The Port Huron Project is a series of six reenactments of

protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...

speeches from the

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...

movements of the 1960s and '70s. Between September 2006 and September 2008, each event took place at the site of the original speech, and was delivered by a performer to an audience of passers-by and invited guests. Videos, audio recordings, and photographs of these performances are presented in various venues and distributed online and on DVD as open-source media.

Reenactments

;Port Huron Project 1: ''Until the Last Gun Is Silent'' The first reenactment took place on September 16, 2006, and was based on a speech given by

Coretta Scott King Coretta Scott King ( Scott; April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was married to Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 until his death. As an advocate for African-American equality, she w ...

at a peace march in

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...

on April 27, 1968, approximately three weeks after the

assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7 ...

The speech, which she based on notes found in her husband's pockets when he died, addresses the war in Vietnam, domestic poverty, and the power of women to effect social change. Gina Brown, a New York-based actor and former welfare mother, delivered the speech. ;Port Huron Project 2: ''The Problem Is Civil Obedience'' The second event in the series took place on July 14, 2007. It was based on a speech originally delivered by author and activist

Howard Zinn Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political scien ...

at a peace march on Boston Common on May 5, 1971. In this speech, Zinn defended the use 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 "making war on the peasants of Southeast Asia." ;Port Huron Project 3: ''We Must Name the System'' The third reenactment was staged near the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2007. The original speech was given at the April 17, 1965 March on Washington To End the War in Vietnam by

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...

(SDS) President Paul Potter. Potter offered an insightful critique of our government's use of the rhetoric of freedom to justify war, and calls for citizens of the United States to create a massive social movement to build a "democratic and humane society in which Vietnams are unthinkable." Selection criteria for the Port Huron Project included identifying New Left protest speeches, finding transcripts and/or recordings, and determining the locations in which specific speeches were given. Attention is given to speeches that were delivered at protests or demonstrations in public spaces and address issues of peace and social justice. ;Port Huron Project 4: ''We Are Also Responsible'' Based on a 1971 speech by

César Chávez Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez ; ; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged ...

at 6:00 PM, Saturday, July 19, 2008, at South Lawn, Exposition Park, Los Angeles Presented by

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

br>
with

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Located in Hollywood, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is a nonprofit exhibition space and archive of the visual arts for the city of Los Angeles, California, United States, currently under the leadership of Sarah Russin. History In t ...

(LACE

;Port Huron Project 5: ''The Liberation of Our People'' Based on a 1969 speech by

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...

at 6:00 PM, Saturday, August 2, 2008, at DeFremery Park, Oakland Presented by

br>
with the

Oakland Museum of California The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cali ...

br>
;Port Huron Project 6: ''Let Another World Be Born'' Based on a 1967 speech by

Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...

at 6:00 PM, Sunday, September 7, 2008, Adjacent to the United Nations, NYC Presented by

br>

Artist

The Port Huron Project was organized by

Mark Tribe Mark Tribe (born 1966) is an American artist. He is the founder of Rhizome, a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City. In 2013, he was appointed chair of the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Formerly, h ...

, then an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, who is also an artist and curator whose interests include art, technology, and politics. Tribe is the co-author, with Reena Jana, o
New Media Art
(Taschen, 2006). His art work has been exhibited at the

ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe The ZKM , Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (until March 2016: ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology), a cultural institution, was founded in 1989. and since 1997 is located in a listed industrial building in Karlsruhe, Germany, a former muni ...

, the

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...

Festival in Linz, and Gigantic Art Space in New York City. He has organized curatorial projects for the

New Museum of Contemporary Art The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Scho ...

, MASS MoCA, and inSite_05. In 1996, Mark founde
Rhizome
an online resource for new media artists, and he later chaired Rhizome's board of directors. He received an MFA in Visual Art from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

in 1994 and a BA in Visual Art from Brown University in 1990. A team of five Brown University students assisted Tribe in the summer of 2007. These students received funding from the Karen T. Romer Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards, Brown University. General funding for the project was provided by office of the vice president for research, Brown University and the Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University.

References

*Beckman, Rache
"Hot Off The Presses: A Pot Full Of Issues,"
The Washington Post, July 19, 2007 *Falk, Leora
"Times, Faces Change; Struggle Remains"
The Chicago Tribune, July 31, 2007 *Harlow, John
"Art and Politics Collide in Port Huron Project,"
DCist, July 25, 2007 *Johnson, Ken
"Rallying 'Round the Past,"
The Boston Globe, July 22, 2007 *Kennedy, Rand

The New York Times July 28, 2007 *Ulke, Christina. ttp://joaap.org/5/articles/Tribe/ulketribe.htm "Politics by Other Means,"The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Issue 5, Summer 2007

External links

Official website
*Brown University department of Modern Culture and Medi

*Howard Zinn's 1971 speec

{Dead link, date=September 2020 *Paul Potter's 1965 speec

Historical reenactment events