Art Jones case study

   Arthur Jones Musical Activism Case Study  

WHEN/WHERE/PRACTICIONERS  

Music and activism are two concepts that go hand-in-hand. In the African American experience music has always been a part of activism dating back to slavery. The way slaves were able to organize efforts to escape, insurrections, and protest in the sense of speaking to each other without the other folks knowing. They spoke to each other through song. There has always been song, there has always been churches, and organized things where people were able to voice how they feel about things in those settings. During the civil rights movement, the movement could not have been what is was without the music. Not only was there singing among the protestors, but the commercial music that was out at the time and that people were listening to on the radio (Nina Simone, James Brown, The Temptations) commented on situations concerning race and oppression. 

Arthur Jones stated, “When I was in high school and the Civil Rights Movement was going on, my first introduction to it was my friends saying were doing a march to protest against discrimination hiring by the cement company in New York. And so I show up at the march, and the first thing we do is start singing. My introduction to it as a teenager was going to protests and singing.” 

WHY IT WORKED   

            Arthur’s work with both the Negro Spirituals and collaboration with the Flobots on the “No Enemies” project are successful examples of musical activism. Singing and using the Negro Spirituals is about promoting activism within the African American community, but also about a concert tradition that has a history and past of being associated with activism. The Spirituals allow people to remain connected to tradition and also promote musical activist channels. The goal is to include singing and social justice themes in order to get more people interested and involved in movements ranging from BLM, Woman’s rights, environmental issues, LGBT and so on.  

            Concerning the “No Enemies” project Jones said, “Well I think the collaboration with the Flowbots on the No Enemies project was direct application to an activist mission, which is the whole idea of helping contemporary communities understand the way in which music can empower folks and can strengthen their ability to resist. It is calling on the spirit on the non-violence philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement. Non-violent action is empowered through singing.”

            Music is used by activist like Jones to embolden people, encourage them, and to bring like-minded individuals together through an important cause or movement.  

WHAT DIDN’T WORK   

            The issues now for musical activism is a large-scale cultural change. There is no longer a full-range od singing or soundtracks to movements that were found during the Civil Rights Movement. “But now we’ve got a whole culture where the music making has been confined to professional people, and the ordinary people in the street are self conscious about singing and making music,” said Jones. In order for musical activism to continue to be effective all types of people, profession or not, need to participate and feel empowered by music that expresses the messages of movements. During the Civil Rights Movement when people were afraid they would start singing and take the air back. The singing carries so much power. It is a way to channel positive energy in frightening situations when facing injustice and systematic oppression. Music emboldens individuals. The real trick of for ordinary people to be involved.  

KEY TACTIC  

            The key tactic utilized within musical activism is strategic nonviolence.  Strategic nonviolence is used to create a framework for broad-based direct action conducive conducive to building large, inclusive, diverse and effective movements. Music is a great way to use nonviolent strategy because music represents a way for activist to “take back the air”. Through music people are able to express their messages in a safe and inclusive manner. Music connects and emboldens individuals within a movement.

KEY PRINCIPLES  

A new principle created through musical activism and the work of people like Arthur Jones is REAP. This stands for research, education, activism and and performance. Music and activism combined represent and cover all of these elements. Music covers all the bases of research, education, activism and especially performance.   

Balancing art and the message is another key principle of musical activism. Effective creative interventions/actions require a judicious balance of art and message. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. In the case of musical activism, you wouldn’t want the focus to only be on the music because people wouldn’t understand the message and no awareness would be raised. At the same time, there also shouldn’t be a focus on the message alone without music to support and enhance it.  

Another significant principle is don’t just brainstorm artstorm. “Artstorming creates space for the spatially, kinesthetically and musically gifted folks who might be alienated from a verbal brainstorm.” (Beautiful Trouble pg. 128) “Artstorming” invites participants to jump directly into the unmediated experience of creation, engaging the full spectrum of our creative intelligence. Creating music that enhances a movement and spreads awareness is a successful way to “artstorm”.  

The final key principle shown through musical activism and individuals like Arthur Jones is using the power of ritual. Rituals like weddings, funerals, vigils and so on are powerful experiences for participants. By adopting sacred and symbolic elements the power of rituals can be used to give actions greater power and depth. And what do all of these rituals have in common? Music. Music is a way to combine elements of ritual, tradition and action in an effective manner. Music is found at almost any type of ritual, and therefore has great symbolic, cultural and traditional influence.  

Case Study: Sole Journey

When: 2008

Where: Denver

Practitioners: Kate Burns and Sheila E. Schroeder 

The Story: 

Sole Journey is a documentary, directed by Kate Burns and Sheila E. Schroeder. In this documentary, they want to show that gay marriage will not "destroy the family and nation”, people in LGBT families are no different with anyone else. The background of this story is in the last century, LGBT individuals in America often subjected to society’s negative perceptions. Because mainstream culture not accept gay and lesbian people, some of them were feel contempt or disgust towards themselves of being “different”. Thus, they tried to change their sexual orientation and some people even use shock treatments, aversion therapy or exorcism to cure themselves of being gay. 

They interviewed Dr. Mel White, who is one of the founder of Soulforce. Soulforce is an American social justice and civil rights organization that supports acceptance of LGBT people through dialogue and creative forms of nonviolent direct action. It is inspired by the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance as taught and practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Mel White grow up and live in a Evangelical Christian family. Before coming out as a gay man, Mel was a ghostwriter for Evangelical leaders. He loved both his family and church but he quickly realized he is gay when he joined boy scouts. He spent 40 years in therapy, tried to get over attraction to men and even get married with woman and have kids. After 40 years of trying, his wife told him: “You tried hard and it’s time to get your own life.” In 1999, Mel white and his partner co-founded Soulforce.

Why It Worked:

Kate and Sheila found LGBT group continue to face exclusion and discrimination in society. Thus, they made this film, against the discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. People in Sole Journey stand up for gay rights and they usually resulting in arrests. “In 2005, in which several families took part in a 6 day trek from Denver to Colorado Springs to Dobson's headquarters.”

Sole Journey is an inspiring and true story of courageous families confronting the anti-LGBT rhetoric and political policy-making of the fundamentalist mega-organization Focus on the Family. The film has screened at the Breckenridge Festival of Film and the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival where it ranked as one of the top documentaries of the festival. 

In this film, gay and lesbian people are able to share their stories with audience such as the Kate and Sheila interviewed Shepard family. Judy and Dennis Shepard lost their gay son Matthew, to a hate crime. Their son was severely beaten, tied to a wooden fence and left to die outside Laramie, Wyoming. The film also introduced another family who had a child is gay. The mother said: “When Jack first time came out, we know nothing about homosexual reality, so we had to educated.” At the end, she appealed to people to learn about LGBT group and give respect and protect for LGBT people.

BT principles: 

Consider your audience 

Use other’s prejudices against them

Do the media’s work for them, if you want media coverage for your event, give them a story they can’t refuse. 

Put movies in the hands of movements. By telling a personal story, documentary film can make an otherwise difficult- to- approach issue accessible. Filmmakers and activists, working together, can collaborate to make a film a story-driven lever for change. 

New principle:

Use Media to Affect Our Society

Today, billions of people use social media every day, and that number is still increasing. Public’s time and attention is increasingly directed toward media platforms. Some social media such as blogs, Twitter, films, YouTube have great influence on people’s thoughts and actions. Recent years, the relationship between social media use and protest activities participation become stronger. People use social media to join different kinds of activities such as demonstrations, marches and boycotts. In 2008, Kate and Sheila already use their film “Sole Journey” against people's prejudice and discrimination of gay and lesbian and appeal people to understand LGBT group.

Case Study: ILL Se7en

ILL Se7en

Who: A local rapper and activist

When: 2008 to present

Where: Denver, Colorado

Practitioners: Michael Acuna

Further Insight:

http://www.illse7en.com/

https://soundcloud.com/ill-seven

https://www.facebook.com/ill.seven

 

For nearly ten years, Michael Acuna has been making music that speaks to “the social ills that plague the urban spectrum.” Acuna is Denver-based hip-hop artist that combines his music-making with activism under the pseudonym ILL Se7en. Acuna began his activism as a teenager by engaging in dialogue about the systemic injustices of society, and particularly how they pertain to young, African-American men.  “Eventually, I stopped wanting to just talk about it. I wanted to engage in it,” says Acuna. He began volunteering at schools and detention centers, and he started to see himself in a lot of the young people he was helping. He saw them facing struggles similar to what he had gone through growing up. Acuna was already making music when he had this realization, and so he decided to incorporate activism into hip-hop. “It was a natural incorporation,” says Acuna. And thus, ILL Se7en was conceived.

“Hip-hop is like folk music,” says Acuna. “I tell stories that come from experience. Either from my own, or from stories that I have heard.” A lot of Acuna’s music comes from what he has observed in his own community. Through ILL Se7en, Acuna challenges young African-American men to change the way they think about themselves in society. His belief is that it is important for these men to work towards establishing a legacy for themselves among the dominant white narrative that exists within our current culture. Through his music, Acuna wishes to speak to people of a variety of ages and demographics. He seeks to create dynamic music that is palpable to everybody on some level. “Even if you have never lived in the environment [I talk about in my music] you still get a sense of what it is like,” says Acuna. “It’s like a spiritual connection from me to the messages in my songs.” Hip-hop engages young people and has the ability to rally people together. It allows for unlimited perspectives to be shared. In addition to ILL Se7en, Acuna acts as the keynote speaker at universities and schools. In 2016, he spoke at the Black Male Initiative Summit at the University of Denver, where he led students in an exercise to create an action plan that outlines how they can achieve excellence in school, their community, family and within themselves.

Welcome to the underground. Bare arms when the stranger’s knock. Pull trigger, no question, it might be the cops… with my fist up to fight this, raise up the righteous. This system is going to be overthrown. There is going to be a fight. It’s going to mean a lot of white people risking a lot of things.

These are lyrics from one of ILL Se7en’s songs, Track the Underground. “Much of what I was talking about on this project had to do with the under current of the reality of our system,” says Acuna, “and that reality…we still deal with.”

 The song ends with the perforating line, Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks.

Acuna’s next big project is called Thoughts from a cinematic night. It will connect movies to relevant political topics. For instance, the movie New Jack City will be used to comment on the hustle and the struggle of life. Acuna is using this project to talk about how drugs came to America and the divide within black culture. “I want to talk about who we are within that blackness,” says Acuna. “Why do we break ourselves down and divide ourselves into groups instead of build ourselves up?”

Replacing a common narrative with a new, accurate one, Acuna speaks to the systemic injustices that plague the lives of young African American men. He tells young men to change their story and break the mold aids in perpetuating the stereotype.

Why it Works

Hip-hop is engaging and interesting. It allows for multiple platforms of performance and avenues of getting the message out. With a song, one can tell a long narrative in a unique and disarming way. Music appeals to many people of many ages.

Theories

Narrative Power Analysis (244)

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (246)

Tactics Used

Direct Action (32)

Forum Theater (48)

Strategic nonviolence (88)

Key Principles at Work

Choose Tactics that Support your Strategy (112)

Reframe (168)

Shift the Spectrum of Allies (172)

New Principle Used

Use Poetry and the Power of Culture

Sometimes, commenting on your environment is the most effective way to relay that perspective to others. Observing the culture around you and putting it to words can be a very powerful tool. Combine that with an awesome beat and an enthralling chorus, and you’ve got people’s attention. 

Case Study: Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Case Study:
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Protesters wear shirts reading "Non-Violence Is Our Strength"

Between 1990 and 2003, the United States and United Nations impose
brutal economic sanctions that challenge the livelihoods of
Iraqi people. Soon after, peace activists join to start
Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a group that is active in non-violent

resistance to U.S. war-making. Members of VCNV draw 

experiences from those who are directly influenced 

by corrupt governments and the negative impacts of war.

Kathy Kelly in Afghanistan to experience living in a war zone

When

2005-present 

Where 

Chicago, Illinois 

Practitioners

Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Kathy Kelly

Further Insight

www.vcnv.org/ 

www.vcnv.org/author/kathykelly/
 

Contributors  

Jake Pemberton 

Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) was founded in 1996 by a group of peace activists in an apartment kitchen. The group began as "Voices in Wilderness", and worked to lift the corrupt economic sanctions against Iraqi people. When the activists realized they had not made progress over the years, they changed the organization's name in 2006 to what it is today, expanding their message to combat corrupt governments and U.S.-affiliated war. Fed up with people around the globe dying and living in turmoil due to the consequences of wars and bombings, members of VCNV set out to portray the message that the consequences are not worth the gains of war: "What we bring to the efforts to stop wars is literacy; I find people are illiterate. They just don't know about the consequences of wars the U.S. is waging," the organization's co-coordinator, Kathy Kelly, claims in an interview. 

But how can a small group of activists educate an entire country about the negative consequences that come with war, and how they overcome the overall gains? Members of VCNV work towards this by visiting war zones and living in such places for periods of time.While they live in war zones, the activists will learn the stories of villages; what the people have gone through and how war has directly impacted their lives. VCNV members will take such stories back to the U.S. and illustrate the experiences they learn to audiences in the attempt to educate the negative consequences of war. They believe bringing the issues back home will educate American citizens about the true impacts of war, thus evoking public emotion, sparking the conversation, and hopefully progressing the movement against U.S.-waged wars.

By bringing issues back home, members of VCNV make it difficult for people to ignore the problems at hand, and encourage more to speak up and fight for a just cause. "Where you stand determines what you see", a belief that members of VCNV, as Kathy Kelly describes, work by. If Kelly and her colleagues can reveal the facts about the consequences of war in the faces of the uneducated, they will see a new world and gain (or change) their stance on the issue.

As a means of educating those who do not understand the full scope of how U.S.-waged wars impact human lives, VCNV applies tactics that help to communicate their message. Although many of the activists have been arrested or visit war zones, Kathy Kelly does not advocate a violent approach to protest, "if it's good for the goose it's good for the gander. Total nonviolence is the best way to go." However, the nonviolence is strategic. Kelly protests in ways that are responsible and even-keeled, but knows when it is time to escalate her participation in a protest. Such escalation has gotten her arrested, hog-tied, and sent to prison multiple times, but has also helped her portray the importance of her movement and convey her message. Although, escalation is not essential, especially when the protest is, as Kelly describes, out of the ordinary or unusual. VCNV activists spend much of their time living in villages of war zones, protesting and fighting to help the people living in chaos. Some might think the simple act of Americans protesting in Afghanistan, Yemen, or Iran is unusual, and they are correct. Kelly explains how she and other activists have fasted in foreign countries as a way to protest in an unusual way, and how it progresses their efforts: "We’ve done 30-day fasts, 40-day fasts, and 28-day water-only fasts. I think when they see a group of U.S. people fasting they think 'well, they’re pretty weird, we don’t really get them, but we’re not afraid of them. They’re obviously trying to do a good thing."  She believes protesting in a way that seems out of the ordinary adds to the image of how important and serious a movement is. VCNV members, for example, fasted in Iraq in front of a government building for thirty days in protest of economic sanctions that directly resulted in the deaths of nearly half a million children under five-years-old. Through the fast, Kelly believes, the activists were allowed more access to move about the country, communicate their cause, and eventually lift such sanctions.

As an organization, Kathy Kelly perceives Voices for Creative Nonviolence as a source of information for those who do not understand the murderous consequences of U.S.-waged wars. Through nonviolent, sometimes unusual tactics, these activists collect experiences and moral power in the face of danger to fight for a cause they deeply believe in. The actions of such peace activists do not seem like much, but sometimes all it takes is simplicity, "a simple actions awakens altruism," Kelly explains. "it makes people want to help. If we don't care about political will, then we're left with rage and despair, and society can't flourish in the face of rage and despair." 


Theories Used
Anti-oppression (212)
Hamoq & hamas (236)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (246)


Why It Works
If you can stay disciplined and not act out with violence while advocating change, others will respect the movement and feel comfortable to understand it. Once understood, more will join and realize the importance of the movement, and eventually realize why success is essential.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” – Mahatma Ghandi. 

Tactics Used
Strategic Nonviolence (88)
Do something ususual 

Key Principles at Work
Bring the issue home (106)
Escalate strategically (134) 

New Theory Used

Education is key

Kathy Kelly and VCNV believe that the key to a successful movement is to educate the illiterate. The peace activists understand that many people may not comprehend or even know about the issues that VCNV is involved with. But they also believe that this "blindness" can not be an excuse to allow such wrong-doing to occur. By visiting war zones and learning the stories from refugees and those who live in such places about how U.S.-waged wars have directly ruined their lives, they can bring such experiences back to Chicago and help other realize what is going on.

   
New Principle at Work
Never let inconvenience interfere with acting in accord with your deepest beliefs   
Work comes easy when it is convenient, and for many people, it is time to quit when such work pushes them out of their comfort zone. This does not hold true for Kathy Kelly or members of VCNV, as they find it essential to never allow inconvenience limit their drive to create a better world. Kelly has been arrested, hog-tied, and imprisoned three times, has lived in war-zones and along refugees, and has participated in month-long fasts. All of which would be regarded as inconvenient to anybody, but that does not stop Kelly from acting in accord with her deepest beliefs.