Not An Alternative

Oct 3, 12-5pm - Props Production in preparation for immigrant voting rights street festival

Hi folks,

After a raucous summer of art and action around the RNC, the culture of resistance is still going strong. For the next 2 Sundays, The Change You Want to See Gallery will host art-making sessions with the New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE). NICE is a coalition out of Queens that’s working to expand immigrant voting rights (see campaign info below). We’ll be making banners and cardboard sculptures for an upcoming street festival. Plug in and paint puppets, pork out on potluck!

Sunday, Oct 3 12-5pm

The Change You Want To See: Gallery and Convergence Space – 84 Havemeyer St, at Metropolitan

Email: info at thechangeyouwanttosee.org

Phone: 646-221-7845

Directions:
L train to Bedford Ave, walk south, left onto Metropolitan. Havemeyer is 3 blocks down on the right.
G train to Metropolitan, walk west toward the water, Havemeyer is a few blocks down on the left.
J/M/Z to Marcy, walk west on Broadway, right on Havemeyer, we’re 5 blocks down at the end of the street

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Background:
A diverse coalition of groups in New York City is leading a campaign to expand voting rights in municipal elections tonon-citizen residents of the city. There are cities in Maryland and Massachusetts where non-citizens may vote in municipal elections today. Historically, citizenship was not widespread as a requirement for voting in municipal and state elections until after World War I. We are going to be making artwork for the campaign with an New Immigrant Community Empowerment, an immigrant advocacy group in Queens. While we haven’t finalized our artistic plans, we will be making a banner and probably some large signs that will double as street theater props. We might –or might not– try to make some t-shirts. Most likely, we are going to be dealing with images of inclusion and exclusion and the consequences of that on the community– especially with regard to city services like healthcare, education, and transit. We have the challenging task of turning concepts about participation in democratic processes into strong concrete images and/or theatrical actions.

The event:
The first place these images will be used is for a street fair/outreach event and hosted by New Immigrant community Empowerment (NICE) On October 16 at 103 st/Corona Plaza in Queens (Right next to the 7 train). The purpose of this event is to educate Corona residents (of whom 30% are potential non-citizen voters) about the campaign. The organizers of the fair would be pleased to have additional creative folks plug in to this event, especially musical performers and dj’s. There will probably be lots of children around as well, so creative stuff to engage them would be great to see as well. We are going to try to have our banner set up so that it can be colored in at the fair by children: we aren’t sure how to make this work technically yet…

Note: Organizers have asked that the art for the fair be “non-partizan” since NICE is a 501 (c)3 and doesn’t want to fall afoul of any regulations.
We’ll be meeting at The Change You Want To See Gallery for the next two Sundays to build for the event.

More information:

The New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights

http://www.immigrantvoting.org/material/nycoalition.html

New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE):
http://www.nynice.org/

NICE is located at:

71-34 Roosevelt Avenue, Lower Level
Jackson Heights, NY 11372

Phone: (718) 205-8796 Fax:(718) 505-7130

Contact: Cheryl Wertz, Government Access and Accountability Campaign Director - cherylatnice at yahoo.com

For art information:
Ian Hart - ian at ianhartart.com
718-267-1268