Immigrant Movement International

JOIN IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT INTERNATIONAL’S IMMIGRANT RESPECT AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

Creation of the Awareness Ribbon for Immigrant Respect

Inspired by the success of previous awareness ribbon campaigns and after talking to various community organizations, Immigrant Movement International found that there was no campaign for immigrant causes. We then decided to create the Awareness Ribbon for Immigrant Respect. The immigrant condition can be a very isolating and stigmatizing social experience. We hope that the ribbon can signal unspoken solidarity while calling for respect between people and facilitating an expanding conversation about immigration.

Why Immigrant Respect?

We decided on Immigrant Respect after learning that the language of ‘Immigrant Rights’ can be politically polarizing. Demanding Immigrant Respect, on the other hand, humanizes the issue. It communicates that it is not simply about money or laws, it is about people who deserve as much respect as anyone else.

The ribbon as symbol

The colors brown and blue, represent common entry points of immigrants traveling to a new country, over land, through the air, or via waterway. The bottom of the ribbon’s edges are in the shape of an arrow signaling movement, arrival, and transformation. The words Immigrant Respect convey the goal of the campaign.

Links

Add a badge to your social media profile, click here

Order a ribbon pin, click here

Make your own and send us a photo, click here

RESPECT FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS REGARDLESS OF LEGAL STATUS!

Where is New York?* Institutions and Immigration in Corona, Queens
09.26.11
6:30PM – 8:30PM
WOOD AUDITORIUM, AVERY HALL

Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International
Larissa Harris, Curator, Queens Museum of Art
Prerana Reddy, Queens Museum of Artmoderated by Felicity Scott, GSAPP

Organized by the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture Program and moderated by Felicity Scott, this is the first installment of the monthly series “Where is New York?*”

In summer 2011, acclaimed performance artist Tania Brugera relocated to Corona, Queens, where she operates the non-profit Immigrant Movement International at Corona Studio, a space at 108-59 Roosevelt Avenue that is jointly sponsored by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art to organize classes, workshops, and public actions that address and highlight the needs of those who live nearby. This conversation on institutions and immigration in New York’s famously diverse borough will be joined by Queens Museum of Art Curator Larissa Harris and Director of Events Prerana Reddy, who have advocated for change in nearby Corona Plaza as part of the museum’s extraordinary array of community-based public programming.

Find out more at #wood92611

* Each month, one program at GSAPP will identify a site within the five boroughs that has been important to their discipline within the past year and bring designers, policymakers, developers, community activists, and other New Yorkers together to discuss the site and question where we are.

9/11 (The War on Immigrants), September 11, 10-5pm

The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the emergence of The War on Terrorism have produced aggressive networks of punishment, mass warehousing, and criminalization that deploy an unjust system of detention and deportation. Recent reports and academic research indicate that the U.S. government’s trend has been to increase the privatization of the detention center system as a way to increase national security measures. With the help of scholars, activists and legal advocates, awareness about the conditions and treatment of detained immigrants help in pressuring government officials to adopt reformative detention guidelines. To address this current reality, ‘Make a Movement’ Sundays: 9/11 (The War on Immigrants)” collaborated with IRATE/First Friends to train people to participate in a visitor program to visit immigrants detained at the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, NJ. After the training the participants traveled to the detention center to visit immigrants who have been converted into prisoners of the ”nation of immigrants.” After the visitation, the participants made a drawing of an officer based on the descriptions given by the detainees of the officer who arrested them.

Tania Bruguera is NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Project Featured Artist this month. Here is the interview conducted by Program Officer Karen Demavivas and Intern Emily Chen:

IAP: You grew up during the political upheaval of the Cuban Revolution, the daughter of a Cuban diplomat and an English translator and sociologist. How does your upbringing shape your art and what was your experience like when you moved from Cuba to pursue your career in the States?

TB: I grew up while the Cuban Revolution transformed from being the hopeful ideal for the rest of the developing countries and an exemplar case study for the western left, into a revolution that had to endure the debacle of the rest of the socialist countries and adapt its ideological concepts just to be able to survive at any cost. I lived the Cuban Revolution of the Opción Cero, the times of a Revolution without options.

People living in countries with totalitarian regimes do not have the privilege of being trusted by those who govern them. Social trust allows for not having to get involved in politics. People in totalitarian countries do not have the luxury of choosing if they want to be directly involved in the social project they are living in; rather, it becomes their primary duty as citizens. But it is a duty that is really a directive and therefore for most is just simulacra — where you don’t have a real participation or impact in the process but are required to be an enthusiastic crowd.

Here is where dissatisfaction and dishonesty resonates in the construction of such “exemplar” citizens. In this sort of political system, the problem starts when you think like the propaganda to which you are exposed. Propaganda is mostly not to be understood but to be followed; an understanding is assumed to come later but belief in it is assumed to be immediate. There is a syncing problem between what is proposed and what is happening in social behavior and sometimes politics does not want the future behavior to happen now.

IM International may be the farthest project I’ve ever done from the biennale circle, from the art world even.

In your house, when politics is the job and passion of your parents, it becomes quotidian and, in a way, theoretical because people who are involved in politics inside the power structure have a more abstract relationship with the consequences of their political decisions. Abstract approaches to politics give you a greater satisfaction because you can think in heroic terms, especially when you’re distanced from the people who face the consequences of your decisions and you cannot directly see the details of the collateral damages. In Cuba, the government disconnected from the reality lived by its people and at some point it stopped listening to them. Two parallel realities started to coexist: one lived for the pragmatic continuity of a system and another where everything became illegal. The Cuban Revolution’s reality was committed to ideas and not to an everyday experience.

Due to the diplomatic work of my father, we were always removed from the reality we were “defending” (the revolutionary project). Revolution was a word, and it was not associated with an attitude towards injustices and desire for change, but rather with a “brand” belonging to a certain generation in power in Cuba and their historical trajectory. It was a word stripped of its meaning. When I came back to live in my country as an adolescent, I was a believer in the revolutionary project and it took me living on the other side of those political decisions to understand the disparities between the projection of the project and the reality of it. My work as an artist exists in this crossroad because I have not stopped believing but I see what is really happening.

All this previous experience between the dreamed society and the real one came very handy once I came to a country like the United States.

But I have to say that I did not move from Cuba to pursue my career in the States. This is in fact one very common assumption when people come to the United States. I still go to Cuba and I’m not interested in pursuing a career in the United States in the way it is assumed in your question. I was here studying for my master’s and worked for a few years teaching. Then I left the United States to move to Europe and I just came back for the Immigrant Movement International project but it doesn’t mean that I will stay here. The United States, so far, has been a transitory station.

IAP: You have shown works of visual and performing art in previous years at the Venice Biennale, a forum in which national identity and international politics heavily inform presented works. How did these past works pave the road to IM International and your decision to engage local audiences instead of, or in addition to, international ones?

TB: The Venice Biennale is an art event with no context other than the history of itself. It is the hardest exhibition space I’ve worked at because no matter what you do, it will be seen as an aesthetic experience. It becomes an experience in and of itself where the artist and the piece are responsible for creating the context. The national pavilions are seen since long ago as archaic rhetoric forms. With Harold Szeemann’s Aperto, the idea of national identity via a pavilion started taking an interesting turn because it is ridiculous to think that a single artist with a single short-term art proposal can serve as a thermometer of a nation’s ideology in a foreign context (We all know by now about the ideological maneuvers behind the fame of the Guernica.). Also, we know how flexible forms are towards ideology. The idea of migration is something we see more and more in these contexts: interchanged identities and national territories as temporal landscapes when artists behave as immigrants.

I have thought lately of starting to participate at those events as an independent. I guess that would be equivalent to participating at the “Pavilion of Oneself.”

Those events can give you permission to react personally towards issues greater than yourself but, in general, they don’t give you the idea or requirement of responsibility. That is my concern with those art events: thinking without accountability.

IM International may be the farthest project I’ve ever done from the biennale circle, from the art world even.

I would like to mix two audiences — the one trained to imagine the impossible and the one that is hardly permitted to do so; the audience that is entitled to be international with the one that is forced to be local even if they come from another place in the world; the audience that can’t escape their condition of citizenry and the one that has to be compelled to become a citizen. Both artists and immigrants dream of a different future.

For me, the idea is to bridge the language of contemporary art and that of urgent politics. For that, we need the perspectives of the local as well as the international crowd.

My past works paved the road to IM International in the sense that the work has demanded more and more radicalization in the ways in which it interacts with the real, in the ways in which I have to get away from concerns of whether it is art or not.

IAP: The IM International Headquarters used to be a beauty supply store in Corona, Queens. How did you choose the space? Since you’ve started your intervention there, have you noticed a shift from local people coming in to look for concrete social services to them opening up to a more creative engagement with the space?

The space is in front of a lumber/hardware store, next to a rather big supermarket and at the exit of the 111 street train stop. I was thinking at the natural traffic already happening at that intersection, of people whom we wanted to work with. I realized that there were no community associations around that focused on immigration and thought about the use of our project in that area.

We have some crowded English classes, classes held by the Paper Orchestra for children under 8 years old, and we are getting there with the cinema club. We hosted those events in collaboration with New Immigrant Community Empowerment and Corona Youth Orchestra. They bring their community and we try to do outreach in ours. It is a balance between what you know you want or need and what we want you to know that you could appreciate. But we have a long way to go. Before this project, I was in crisis about the value of art. By doing this work, I have recovered some faith in the usefulness of art.

IAP: You observed on the IM International blog that the same symbols are used in political rallies until they become clichés, noting that your roommates from Ecuador have lost faith in the traditional modes of effecting reform. On the other side, you question the whole notion of a permanent political truth (that is even able to morph into a cliché) – noting such truth as ephemeral. How do you see the ‘Useful Art’ of IM International informing or being a new vehicle for these debates?

TB: Well, once you put political on anything you are talking negotiable truth. Even people who understand social timing would be discouraged and faithless after 10 years of waiting for some sort of regularization of their legal situation. If to that you add the fact that the language that is used is completely old, circular and predictable, how are you going to be able to imagine change?

Right now, the dreamers who are fighting for the Dream Act are leading a wonderful performative process. It is one that brilliantly applies the inherited contradictions about the image of immigrants and what its rightfulness means — not only for the immigrants themselves, but also for the country.

The usefulness of art is what bridges politics and art, artists and non-initiated audiences. Behavior is the language through which society communicates and usefulness is the way in which society pays attention, makes statements, and serves people. If you are interested as an artist to deal with the social and the political, usefulness is the primary medium you work with.

I’m interested in the process of transforming affect into effectiveness.

IAP: How will you collaborate with artists who work with immigration as a theme? How will they bring social survival strategies into the discourse of this project?

TB: We are open for proposals and are mostly interested in artists doing Useful Art and also those who want to act politically with their art practice instead of using politics as a theme to be represented. We are looking for art projects working in hyperrealistic ways. We are interested in art projects combining the language of avant-garde and the one of urgent politics.

Link to NYFA newsletter
Link to more info about NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Project

50 years ago, a day like today, the first brick was put in place to begin building a wall in the west. Those bricks, that wall, divided families, friends and a culture. That wall created a fictitious division among human beings, it became a symbol of intolerance installed by hidden interests of a government, a wall that didn’t reflect who the people were but presumed to be the spirit of the people. Year after year those bricks, that wall, created a wall in the mind of the people, and imposed a man-made separation that was normalized by its mere presence.

We have other walls today, walls constructed around us, artificial and invisible walls that separate people, that affect human lives. Those invisible walls make us forget the only search and the only lesson that survived all generations, all cultures, all religions: the satisfaction of being a better human being.

But how can we be a better human being if we know and we see injustice yet continue under a falsely normalized reality, where we pretend that justice and law are the same thing.

For how many years was human trafficking and slavery a normalized practice? People back then thought it was normal; it was perfectly justified, they were even excited about it, now we would be horrified, now we persecute human trafficking because we know that no human being can be treated like a product, that every human being has human rights that we need to respect.

For how many years were people separated because the color of their skin, even not allowed to enter certain places? Now, we would not even understand how that could have happened, we were all united against South African apartheid, we are all ready to unite against any other form of racial discrimination.

For how many years were women just a reproduction accessory and marginalized to home labor? And now the chancellor of Germany is a woman.

For how many years was education the right of the wealthy? Now education is a human right, even if some people have to be reminded of it.

For how long are we going to let a dress done by the maquiladoras in México travel freely and with rights while a Mexican is not permitted to travel freely and   with their human rights. For how long we will enjoy a kebab while a Turkish is not permitted to travel freely and with their human rights. For how long will objects, products and ideas be considered by governments and companies part of globalization, while immigrants are seen as a local or a national issue.

It is not hard to imagine, in a few years, our kids trying to understand whyimmigrants were treated as they are treated today; trying to understand even, why there were people called immigrants; the same way we don’t understand today how slavery lasted for so long.

There are too many examples of injustices justified by the law to let them keep happening. The law is made by mankind and it is men who create artificial separations that lead into real suffering. The latest of those constructed and unnecessary separation are immigrants. What I do not understand is the efforts to demonize immigrants.

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian extremist, killer and confessed perpetrator of dual terrorist attacks in Norway last 22 July: bombing government buildings in Oslo that resulted in eight deaths, and the mass shooting at a camp of the Workers’ Youth League (AUF) of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya where he killed 69 people, he is not an immigrant and immigrants are not demonizing him.

The list of people committing crimes against humanity who are not immigrants is extremely long and that doesn’t make immigrants see everybody else as a criminal. Immigrants will never demonize these people, because if immigrants understand something it is that people are different and you can not judge them as a group, you can not judge them for the color of the skin, you can not judge them from where they come from, you can not judge them for their money, nor even for the political party they are affiliated to, you can only judge people for their actions.

I can’t understand the efforts to make immigrants a homogeneous group ignoring the richness of their origins, their reason to migrate, their experiences and skills.

I’m an immigrant myself and I have gone to the harsh process to incorporate on a new society, one very different from where I came from. I remember when I didn’t want to be integrated in that new society, I didn’t want to renounce who I was before arriving to that new place. This is very important for a first generation of immigrants.

You do not have to renounce who you are to be grateful for the welcome and the invitation to be part of a new country. What makes me different is what makes me a better immigrant.

In order for that “integration” to be a real and a natural process time has to pass, maybe 3, 7, 12, 19 years, it depends from person to person, what is important is not how long it takes but how real and committed the person is to it. That is a process impossible to measure in bureaucratic terms. One has to have faith in the immigrants, one has to have trust in the society we are building together.

Integration is not about learning a language, but about understanding the differences between where you were before and where you are now.

Integration is not a one-way monologue, one has to repeat as a trained animal, it is a conversation between two cultures.

Integration is not being afraid to enrich our culture from other cultures.
Integration is not only appreciating the exotic food and the music, it is also giving people a chance to contribute with their experiences in the areas of civil society.

Integration is giving immigrants the same civil rights we fought for and we have for ourselves.

Integration is integrating immigrants into the political life.Immigration is a question of tolerance, from both sides, if we are not willing to have it then we do not have the right to claim, we don not have the right to declare, that one has entered and that one belongs to the 21st  Century because if you do not understand immigrants as human beings with the same rights you belong to the older times of slavery.

And I’m here today because I know some Germans and I have received their kindness, their smartness, their great culture, I’m here because I know that it is just a matter of time for Germany, who is known as the economic engine of Europe, to become known also as part of the engine for immigration justice. I know that people in Germany, immigrants and citizens can unite to create the first steps for this leadership.

I want to propose to all of you, immigrants and citizens to create a new political party, a party for international citizens, for the citizen of the future, a political party for the rights of immigrants to be fully part of society, a political party for the right to be judged by your actions and not by what people ignore about you, a political party for the rights of immigrants to be an equal partner in the construction of a better society.

Let’s create here in Europe, in Germany, in Frankfurt, today, the political party for immigrants: Immigrant Movement International.

Let’s stand up, let’s look at people’s eyes in a few years, look at history in the face and say: we did it, we stand against injustice, this is the way to lead, this is the way to start the global immigrant era to which all of us belong, because we are all immigrants at some point.

I have heard the voice of the people here, the people who tore down the wall that divided a country before, are the people who will tear down the invisible wall that is dividing people in the world now: the wall around immigrants.

Because with immigrants we can think a better future!

Frankfurt, August 13th, 2011

Being a political artist is functioning in the political timing of things. But art seems to always be running after the events to catch up in a sort of reacting manner. As valid as this may be for some, it brings up some ontological problems in terms of the relationship between art and politics.

The first would be that the ability to be in sync with what is political and what is politically happening makes you trustworthy to the people relating with your project (at any point in time and from any distance.)

Also that what is generated as a reaction to something which has already happened and that, moreover, was already defined by politicians, locks away the artist at an archaic position of a difficult passivity, even when its intention is to be analytical and critical. Being an observer is closer to be resentful than to be creative.

Creating knowledge from a data source (whether from the news, books, lectures, etc.) already delivered as a result of several filters of information’s manipulation makes it harder to go beyond the representational. It is working with already censored information, which makes extremely hard to find intentions and realpolitik.

Political art is uncomfortable whether made by a commentator or by a generator of what is political. It is so because it is generating knowledge in the process of formation and it calls for responsibility. Political art is uncomfortable because it is denied the luxury of indifference. Political art is inopportune because policymakers are in their own timing zone and have their own long-term plan. And artists are very much blamed and guilt-tripped with the consequences of the disruption on the overall plan, even when this may be only a possibility.

It is uncomfortable and inopportune but it is necessary.

An artwork with political aspirations that is conceived and/or arrives at the wrong political time makes the existence of what constitutes the political within almost non-existent. Arriving at the wrong time generates an expiration date of what works as the political within from the moment it is conceived, whether coming from an emotional or a pragmatic place.

It is a question of catching up or leading the way.

Working with what is social has to do with understanding what your position is regarding chaos. Working with what is political has to do with understanding what the future is.

Art can’t be solely a mental state or an emotional decision. Art is beyond guaranties.

——-

(Version en Espanol)

Momento Político
por Tania Bruguera

Ser un artista político es funcionar con el momento político de las cosas. Pero el arte parece estar siempre corriendo tras los sucesos para alcanzarlos en una suerte forma reactiva. Con todo lo válido que esto pudiera parecer a algunos, plantea algunos problemas ontológicos en función de la relación del arte y la política.

El primero sería que la habilidad de estar en sincronía con lo político y con lo que se produce desde el punto de vista político hace que quienes se relacionan con el proyecto (en cualquier momento y desde cualquier distancia) lo consideren a uno digno de confianza.

También, lo que se genera como reacción a algo que ya ha ocurrido y que, además, ya había sido definido por políticos, encierra al artista en una posición arcaica de difícil pasividad, incluso cuando su intención sea ser analítico y crítico. Ser un observador está más cerca de ser rencoroso que de ser creativo.

Crear conocimiento a partir de una fuente de datos -sean noticias, libros, conferencias u otros- ya difundida como resultado de diversos filtros de manipulación de la información dificulta aún más trascender lo representativo. Es trabajar con información ya censurada, lo que hace difícil en extremo encontrar intenciones y lo realpolitik.

El arte político es incómodo hágase como comentarista o como generador de lo político. Lo es porque genera conocimiento en estado de formación y exige responsabilidad. El arte político es incómodo porque no se le permite el lujo de la indiferencia.

El arte político es inoportuno porque quienes elaboran la política se encuentran dentro de su propia zona temporal y tienen sus propios planes a largo plazo. Y mucho se culpa al artista de los trastornos en el plan general o se le achacan las consecuencias de estos, incluso cuando esto sea sólo una posibilidad.

Es incómodo e inoportuno, pero es necesario.

Una obra de arte con aspiraciones políticas que se conciba o llegue a destiempo hace casi inexistente lo que constituye lo político que lleva en su seno. Llegar a destiempo genera una fecha de expiración de lo que funciona como lo político que lleva dentro desde su momento de concepción, independientemente si viene de un lugar emocional o pragmático.

Es cuestión de ponerse al día o guiar el camino.

Trabajar con lo social tiene que ver con comprender cuál es la posición propia con respecto al caos. Trabajar con lo político tiene que ver con comprender cuál es el futuro.

El arte no puede ser únicamente un estado mental o una decisión emocional. El arte está más allá de las garantías.

Photo Credit: Hans Haacke, “Moma Poll,” 1970

“It’s time to put Duchamp’s urinal back into the restroom” —Tania Bruguera

A Conversation on Useful Art #1 :
On Saturday, April 23 we hosted A Conversation on Useful Art #1, an event organized by artist Tania Bruguera as part of Immigrant Movement International, a year-long, socio-political movement initiated by the artist in Corona, Queens presented by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art. The event took place at Immigrant Movement International headquarters and was held in conjunction with the Useful Art Association and featured an introduction to Useful Art followed by a series of brief conversations with artists and presenters Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin, Mel Chin, Beka Economopoulos from Not An Alternative, Rick Lowe, Pase Usted, Creative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson, QMA Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl, Larissa Harris, Gregory Sholette, representatives from Make the Road, New York, and N.I.C.E. (New Immigrant Community Empowerment), and New York City Council Member Julissa Ferreras.

Video Documentation of A Conversation on Useful Art

Part 1. Definition of Useful Art and Introduction – Tania Bruguera
Part 2. Not an Alternative: Let It Out
Part 3. Mel Chin: Revival Field
Part 4. Rick Lowe: Project Row Houses
Part 5. Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin: Jurisprudence
Part 6. Pase Usted: Genera
Part 7. Disscussion

Part 1. Definition of Useful Art and Introduction – Tania Bruguera

Part 2. Not an Alternative: Let It Out

Part 3. Mel Chin: Revival Field

Part 4. Rick Lowe: Project Row Houses

Part 5. Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin: Jurisprudence

Part 6. Pase Usted: Genera

Part 7. Disscussion

After leaving the site of the rally yesterday I kept thinking about what bothered me from it? On the one hand, there is the comfort of the known, the known chants, the repeated by heart slogans, the same cardboard signs that you have carried over and over to each demonstration. But, the comfort of those carrying the signs and chanting the chants, may be discomfort for those who also attend, who also care about the same injustices, who also believe that things can and should be changed but by creating new approaches to old problems instead of repeating a strategy that may still be political but not effective. Those people may want to come to a rally to feel that their ideas have power, to reach some energy that make them believe that things can happen, a place where to look for ways to express their political views. But instead they may encounter a saturated ambiance with symbols becoming clichés and dispersed enthusiasm.

If I were a passerby and saw the event from a distance would I want to stay and join in? Would I want to listen to the messages? Would those messages would make me think differently? What would one learn from a rally?

People come and go, in groups, making of their presence their statement. But to whom? To people who think alike? To the people who are part of organizations that ritualistically return each year and repeat the same gestures? To the small group of people who are looking for something to do with their disagreement? There are no surprises, there are no challenges. My discomfort comes from that place, from the place where the rally is symbolic and does not become interesting as an event nor does it relate to change itself. It is just a series of adepts who come and go creating an amorphous form that dissolves here and there. What does it mean that people who care, leave or just come for a few minutes? What does it mean when live out of the rally is more attractive and seems more important?

The fact that we were in the square in front of the courts where judges make the decisions about immigrants issues was a nice touch but the fact that it was on a Sunday, when those judges are with their friends or spending time with their family or preparing for a case on Monday, thinking exactly the same way they did the day before, there in lies the problem. I believe more in an individualized protest where you talk to someone you do not know and may think differently. I prefer to talk to an Armenian on the train that is against immigrants, than to a “comrade” who will not challenge the happiness of a shared thought. Formalism is a mode of non-productive inertia. Happiness should come from defies not from the assurance of a temporary populism.

What is the goal of rallies if they repeat the same message we all already know, in the same way from last year and with the same energy, with the same symbols and their same meaning? What happens when sensitive problems become a repetitive litany? What is the goal of rallies if they do not create any context, if they do not produce any change, if they do not put anything at stake? Why are my roommates from Ecuador not interested in going if they have the same problems they are talking about there? The rally was scheduled from 1- 3pm, but what about doing one that starts and does not finished until the law for immigration reform has been changed? What about learning from Tunisia and Egypt? There, the rallies were demonstrations of direct democracy not pure representation of disagreement. I would like to see the issues shown in a way that they sensitize us again, although that may need to show a creative and maybe not so nice “face” of things. Once a friend was telling me about the force of Unions as agents of tough negotiations and real changes for workers and how different they were now. I wonder how long it takes for the mainstream to learn how to use our disagreement in their favor and, how much is it helping that we are repeating ourselves each May 1^st.

I think that we need to create strategies that take by surprise people in power, strategies that makes them not having an automatic pre-programmed response to our demands, strategies to paralyze them so it makes them pause and rethink their reactions and maybe their ideas. But re-enacting the same strategies over and over not only do not put pressure in the issues and have the risk of transforming into self-parody, it becomes the noise you do not hear anymore because you think you know it by heart, which is different than feeling it.

And then, I came back home to learn that Osama Bin Laden was killed. I knew about it by looking at images of young people who took the streets with the fervor, unity and intensity I wanted to feel at the May 1^st rally and I was completely confused and sad that such immediacy, urgency and energy was coming from an act of death rather than an act of life.

-Tania Bruguera, Corona, Queens, after May 1st