Gonzo Illustrator Ralph Steadman Draws the American Presidents, from Nixon to Trump

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Current Affairs, History, Politics | August 28th, 2017

In a 2012 inter­view with Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, car­toon­ist Ralph Stead­man, best known for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son, lament­ed the qual­i­ty of the can­di­dates in that year’s Pres­i­den­tial race:

The prob­lem is there are no Nixons around at the moment. That’s what we need — we need a real good Nixon to give some­thing for oth­er peo­ple to get their teeth into, to real­ly … loathe him, to become them­selves more effec­tive as oppo­si­tion lead­ers.

Alas, his prayers have been answered.

Stead­man, who has brought his inky sen­si­bil­i­ties to bear on such works as Ani­mal Farm and Alice in Won­der­land, has a new Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to add to the col­lec­tion he dis­cussed sev­er­al years ago, in the video above.

Steadman’s pen was the sword that ren­dered Ger­ald Ford as a scare­crow, Ronald Rea­gan as a vam­pire, and George W. Bush as a mon­key in a cage of his own mak­ing.

Barack Oba­ma, one of the can­di­dates in that com­par­a­tive­ly bland 2012 elec­tion, is depict­ed as a tena­cious, slen­der vine, strain­ing ever upward.

Jim­my Carter, some­what less benign­ly, is a pup­py eager­ly fetch­ing a stick with which to par­don Nixon, the Welsh cartoonist’s dark muse, first encoun­tered when he accom­pa­nied Thomp­son on the road trip that yield­ed Fear and Loathing: On the Cam­paign Trail ’72.

And now…

Don­ald Trump has giv­en Stead­man rea­son to come out fight­ing. With luck, he’ll stay out as long as his ser­vices are required. The above por­trait, titled “Porky Pie,” was sent, unso­licit­ed, to Ger­ry Brakus, an edi­tor of the New States­man, who pub­lished it on Decem­ber 17, 2015.

At the time, Stead­man had no rea­son to believe the man he’d anthro­po­mor­phized as a human pig hybrid, squeezed into bloody flag-print under­pants, would become the 45th pres­i­dent:

Trump is unthink­able. A thug and a moles­ter. Who wants him?

The por­trait’s hideous­ness speaks vol­umes, but it’s also worth look­ing beyond the obvi­ous-seem­ing inspi­ra­tion for the title to a ref­er­ence few Amer­i­cans would get. “Pork pie”—or porky—is Cock­ney rhyming slang for “a lie.”

See a gallery of Steadman’s por­traits of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents on his web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ralph Steadman’s Sur­re­al­ist Illus­tra­tions of George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm (1995)

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Artists Put a Hidden Message in Their Letter Resigning from President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities

in Art, Current Affairs, Politics | August 21st, 2017

It was­n’t the most high pro­file mass res­ig­na­tion of last week. (The CEOs on Trump’s busi­ness advi­so­ry coun­cils got that dis­tinc­tion.) But it was arguably the most cre­ative one. Last Fri­day, “all 16 of the promi­nent artists, authors, per­form­ers and archi­tects on the President’s Com­mit­tee on the Arts and the Human­i­ties resigned,” reports The New York Times. And while their res­ig­na­tion let­ter did­n’t mince words (read it online here), it did take the added step of encod­ing in its text a short mes­sage for POTUS. Cir­cle the first let­ter of each para­graph and what do you get? RESIST, the mantra of 2017.

In oth­er relat­ed news, the admin­is­tra­tion announced that Trump will skip the annu­al Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors this year–just the fourth time that a pres­i­dent has missed this annu­al nation­al cel­e­bra­tion of the arts. This year’s hon­orees include Glo­ria Este­fan, LL COOL J, Nor­man Lear, Lionel Richie, and Car­men de Laval­lade.

via Boing Boing/Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant Again in 2017

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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People Are Planting Flowers in Potholes Worldwide: See the Creative Protest Taking Place in Montreal, Ukraine & Beyond

in Current Affairs | August 7th, 2017

In 2015, Paige Bre­i­thart, an artist and stu­dent liv­ing in Ham­tram­ck, Michi­gan, had grown tired of the count­less pot­holes mar­ring Ham­tram­ck­’s streets. So she took mat­ters into her own hands, and drove around town, fill­ing the pot­holes with flow­ers, replac­ing the decay with sym­bols of growth and beau­ty. The sto­ry went viral, and Bre­i­thart’s aes­thet­ic treat­ment has since caught on. Look around Twit­ter, and you’ll find sto­ries about flow­ers fill­ing pot­holes around the Unit­ed States, and indeed around the world.

In some cas­es, these gueril­la projects aren’t just dec­o­ra­tive, a sim­ple way to spruce up a neigh­bor­hood. There’s an activist ele­ment to them. In Bath, Eng­land, one flower pot vig­i­lante said:

In an area of Amer­i­ca there were a load of pot­holes filled in with pot plants, although that’s not what we are doing here. We think it’s a good thing to do but it’s more than about mak­ing peo­ple smile. Pot­holes are a real prob­lem and have the poten­tial to be death traps for bik­ers and cyclists and with cars there is an issue with blow-outs to wheels. The whole point is to raise aware­ness of them.

And local gov­ern­ments are tak­ing notice, though not always hap­pi­ly. Con­cerned that dri­vers might get sur­prised or dis­tract­ed by flow­ers sud­den­ly appear­ing in the mid­dle of a road, politi­cians are dis­cour­ag­ing this form of protest. But you can’t argue with the results. Once pro­test­ers call atten­tion to them, the pot­holes have a mag­i­cal way of get­ting prop­er­ly paved and filled. Quick­ly.

Below you can see a gallery of pot­holes around the world that have got­ten the flower treatment–from Mis­soula, Mon­tana, to Mon­tre­al, Bath, Bosnia and Ukraine. Maybe the artist from Chica­go (see image at bot­tom) is the one who got it right?

Wet­zel Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia

 

Mis­soula, Mon­tana

 

Mon­tre­al, Cana­da

 

Cor­ner Brook, Cana­da

 

Bath, Eng­land

 

Berwick­shire, Scot­land

 

Edin­burgh, Scot­land

 

Ukraine

 

Bosnia

 

Chica­go

via Twist­ed Sifter/My Mod­ern Met

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Animations Show the Melting Arctic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

in Current Affairs, Science | May 24th, 2017

It’s no secret that cli­mate change has been tak­ing a toll on the Arc­tic. But it’s one thing to read about it, anoth­er thing to see it in action. Above you can watch an ani­ma­tion nar­rat­ed by NASA’s cryos­pher­ic sci­en­tist Dr. Walt Meier. Doc­u­ment­ing changes between 1984 and 2016, the ani­ma­tion lets you see the Arc­tic sea ice shrink­ing. As the impor­tant peren­ni­al sea ice dimin­ish­es, the remain­ing ice cov­er “almost looks gelati­nous as it puls­es through the sea­sons.” For any­one inter­est­ed, an updat­ed ver­sion of this visu­al­iza­tion can be down­loaded in HD here.

If you’re curi­ous what this could all lead to–well, you can also watch a har­row­ing video that mod­els what would hap­pen when all the ice melts and the seas rise some 216 feet. It isn’t pret­ty. The video below is based on the 2013 Nation­al Geo­graph­ic sto­ry, “What the World Would Look Like if All the Ice Melt­ed.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Frank Capra’s Sci­ence Film The Unchained God­dess Warns of Cli­mate Change in 1958

Watch Episode 1 of Years of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly, The New Show­time Series on Cli­mate Change

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“Calling Bullshit”: Watch Lectures for the College Course Designed to Combat the BS in our Information Age

in Current Affairs, Online Courses | May 15th, 2017

This past Jan­u­ary, we high­light­ed a syl­labus for a ten­ta­tive course called “Call­ing Bull­shit,” designed by two pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West.

The course–also some­times called “Call­ing Bull­shit in the Age of Big Data”–ended up being offered this spring. And now you can see how it unfold­ed in the class­room. The 10 video lec­tures from the class are avail­able online. Watch them above, or at this YouTube playlist. Also find them housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Accord­ing to The Seat­tle Times, the course “achieved the aca­d­e­m­ic ver­sion of a chart-top­ping pop sin­gle: At the UW [Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton], it reached its 160-stu­dent capac­i­ty short­ly after reg­is­tra­tion opened this spring.” And now col­leges “in Cana­da, France, Por­tu­gal, Eng­land and Aus­tralia have con­tact­ed the pro­fes­sors about teach­ing a ver­sion of the course this fall.”

The course itself was premised on this basic idea: “Bull­shit is every­where, and we’ve had enough. We want to teach peo­ple to detect and defuse bull­shit wher­ev­er it may arise.”

A longer overview of the course appears below. It was cit­ed in our orig­i­nal post. And it’s worth high­light­ing again:

The world is awash in bull­shit. Politi­cians are uncon­strained by facts. Sci­ence is con­duct­ed by press release. High­er edu­ca­tion rewards bull­shit over ana­lyt­ic thought. Start­up cul­ture ele­vates bull­shit to high art. Adver­tis­ers wink con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly and invite us to join them in see­ing through all the bull­shit — and take advan­tage of our low­ered guard to bom­bard us with bull­shit of the sec­ond order. The major­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, whether in pri­vate busi­ness or the pub­lic sphere, seems to be lit­tle more than a sophis­ti­cat­ed exer­cise in the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al reassem­bly of bull­shit.

We’re sick of it. It’s time to do some­thing, and as edu­ca­tors, one con­struc­tive thing we know how to do is to teach peo­ple. So, the aim of this course is to help stu­dents nav­i­gate the bull­shit-rich mod­ern envi­ron­ment by iden­ti­fy­ing bull­shit, see­ing through it, and com­bat­ing it with effec­tive analy­sis and argu­ment.

What do we mean, exact­ly, by the term bull­shit? As a first approx­i­ma­tion, bull­shit is lan­guage, sta­tis­ti­cal fig­ures, data graph­ics, and oth­er forms of pre­sen­ta­tion intend­ed to per­suade by impress­ing and over­whelm­ing a read­er or lis­ten­er, with a bla­tant dis­re­gard for truth and log­i­cal coher­ence.

While bull­shit may reach its apogee in the polit­i­cal domain, this is not a course on polit­i­cal bull­shit. Instead, we will focus on bull­shit that comes clad in the trap­pings of schol­ar­ly dis­course. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such high­brow non­sense has come couched in big words and fan­cy rhetoric, but more and more we see it pre­sent­ed instead in the guise of big data and fan­cy algo­rithms — and these quan­ti­ta­tive, sta­tis­ti­cal, and com­pu­ta­tion­al forms of bull­shit are those that we will be address­ing in the present course….

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think crit­i­cal­ly about the data and mod­els that con­sti­tute evi­dence in the social and nat­ur­al sci­ences.

If you’re inter­est­ed in watch­ing the course, get start­ed with Lec­ture 1: Intro­duc­tion to Bull­shit.

To learn more about the course, please vis­it this web­site.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

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The First 100 Days of Fascist Germany: A New Online Project from Emory University

in Current Affairs, History | April 28th, 2017

From Emory Uni­ver­si­ty comes The First 100 Days of Fas­cist Ger­many, an attempt to doc­u­ment online what hap­pened on each day–from Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 through May 9, 1933–when Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler of Ger­many.

As you can per­haps imag­ine, the moti­va­tion for the project isn’t entire­ly divorced from cur­rent events. The grad stu­dents behind The First 100 Days explain:

Dur­ing the high­ly con­tentious polit­i­cal cli­mate in this coun­try, the terms “fas­cism” and “Nazi Ger­many” have been tossed around quite freely by both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. As a response to this and in an effort to pro­vide some clar­i­ty of what fas­cism in Nazi Ger­many actu­al­ly looked like, we at the Emory Uni­ver­si­ty Ger­man Depart­ment ini­ti­at­ed a research project that aims to doc­u­ment the first 100 days of Nation­al Social­ism- from the day that Adolf Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler on Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 until May 9, 1933.

They con­tin­ue:

The gen­er­al plan for our project is that our research team will work its way through the 100 days, inves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the events of each day and then post­ing the find­ings on a dai­ly basis for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

As the dai­ly cal­en­dar shows, Hitler did­n’t waste a lot of time. By Day 51, Dachau–one of the first con­cen­tra­tion camps–opened and received its first pris­on­ers, notes Emory News. By Day 60, all new sto­ries crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment were cen­sored. And, by Day 88, the press expelled from its ranks all Marx­ists and Jews. That was just the begin­ning.

Mean­while, on Day 88 over here, Trump’s ini­tia­tives (some rel­a­tive­ly innocu­ous, some alarm­ing) have met civ­il, judi­cial and polit­i­cal resis­tance, or col­lapsed under their own weight. The con­cern of Jan­u­ary has giv­en way to com­e­dy in April. So far, it’s more farce than fas­cism:

But don’t get com­pla­cent, ter­ror might be the oper­a­tive word in May.

You can learn more about Emory’s his­tor­i­cal project here.

via John McMur­trie

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Stu­dents Launch a Free Course on How to Resist Trump

Hitler Was ‘Blitzed’ On Cocaine & Opi­ates Dur­ing World War II: Hear a Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view with Best-Sell­ing Author Nor­man Ohler

Fritz Lang Tells the Riv­et­ing Sto­ry of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Ger­many

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

The New York Times’ First Pro­file of Hitler: His Anti-Semi­tism Is Not as “Gen­uine or Vio­lent” as It Sounds (1922)

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da

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Artist is Creating a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Monument to Democracy & Intellectual Freedom

in Art, Current Affairs, Politics | April 27th, 2017

With the rise of Far Right can­di­dates in Europe and in Amer­i­ca, along with creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in Turkey and author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Philip­pines, the idea of democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech feels under threat more than ever. While we don’t talk about polit­i­cal solu­tions here on Open Cul­ture, we do believe in the pow­er of art to illu­mi­nate.

Argen­tine artist Mar­ta Min­u­jín is cre­at­ing a large-scale art­work called The Parthenon of Books that will be con­struct­ed on Friedrich­splatz in Kas­sel, Ger­many, and will be con­struct­ed from as many as 100,000 banned books from all over the world.

The loca­tion has been cho­sen for its his­tor­i­cal impor­tance. In 1933, the Nazis burned two-thou­sand books there dur­ing the so-called “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Cam­paign against the Un-Ger­man Spir­it), destroy­ing books by Com­mu­nists, Jews, and paci­fists, along with any oth­ers deemed un-Ger­man.

Min­u­jín chose the Parthenon—one of the great struc­tures of Ancient Greece—for its con­tin­u­ing sym­bol­ism of the endur­ing pow­er of democ­ra­cy through­out the ages.

When it comes to mate­ri­als, she using a list of 100,000 books that have been, or still are, banned in coun­tries across the world, going all the way back to the year 1500. You can browse that list here, but for less eye-strain, try this short­er list of 170 or so titles. New titles can be sug­gest­ed for the project here.

Some of the books that have been banned over the years include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit­tle Prince (banned in Argenti­na), Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (banned in Chi­na), and Nor­man Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (banned in Cana­da).

Min­u­jín con­struct­ed a sim­i­lar Parthenon in 1983 after the fall of her country’s dic­ta­tor­ship. The orig­i­nal El Partenón de libros fea­tured the books that the for­mer gov­ern­ment had banned, and, at the end of the instal­la­tion, Min­u­jín let the pub­lic take what they want­ed home. (She will be allow­ing the same thing to hap­pen this time.)

Her peo­ple, as she says in the video above, didn’t know what democ­ra­cy was after years of mil­i­tary rule. We might be on the oppo­site side of the spec­trum: we won’t know what democ­ra­cy is until we lose it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)
Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Harvard Students Launch a Free Course on How to Resist: Now You Can Watch the Lectures

in Current Affairs, Politics | April 5th, 2017

NOTE: As of July 22, we updat­ed this post to include the videos from the class ses­sions. Watch the playlist of lec­tures above.

I have my doubts about whether we should call reg­u­lar acts of civic duty “resis­tance,” rather than Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-pro­tect­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms.  Yes­ter­day we remem­bered Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. on the 49th anniver­sary of his assas­si­na­tion (and the 50th anniver­sary of his speech oppos­ing the Viet­nam War). As King and count­less oth­er civ­il rights and anti-war cam­paign­ers have demonstrated—some at the cost of their lives—civil dis­obe­di­ence is very often required and moral­ly jus­ti­fied when legal appeals for jus­tice fail. But for bet­ter or worse, “The Resis­tance” has become a catch-all media term for a loose and very often frac­tious col­lec­tion of main­stream Democ­rats, pro­gres­sives, and rad­i­cals of all stripes, whose tac­tics range from polite phone lob­by­ing to brawl­ing with white suprema­cists in the streets.

Mil­lions of peo­ple who for­mer­ly had lit­tle to no involve­ment in pol­i­tics have thrown them­selves into activism, and vet­er­an orga­niz­ers have been over­whelmed with new recruits. Just as quick­ly, those orga­niz­ers have met the chal­lenge by dis­sem­i­nat­ing guides for lob­by­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives, run­ning for office, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in more direct forms of action.

Every move­ment has its res­i­dent schol­ars and edu­ca­tors, whether they be eru­dite laypeo­ple, pro­fes­sion­al aca­d­e­mics, or enter­pris­ing col­lege stu­dents. A group from the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, “pro­gres­sive stu­dents,” writes CNN, from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, begin today what they’re call­ing “Resis­tance School,” a “4‑week course in anti-Trump activism… open to peo­ple across the coun­try and the world.” (You can watch the video from the course above.)

At their site, the stu­dents bill “Resis­tance School” as a series of “prac­ti­cal skills for tak­ing back Amer­i­ca” and open their online syl­labus with a quote spu­ri­ous­ly attrib­uted to Thomas Jef­fer­son: “When injus­tice becomes law, resis­tance becomes duty.” It’s pos­si­ble that who­ev­er said it had blood­i­er things in mind. Resis­tance School sticks to peace­ful means, with four ses­sions that teach, in order, “How to Com­mu­ni­cate our Val­ues in Polit­i­cal Advo­ca­cy,” “How to Mobi­lize and Orga­nize our Com­mu­ni­ties,” “How to Struc­ture and Build Capac­i­ty for Action,” and “How to Sus­tain the Resis­tance Long-Term.” Instruc­tors are drawn from the ranks of acad­e­mia, labor orga­niz­ing, and the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, and you can stream the ses­sions on the school’s site or on Face­book, or attend in per­son.

The Resis­tance School is sure to attract crit­i­cism, not only from the expect­ed sources but from more anti-estab­lish­ment fac­tions on the left. But that may be unlike­ly to deter the more than 10,000 peo­ple who have reg­is­tered for the first class. Orga­niz­ers have encour­aged peo­ple to attend in groups, and cur­rent­ly have about 3,000 groups enrolled. “Some are com­ing with groups of 700 peo­ple,” says co-founder Shanoor Seer­vai, “some are small­er groups, potlucks, gath­er­ing in people’s kitchens.”

Ser­vaai and fel­low Kennedy School stu­dents have been tak­en aback and are now, writes CNN, “grap­pling with ques­tions of scale.” How, they won­der, will such large num­bers of peo­ple coor­di­nate; how to mea­sure the impact of the pro­gram?.… ques­tions, per­haps, they will resolve by the fourth ses­sion, “How to Sus­tain the Resis­tance Long-Term.” But they’re cer­tain­ly not alone in try­ing to steer a mas­sive surge of new inter­est in activism and elec­toral pol­i­tics. As the mil­lions now plan­ning and par­tic­i­pat­ing in civ­il actions across the coun­try attest, peo­ple have begun to take to heart sen­ti­ments recent­ly expressed by orga­niz­er Alice Mar­shall: “If we wait for some great leader to save us we are lost. We have to save our­selves.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Matt Damon Reads Howard Zinn’s “The Prob­lem is Civ­il Obe­di­ence,” a Call for Amer­i­cans to Take Action

Hen­ry David Thore­au on When Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence and Resis­tance Are Jus­ti­fied (1849)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Watch The March, the Mas­ter­ful, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Doc­u­men­tary on The Great March on Wash­ing­ton

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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