PROTEST ART 2 — Susan Grace Banyas

PROTEST ART continued

The multi-cultural, grass roots network that grew into the Underground Railroad, the Civil Rights Movement, the American Indian Movement, the anti-colonial freedom movements, the Women’s Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, the Black Freedom Movements, #MeToo, #Water is Life, the Abolition Democracy movements, the Labor movements, Occupy, Free Palestine, the people-led peace, freedom and justice movements have morphed into a new global network emerging above ground.

I was in Kenya in June, 2024 when Gen Z activists in Nairobi and all over Kenya staged massive protests against taxation, corruption, and police violence, proclaiming we are non-tribal, non-religious, leaderless, classless, gender fluid, and we don’t want to meet the President in a board room. Come to us, and we will bring thousands of people to a virtual conversation with the people.

Africa news
The Elephant, Africa is a Country, Black Agenda Report, Al Jazeera, Africa Stream

The School Fight, 1955, Hillsboro OH
Black Lives Matter, 2020, Hillsboro
Occupy Parliament, Nairobi, Kenya, 2024
Occupy Portland, 2011
Women’s March LA 2017
Free Palestine, 1948-present

“Don’t we want to try to imagine the expansion of freedom and justice,”
Angela Davis writes in Freedom is a Constant Struggle/Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015)—essays on history, self-observation and transnational solidarity.

In conversation with Frank Barat in 2024, she continues. “To not only imagine, but to bring into existence a moment in the history of the globe when exploitation and racism and war are not the primary features of human society. What I have found inspiring is that so many social justice activists have turned their attention onto Palestine. We see it happening in Africa, South America, all over the world. It reminds me that these connections across national borders are possible, that Palestine is allowing us to imagine a very different kind of world… has awakened something in people everywhere.”

The Third Intifada will be cultural.

—Juliano Mer Khamas, co-founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, Jenin Refugee Camp, assassinated by IDF in 2012