OF EVENTS
Friday, September 26: Cultural Production + Neoliberal Capital Sunday, September 21
12 to 3 pm: Performance by Pia Lindman
7:30 pm to 10 pm: Live music series organized by Angel Nevarez + Valerie Tevere
Featuring bands So So Glos, Nutria NN, and Taigaa!
Saturday, September 27
1-3 pm: Performance by GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand
In this performance, audience members are inducted as counter-recruits, people who pledge to protest the U.S. military’s recruitment of high school and college students.
3-6 pm: Performance by Pia Lindman
6 pm: Speech by Camilo Mejía (Nation Institute Presents)
Camilo Mejía is a former member of the Florida National Guard and was one of the first Iraq War veterans to become a conscientious objector. He is now an anti-war activist and the chair of the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
7 pm: Speech by David Harvey
David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and has authored numerous books and essays influential in the development of modern geography.
8 pm: Speech by W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy)
W.A.G.E. is a group of individuals fighting for the rights of artists to be paid for their labor.
9 pm: Speech by the Yes Men
The Yes Men use humor, truth, lunacy and the medium of film to bring attention to the global misdeeds of large corporations and government branches.
Daily (except Tuesday)
6:30 to 10 pm: Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere’s Another Protest Song: Karaoke with a Message
In the first-floor hallway, Nevarez & Tevere invite you to channel your agitation through song by belting out the most thought-provoking, volatile, and politically oriented songs of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Past Events
Thursday, September 25
7-9 pm: Open Rant Night
Visitors to Democracy in America are given an opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights in the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall. Sign up on the website, or at the entrance to the show for a chance to speak your mind!
Wednesday, September 24: Ethics in the Art World
7 pm: Speech by Brian Holmes
Holmes is an art and cultural critic, activist and translator. He co-organizes a series of seminars on geopoetics and geopolitics with 16 Beaver Group.
8 pm: Speech by Karen Finley
Finley is a controversial and influential American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labeled “obscene” due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement. She was one of the “NEA Four,” a group of performance artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed in 1990 on the basis of subject matter. In 1998, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley.
9 pm: Performance by GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand
GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand is a bevy of young, next-generation feminists and artists of color. They will perform a CNN-style “expert commentary” exploring the implications for women of Sarah Palin’s VP candidacy.
Monday, September 22: We Will Not Accept the War on Terror
6 pm: Speech by Aarti Shahani, Families for Freedom
Shahani is a co-founder of Families for Freedom, a multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing deportation.
7 pm: Speech by Trevor Paglen
Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, and his Patches from Classified Military Projects are on view in Democracy in America.
8 pm: Speech by Elizabeth Holtzman (Nation Institute Presents)
Holtzman served for eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman and received national attention as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate scandal. She is now an attorney and author on politics and, in 2006, she coauthored the book The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.
9 pm: Speech by Matthew Diaz (Nation Institute Presents)
Diaz is a former JAG (Judge Advocate General's Corps) officer who, while stationed in Guantánamo Bay, was the first person to release the names of the prisoners to the Center for Constitutional Rights. He was tried in a military court, found guilty on four of five charges, and sentenced to six months in prison.
6 pm: Speech by Tanya Fields
Fields is a vocal New York City activist for the environmental and economic rebirth of the South Bronx.
7 pm: Speech by Steve Kurtz
Kurtz is a professor of art at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, and a founding member of the performance art group Critical Art Ensemble. In May 2004, he was arrested by the F.B.I as a suspected “bioterrorist.” The case was dismissed in April 2008.
8 pm: Performance by Rachel Mason
Accompanied by a specially assembled guerrilla army of dancers led by Michael Hart and Zack Winoker, Avanza! will perform a cycle of four songs weaving together the death of Saddam Hussein, the destruction of Pompeii, the Chechen Revolution, and the Presidency of the United States of America. Avanza! is Rachel Mason (keyboard and vocals), John Allen (guitar), Hugo Moreno (trumpet), and Sahba Sizdahkhani (percussion and drums), along with special guest musicians.
9 pm: Speech by Reverend Billy
Reverend Billy creates sermons about consumerism’s evils, materialism, globalization, and the business practices of large corporations.
