BUREAU of ART & REVOLUTION

 

Bureau of ART & REVOLUTION

Slideshows, Videos, Workshops & Performances 

by Mike Alewitz

 

 

MIKE ALEWITZ is a well-known mural painter working in the U.S. and internationally.  

 

As Artistic Director of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP,) Alewitz has traveled throughout the world creating public art on themes of peace and justice.  He has painted in South-Central LA, New York, Baghdad, Chernobyl, Mexico, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Israel, the Occupied Territories and numerous other locations.

 

In 1999, Alewitz was named a Millennium Artist by the White House Millennium Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.   In that capacity he executed a highly publicized series of murals painted in Maryland about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

 

Alewitz has organized cultural initiatives for numerous unions and progressive organizations including the United Mine Workers, Jobs with Justice, Teamsters, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, United Farm Workers and many others.  He taught labor history at Rutgers University, where he was Artist-in-Residence for the NJ Industrial Union Council.

 

A lively and provocative speaker, Alewitz has spoken and written extensively on political and cultural topics and is the co-author, with Paul Buhle, of Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz.  His art has been the subject of several documentary films.

 

Because his work is a voice for working people, his murals have been frequently destroyed. To his knowledge, he is the most censored artist in the US.

 

Alewitz was a student leader at Kent State University and an eyewitness to the murders of four students in 1970. He was a leader of the national student strike that followed the massacre and has remained a life-long activist in movements for social change.

 

A former railroad laborer, sign painter and machinist, Alewitz is currently Associate Professor of Art at Central Connecticut State University, where he directs the unique community-based mural painting program. He is the organizer of the annual New Britain International Mural Slam.

 

Alewitz is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829/ IATSE-AFL-CIO and the CCSU chapter of AAUP. 

For More Information: Alewitz@comcast.net

 

Current/Recent Talks:

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Global Agitprop: STREET ART OF THE REVOLUTION

 

Street Art of the Revolution reveals an amazing, yet hidden history of working class culture.

 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 gave birth to one of the most creative art forms in modern times – Agitprop (Agitation-Propaganda.)  Agitprop artists took their work into the streets - creating mass spectacles and pageants, painting trains and ships, revolutionizing filmmaking, poster art, theater – everything from reinventing teapots to designing buildings that would float in space.  These efforts were an ambitious attempt to create a new way of seeing – an art for the revolutionary future they envisioned.

 

Similar optimism found expression in a rich tradition of agitprop art in the US.  For example, the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies,) used humor, poetry, song, cartoons and theater that made a lasting contribution to American culture. In 1913, striking New Jersey silk workers marched from Paterson, New Jersey, to Madison Square Garden, where they strode onto the stage and performed the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant.  In 1937, Buffalo auto workers in sit-down strikes formed an orchestra to serenade assembled supporters from the rooftops of the occupied plant - when they won the strike they transformed the orchestra into a brass band and marched through the streets of the city in a victory parade.

 

Street Art of the Revolution provides insights for artists and activists today, as we attempt to create meaningful work in the midst of a deepening economic and social crisis, and the global rebellion against the US war machine.

 

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The Kent State Massacre: An Eyewitness Account

 

On May 4, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a peaceful anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The attack left four dead and nine wounded. Students had gathered in response to President Richard Nixon’s announcement that the US had invaded Cambodia – a major escalation of the war in Southeast Asia.

The massacre at Kent was followed two days later with the police barrage of bullets into a dormitory at Jackson State in Mississippi that left two students dead and an unknown number of others wounded.

 

The massacres at Kent and Jackson, along with deep hatred of the war, sparked a national student strike that was to become the largest political demonstration in U.S. history. Tens of thousands of students occupied their universities and used the facilities to reach out with their anti-war message. The strike played a crucial role in the movement that eventually forced an end to the war.

 

This slideshow provides a compelling visual record of these events and a perspective on how students and working people can end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mike Alewitz was the founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War.  He was an eyewitness to the massacre of May 4, 1970, and a leader of the national student strike that followed.

 

 

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 The Most Censored Artist in America on:

WHY BOSSES AND BUREAUCRATS FEAR ART

What happens when an artist paints outside the lines? If you decide to make art for working people, instead of wealthy buyers, you become marginalized and subject to harsh censorship.

 

Mike Alewitz is a case in point – he is the most censored artist in the US. Among his destroyed works: a mural about police violence at the MA College of Art; the P-9 Mural, painted with striking Hormel workers - sandblasted off the wall by union bureaucrats; murals in Nicaragua destroyed by US backed counterrevolutionary forces; a mural of Malcolm X in Belfast, painted over by Sinn Fein; and others.

 

He has had work removed from union halls and suppressed by labor organizations.  A mural design about Harriet Tubman was rejected in Baltimore and another vandalized by Nazis. Existing work is under constant threat of destruction.

 

Despite the high visibility of his projects, Alewitz is not covered in the art press, invited to visit academic or cultural institutions or asked to participate in exhibitions.  He is so censored, he is not included in censorship books!

 

This presentation exposes the myth of artistic freedom and explains why art that expresses working-class aspirations is threatening to bosses and bureaucrats. It reveals the truth about the gallery system that dehumanizes artists and ignores democratic art that cannot be bought and sold.

 

 

 

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Marx on the Walls: ART AND REVOLUTION TODAY

Since the rise of capitalism, artists have found themselves in a daily struggle to both create meaningful art and participate in the collective transformation of society. Artists can play a critical role in helping to illuminate and inspire movements for social and economic justice – which is why the ruling class attempts to separate and isolate them from other workers.

 

This presentation takes up many of the questions facing revolutionary-minded artists: How can we help make revolutionary change?  Can we influence specific events unfolding in the class struggle? Must radical artists make political art? How can artists function in revolutionary organizations?

 

Marx on the Walls provides examples of how artists can place powerful cultural weapons in the hands of working people. We will examine the often-bumpy relationships that have characterized the alliance of artists, unions and revolutionary organizations – as well as the differing fate of the arts in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Nicaragua and other revolutionary societies. 

 

Finally, the presentation will look at the particular conditions facing artists and workers in the current economic crisis, the state of the labor movement, and how we can act together in the fight to build a world based on human need instead of private profit.

 

 

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Workshop: HOW TO GIVE YOUR BOSS AN ART ATTACK

 

If you’re alive, you have an imagination; if you have an imagination, you can make art! 

Give Your Boss an Art Attack is a hands-on workshop(s) for how to make cartoons, perform street theater, construct puppets, paint banners and signs for picket lines or demonstrations, and otherwise use art to organize the poor and agonize the rich.

 

The workshop(s) will focus on creating art to empower workers and expose the bosses. We will begin by looking at examples of agitprop art from the IWW, the May-June 1968 revolt in France, the creation of the P-9 Mural during the Hormel meat packers strike and much more. We will then create sketches, conduct critiques, and create something.

 

The workday goes by so much quicker when everyone is circulating funny cartoons about the boss...

 

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Video:  BREAKING WALLS

 

  

Breaking Walls is an award-winning film by Video 48, an Israeli/Palestinian collective. The film tells the story of Arab construction workers who live and work on the Israeli side of the Green Line, their organization by the activists of the Workers Advice Center, and their encounter with CT muralist Mike Alewitz of the Labor Art & Mural Project. 

 

In Breaking Walls, we learn about the struggle of Palestinian workers inside Israel to regain their right to work at their trades. We also see the remarkable transformation of workers when they are given an opportunity to participate in art and culture.

 

This is an excellent video for workers, artists and activists organizing both inside and outside of unions – it provides an outstanding starting point to discuss the global economy and international solidarity. Breaking Walls reveals how we can tap into the great creative potential of our class – to organize political/cultural projects that help to educate and inspire.

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INSURGENT IMAGES: Labor History Through Art

 

Before the civil rights and Black Nationalist movements won important advances like Black studies departments, the history of African-Americans remained buried. Until the development of the modern women's movement, women's contributions to society were kept invisible.

 

Similarly, working people have been robbed of their history.

 

Every May 1st, people all over the world put down their tools to celebrate the international working class holiday of May Day. But in the United States, we continue to work, unaware that May Day was inspired by the militancy of North American labor – it is a commemoration of the execution of anarchist labor leaders in Chicago, martyred in the fight for the eight-hour day.

 

Insurgent Images uses art to tell the story of some of the great, militant traditions of the labor movement: the Knights of Labor, the free speech fights and strikes of the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World,) the Minneapolis Teamster rebellion, the San Francisco general strike, the sit-down strikes that led to the formation of industrial unions and so much more.

 

This presentation reveals a past that we need to rediscover, and the traditions we need to relearn, if we hope to defend ourselves against a ruthless and profit-mad ruling class.

This slideshow presents images that the art world, academia, the employers and the labor officialdom would prefer to keep hidden – art that illustrates a history of struggle the ruling class has tried to bury.

 

 

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Bureau of ART & REVOLUTION

Slideshows, Videos, Workshops & Performances by Mike Alewitz

alewitz@comcast.net