The Art of Activism is an all-purpose guide to artistic activism, combining the creative power of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. With contemporary case studies and historical examples, chapters on cultural and cognitive theory, sections on what can be learned from unlikely sources like popular culture and marketing techniques, along with investigations into ethics and evaluation, explorations of the creative process and the importance of utopian thinking, and an attached workbook with over fifty exercises to practice, the co-founders of the Center for Artistic Activism take readers step-by-step through the process of becoming, or becoming even better, artistic activists.

Historically, artists have inspired the change makers of every era - Aaron Maybin is such an artist. Coming of age in a city that was preparing to erupt as he found himself as a man, as a father, and as an artist - his environment helped to help him figure out how to define himself. This is the true meaning of Art Activism and Art Activism: The Workbook- First he found his voice...then he discovered it was a journey others could take with him and still discover themselves. This collection of paintings, sketches, poems, essays, and music are the audio and visual toolbox to this era we are in now.

Banksy, the Yes Men, Gandhi, Starhawk: the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest is now in the hands of the next generation of change-makers, thanks to Beautiful Trouble. Sophisticated enough for veteran activists, accessible enough for newbies, this compact pocket edition of the bestselling Beautiful Trouble is a book that’s both handy and inexpensive. Showcasing the synergies between artistic imagination and shrewd political strategy, this generously illustrated volume can easily be slipped into your pocket as you head out to the streets. This is for everyone who longs for a more beautiful, more just, more livable world – and wants to know how to get there. Includes a new introduction by the editors. Contributors include: Celia Alario • Andy Bichlbaum • Nadine Bloch • L. M. Bogad • Mike Bonnano • Andrew Boyd • Kevin Buckland • Doyle Canning • Samantha Corbin • Stephen Duncombe • Simon Enoch • Janice Fine • Lisa Fithian • Arun Gupta • Sarah Jaffe • John Jordan • Stephen Lerner • Zack Malitz • Nancy L. Mancias • Dave Oswald Mitchell • Tracey Mitchell • Mark Read • Patrick Reinsborough • Joshua Kahn Russell • Nathan Schneider • John Sellers • Matthew Skomarovsky • Jonathan Matthew Smucker • Starhawk • Eric Stoner • Harsha Walia

Aaron Maybin is barely 30 years old and yet he has lived a number of experiences that make both his work and his thinking far beyond his years. Maybin, a former NFL first round draft pick, artist, writer, father, and teacher offers critiques and analysis on the church, politics, education policy, and criminal justice reform just to name a few, through a lens of a young man coming of age at a period in America's history as pivotal as the Civil Rights era of the 1960's. A native of Baltimore, Aaron was front and center when his hometown erupted into chaos following the death of a young man in police custody. These very same areas that have been left in the conditions that they were in since the riots of 1968 following the assassination of Dr. King, but Freddie Grey wasn't the first to have been killed by law enforcement as Baltimore and Aaron knew all too well. These truths can be found in the profound images captured in the paintings, photography, and sketches that are throughout the book. Nonetheless, while Maybin doesn't shy away from the darker parts of his reality and the conditions of his people you are not left feeling hopeless. There is as much light and love as there is grit and mourning. Collectively with each poem and essay Aaron takes you on a journey with him through his progression and shares his dreams, his prayers, his passion and determination to be a part of the change he seeks for his children and all of those growing up in Baltimore and similar cities. The theme of reaffirming and encouraging our youth and black girls and women does not go unnoticed and while this collection of work is clearly a window into the maturation of one man - it is also a snapshot of the shared feelings of many of his generation. By the time you come to it's end you will be reminded of Psalm 30:5 "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" and a renewed faith in where we go forward as a people despite all that we have collectively overcome.

We Want You! Will you join the ranks of design activists? Doing good is too important to think of as work better left to those fictitious "other" designers. People more famous. More talented. More connected. Richer. Younger. Braver. (Insert your own mental roadblock here.) In truth, anyone can be a design activist. It just starts with a commitment to yourself and your values. A commitment to making conscious choices and realizing how all the decisions you make as a graphic designer affect other people and the planet. It's about being awake instead of sliding by with the way things always have been done. This book is for every graphic designer who's ever sat at a computer, thinking: Is this it? Isn't there more? It's a tool to help you figure out how to start making a difference and making a living at the same time--no matter where you live and work right now. Just open this book and we'll help you start walking in the right direction. It doesn't have to be perfect. Little actions from a lot of people add up to big change. This isn't a contest about who's the greenest or the most radical. It's a movement, and we're inviting you to join right now.

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own. Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

A revolutionary guide to acknowledging fear and developing the tools we need to build a healthy relationship with this confusing emotion—and use it as a positive force in our lives. We all feel fear. Yet we are often taught to ignore it, overcome it, push past it. But to what benefit? This is the essential question that guides Kristen Ulmer’s remarkable exploration of our most misunderstood emotion in The Art of Fear. Once recognized as the best extreme skier in the world (an honor she held for twelve years), Ulmer knows fear well. In this conversation-changing book, she argues that fear is not here to cause us problems—and that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it (not the fear itself). Rebuilding our experience with fear from the ground up, Ulmer starts by exploring why we’ve come to view it as a negative. From here, she unpacks fear and shows it to be just one of 10,000 voices that make up our reality, here to help us come alive alongside joy, love, and gratitude. Introducing a mindfulness tool called “Shift,” Ulmer teaches readers how to experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion from that of a draining battle into one that’s in line with our true nature. Influenced by Ulmer’s own complicated relationship with fear and her over 15 years as a mindset facilitator, The Art of Fear will reconstruct the way we react to and experience fear—empowering us to easily and permanently address the underlying cause of our fear-based problems, and setting us on course to live a happier, more expansive future.

"Edited by Max Schumann, Director of Printed Matter, and with a foreword and afterword by art writer and Colab member Walter Robinson, the book traces the output of Collaborative Projects Inc. (aka Colab), the highly energetic gathering of young New York downtown artists active from the late 1970's through the mid 1980's."--Printed Matter website.

"Avi doesn't only talk the talk, or even walk the walk. He writes the instruction manual. This book shows a way, perhaps not the only way but one indispensable way, of being an activist on behalf of the Jewish people. Read it and learn." --from the Foreword by Alan M. Dershowitz I n this age of perpetual strife and conflict, we need now more than ever to find out how to be proactive in repairing our broken world. Rabbi Avraham Weiss's provocative and challenging guidebook will show you just that--and so much more. With easy-to-follow steps, accessible explanations of the principles of spiritual activism and an exploration into the foundations of spiritual activism as rooted in the Torah, Weiss offers more than simply a user manual--he provides an in-depth approach to changing your role in the world. Topics include: - Why, How and When Do We Engage in Spiritual Activism? - Choosing the Cause - Making Partners - Designing the Strategy - Leading Other People - Seeing the Big Picture - And more ...