more foundational: “What exactly is political in relationship to theater?”

The New Work of Building Civic Practice by Michael Rohd

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:59:42 -0500

The New Work of Building Civic Practice by Michael Rohd:

A great article for artists of all sorts about the ways in which we can approach meaningful work with non-arts partners. What are our skills, our tools, our assets? What are the needs of the non-arts organizations that we are passionate about? How can these meaningfully intersect?

Producing new work does not have to only mean making new plays. And our new work practice, it can excel not just in the caliber of our expression but in the quality of our listening. If we can accomplish that, we model what civic life today desperately needs—a practice that places dialogue ahead of monologue, imagination at the heart of problem—solving, and listening equal in value to expression.

Photo

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:49:20 -0500

Photo

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:56:01 -0500

kartemquin: “Often at-risk youth are robbed from their...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 03:34:07 -0500

kartemquin:

“Often at-risk youth are robbed from their innocence without them knowing. I think art is a way in which we can bear witness to what they have gone through” -Eddie Bocanegra (above, with one of his students)

Eddie Bocanegra, one of three violence interrupters with CeaseFire Chicago featured in 2011’s The Interrupters, has worked tirelessly to curb the violence on the city’s streets and provide alternatives to at-risk youth. In addition to his work as a violence interrupter, he’s worked as an educator and an advocate for ex-offenders, all while earning a bachelors in social work from Northern Illinois University.

This summer he’s collaborated with the National Museum of Mexican Art to put together “Stop the Violence with Art”, a program designed to give young people whose lives have been affected by violence a creative outlet to express their feelings.

The exhibit opens tomorrow (July 6th) with a screening of The Interrupters followed by a conversation with Eddie Bocanegra and the young artists featured.

We hear everyday about the lives lost to street violence; come by tomorrow to support some of the people working hard to make a change.

Learn more about the event.

See more of Eddie’s students’ work at Hancock Highschool Art Expo

Watch The Interrupters.

Time Warner would love it if Anonymous kept up the sales of Guy...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:53:33 -0500

Time Warner would love it if Anonymous kept up the sales of Guy Fawkes masks, but we’d rather make our own - check out these inspired, cheap art masks a la Bread and Puppet. What about making masks from woodcuts? That’d be easy, and fun! Whose interested? We are dreaming about double sided politician masks, sheep police, or what about masks with demographics on them to bring them to life?

Artists, who is interested in making banners,...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:22:38 -0500

Artists, who is interested in making banners, signs?

dalexshoots:

Meeting Saturday, 6pm, at Congress & Michigan to discuss #J28. If you love Chicago as much as we do join us. This is not about the battle against the 1% but the battle of our youth against one another.

I love this so much. I wish I had the courage for large scale public work like this.

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:38:21 -0500

I love this so much. I wish I had the courage for large scale public work like this.

Occupy Chicago Rebel Arts Collective

Listening to Molly Meacham’s incredible poem reminds me of...

It’s important to listen to the teachers explain what drove over 90% to vote for this strike. It’s not about the money.Please, please, take a moment to listen to this:

Rock For Teachers September 22nd

artsyrabbits: View of a mural depicting Democracy breaking her...

lornebair: A Brief Tour of the amazing Chicano Murals at...

Photo

thezenzone: Via @occuprint: KEEP CALM AND CAMERAS...

Photo

Tonight: Rebel Arts Collective ARTIST MEET-UP

Solidarity With Chicago Teachers: For the Schools (and Art) Our Kids Deserve!

There are 1000 ice men sitting on the steps of Opera House in...

mastreacheval: credit

Photo

Playing Politics by Jules Odendahl-James

The New Work of Building Civic Practice by Michael Rohd

Photo

Photo

kartemquin: “Often at-risk youth are robbed from their...

Time Warner would love it if Anonymous kept up the sales of Guy...

Artists, who is interested in making banners,...

I love this so much. I wish I had the courage for large scale public work like this.

It’s important to listen to the teachers explain what drove over 90% to vote for this strike. It’s not about the money.

Please, please, take a moment to listen to this: