Port Huron Project 2: The Problem Is Civil Obedience

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Port Huron Project 2: The Problem Is Civil Obedience

A public reenactment of a speech originally given by author and activist Howard Zinn at a peace rally in May 1971. In this stirring speech, Zinn argued for the necessity of civil disobedience to protest the war in Vietnam and called on Congress to impeach the president and vice president of the United States for the “high crime” of waging war on the people of Southeast Asia.

When: Saturday, July 14, 5 PM (rain date July 15)

Where: Northwest corner of the Boston Common, near the intersection of Charles and Beacon streets. Note: this is the exact site of Zinn’s original speech!

This is the second event in the Port Huron Project, a series of remakes of protest speeches from New Left movements of 1960s and '70s. The project is named after the Port Huron Statement, the visionary manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical student group formed in 1962. The first event in the series, Port Huron Project 1: Until the Last Gun Is Silent, took place on Sept. 16, 2006, and was based on a speech given by Coretta Scott King at a peace march in Central Park in 1968. The third event will be a reenactment of a speech originally given by SDS President Paul Potter at the March on Washington in April 1965.

For documentation and information, please visit http://www.porthuronproject.net

                   

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About the Artist

The Port Huron Project is organized by Mark Tribe, an artist and curator whose interests include art, technology, and politics. He is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, where he teaches courses on digital art, curating, open-source culture, radical media, and surveillance. Mark is the co-author, with Reena Jana, of New Media Art (Taschen, 2006). His art work has been exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and Gigantic Art Space in New York City. He has organized curatorial projects for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, and inSite_05. In 1996, Mark founded Rhizome.org, an online resource for new media artists, and he now chairs Rhizome's board of directors. He received a MFA in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego in 1994 and a BA in Visual Art from Brown University in 1990. He splits his time between Providence and New York City. You can find his CV and examples of his other work at http://nothing.org.