Jed Proujansky and Joan Deely are real ones.
The guerrillas are in the Hall of Fame.
Shirley Chisholm entered the first vote.
Activists.
Progressive.
“Radicals,” using the pejorative term affixed to anyone around the world working to take power from the historically privileged, white, male, monied, ruling class.
Across New York, exhibitions highlighting the work of activists, from the mostly unknown to the iconic, offer hope, inspiration, and instruction for progressives despairing another Trump presidency and regression of humanity.
Jed Proujansky and Joan Deely fell in love with the attendance of the 60,000-strong counter-rally at the American bicentennial celebrations in 1976. It turned into activism through anti-war protests. Terrified that her older brothers will be sent to die in Vietnam. Proujansky Brought to movement paintings through a cousin who taught at a freedom school in 1964. This summer, black-and-white activists from across the country went to Mississippi and established schools for African-American children, training while highlighting the nation’s Black children’s status over a semblance of a public education that is equitable for white children.
Both worked for Amerindian rights organizations when they are familiar. An adjustment made in progressive paradise.
Three years later, a woman born: Alice.
Their years of training in western Massachusetts, and those of their brothers, spent marching and gathering. Karl Marx was summoned in the cooking pantry. A bumper sticker in the circle of motorist relatives said: “Fabited imperialism. “
In Alice Proujansky’s Baby Book, on a page titled “The Ambitions of Mother and Father for the Baby,” Jed Proujansky wrote, “to grow up and be whatever you want, a fascist or a banker. “
“The first page of my baby book, it’s dedicated to a family who was most likely killed by the FBI for being part of (American Indian Movement) work; that’s a heavy thing,” Proujansky told Forbes.com. “You can’t even get born around here before you’re supposed to shoulder this burden.”
The burden of activism Alice Proujansky was born into.
“My (children’s) softball team marched in a parade, and they gave us each a flag and I dragged mine across the ground,” Proujansky recalled. “My coach so angry, but I knew what my parents would expect; it’s great.
This burden and activism and archives of the life of the relatives of their parents, including the pages of the Bathrough electronic book, are shared with love through Alice Proujansky in an electronic book and exhibition in 2023 now in Baxter Street In the Camera Club in New York until February 26, 2025, entitled “Difficult times are struggle. ” The call refers to a 1976 hard work movement conference, Jed Proujansky, helped organize.
“It makes you very anxious, because as a little boy, it flooded you, I had to perceive Palestine and the AIDS crisis. I perceive what my parents were looking to do, and I love them and respect, and I agree with their maximum political investigation of the time, however, there is a component that is family expectations, ”said Proujansky. “I need this task to have many access points. Some other people could love the graphic design of the 70s. Some other people could be looking to discover their own leftist policy. Other other people might think about the expectations imposed on them, and how do they deal with that? How much do you bring forward?
All items from the e-book and exhibition (photographers, brochures, buttons) were stored through Proujanksy and Deely as a recording of their activism. Except for the Chicago Police branch of Proujanksy’s arrest in 1969 by mob action. Her original copy was in poor condition, so Alice presented her father with a payment for her parents’ 40th wedding anniversary.
The FBI record is there.
Alice Proujansky learned about her parents being surveilled by the federal government when she was in college and becoming more and more curious, and more and more capable of understanding her parents’ activism.
“They know it’s important. This is traditionally significant. They’re proud of this story,” Alice Proujansky says of her parents who have held on to those pieces for more than 50 years. “They’re not critical of some of the Tacticians, yet they’re proud of this story because that’s what they are. It’s the story of themselves and our family. “
Beyond a half-century record of activism in America, “Hard Times are Fighting Times” and the Proujansky/Deely family experience share a case study of survival as a progressive in a nation where both major political parties seek your extinction. Never forget, it was the Democrats who defeated Bernie Sanders; no Republican ever did.
“You should see my family text chat. It’s just bad news after bad news; it’s hard not to constantly engage with that,” Proujansky said. “That’s why this project is about both politics and the uses of politics.”
So, how does she cope?
“There’s a reason it’s called a movement or a struggle, not a routing or a win,” Proujansky said. “This is a long thing, and I think for people who have grown up in this, or people who culturally have been experienced in (American abuses) for a long time, a lot of struggle, I think it’s a different story.”
It’s true.
Trump Terror Part 2 does not have the same bite if it has been politically committed for more than 50 years from Vietnam’s horror to Trump I. horror part.
“People like myself are raised to believe if you work hard at it, you’ll get it. We get used to that. We’re like, ‘Okay, I’m going to go to this march and organize, and then it doesn’t work out, you can want to give up, but you have to think about it as a struggle,” Proujanksy said. “It is a movement. It’s a long commitment.”
Take the effort to free American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier from federal prison. His sentence was finally commuted on Joe Biden’s last day in the White House following almost 50 years behind bars. Supporters have been organizing for his release since the first day he was locked up in 1975.
Proujansky also believes that progressives can sanity in his mother’s advice: “A fight, many fronts.
“Possibly it would not end up doing anything that addresses the rights of immigrants, however, it can also be dedicated to educational freedom,” Prujansky said. “You can’t do everything. “
No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. Sending his non -public art practice, Alice Proujansky is an independent training artist organizing workshops and elegance visits in the New York public system.
“I am not a political activist (as my parents were). What turns out to be useful is that when I have an organization of secondary students, we are talking (activism), and that identify a link with their history, and we are talking about this less known story, then when I leave the room, there is an exchange verbal that happened that had not happened before, “said Proujansky. ” Mutual aid is useful to me. During Trump’s first presidency), we downloaded a poster, we made many copies and recorded it throughout the Sunset park (Brooklyn). .
More than anything, connection may be the key coping mechanism.
“You want solidarity or you’ll go crazy,” Proujansky said. It’s too isolating. “
Proujansky likes reminding people, “if my parents could do it, couldn’t anybody else?”
A popular myth that strives to frustrate progressive action is that of the common person.
“We are told that if we don’t have this wonderful leader, we can’t have anything,” said Prujansky. “My parents were not in leadership. They were not famous. They were not the maximum radical. Only people, like any other person, who saw something and did a lot to see to replace it. »
This is not to say that movements don’t gain advantages from other ordinary people or that millions of others don’t motivate them to take action they otherwise haven’t taken. A common user was Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), the first Black woman elected to Congress, representing Brooklyn. In 1972, she became the first black woman to run for president on the slogan of “no being nasty. “
Through July 20, 2025, the Museum of the City of New York presents “Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100,” a look back at Chisholm’s towering legacy using historical artifacts, photographs, archival footage, and art on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her birth.
A stop at the Museum of the City of New York is a must for the city’s progressives who feel lost in a desert of fascism and cruelty. In addition to highlighting Chisholm, an ongoing exhibition, “New York Activist,” stores the long scan of activism in the Big Apple from the 17th century to today.
It has been revealed how political upheavals with close diversity confront America, racial, gender and sexual equality with freedom and immigration of reproduction, go back centuries. And how every intelligent concept that America has had, all the rights and freedoms for which we are grateful, emanating from “radical. “From the left.
Each social movement is considered radical, progressive or awake, to use a new term. The movement of radical abolition. The same is for the efforts they seek to offer women vote. The same is for Social Security, finishing children’s paintings, by building a week of 40 -hour paintings, the equality of African Americans, natural air and water. Freedom of reproduction. LGBTQ + equality. Native sovereignty. These are radical notions in your time. Dangerous. For dozens of millions of Americans and thousands of policy of blank spaces with local school boards, they continue to be radical ideas. Dangerous.
As graffiti.
Dangerous. Frightening.
Remember when graffiti artists were criminals, vandals, not artists?The darling of the city’s fine art galleries a decade later.
Graffiti art may not seem like activism in the Chisholm or Proujansky/Deely sense of the term, but for the middle finger it gave the establishment, the creative outlet it offered historically marginalized individuals, the recognition it demanded, the power it accumulated where none existed previously, and its subversion of norms, street art was, and continues to be, a form of activism. Protest.
The works of vision until August 10, 202 five, presented the museum and artist collector Martin Wong presents a leading era of “Taggers” whose creativity has crossed the worlds of classic art and design, in particular Keith Haringarray Futura 2000, Fab Five Freddy, Rammellee, Leeee, Leeee. Quiñones, Haze, Crash, Lady Pink and Tracy 168.
No history of activism in New York or anywhere else is complete without recognizing the labor movement. That’s what visitors to the International Center for Photography will find during “American Jobs: 1940–2011” through May 5, 2025.
The exhibition examines the evolution of paintings in the United States through more than 130 photographs, photolibros and ephemeral. It will align the dating between paintings, activism and social change, covering the commitment of photography with the organization of the industry union, the civil rights motion – Martin Luther King Jr. murdered in Memphis Protestant with the personnel of the sanitation personnel for greater situations – and the increase in services paintings. “US works” underline lasting ties between paintings and human rights.
Finally, with 3 ICP houses, Hannah Traore Gallery presents “Discriation: guerrillas on bias, money and art”, a diversity of posters of the unnamed collective of feminist-activist artists. Founded in 1985 to highlight the ancient inequalities of global global artist arts basically through female and African -American artists, and their general capture through wealth, guerrillas women many fronts. ”
No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. Go do your thing.
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