History in the Making

All politics aside, I find the Occupy movement fascinating.  How can historians in the future not look back on these events as an age of shifting twenty-first-century cultural paradigms?  In addition to the Tea Party movement and the Arab Spring, it's been awesome to witness the role of social media networks in contemporary political and social grassroots revolutions.

This article by Michele Elam provides some insightful commentary on the relationship between art and Occupy Wall Street specifically.  Below is the Occupy Wall Street invitation Elam discusses--the image was designed by Shepard Fairey, the same artist who gave us the infamous "Hope" poster for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign--and some highlights from the op-ed.

• "Occupy art might just be the movement's most politically potent tool in its dramatic reframing of the racial dynamics of a populist uprising frequently characterized as largely white and 'hippie.'"
• "The poster's retro look recalls a militant past, almost startling in our new millennial moment, and surely is meant as a challenge to the idea that as a society we are anywhere near 'post-race' enlightenment."
• "Imagine its even more revolutionary effect as a poster carried by people of all backgrounds and social position, symbolically calling for a pan-ethnic alliance."
• "But 'You Are Invited' is powerful precisely because it invites identification with this long history of marginalized people striving for social and economic equity, however imperfect and unfinished those efforts."
• "Let the Occupy movement's camps and protests and marches continue generating such art -- art that inspires interracial unity where it may not yet exist, art that reminds us of the voices unheard, art that galvanizes practical social change when nothing seems to give, art that, in Du Bois' words, tries to make the world both beautiful and right."

If you find this interesting, you may also enjoy this earlier post about the Black Power and Black Arts movements.