Refuse & Resist! ("R&R!") was a
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
activist group founded in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1987 by
Emile de Antonio
Emile Francisco de Antonio (May 14, 1919 – December 15, 1989) was an American director and producer of documentary films, usually detailing political, social, and counterculture events circa 1960s–1980s. He has been referred to by Randolph Le ...
, Dore Ashton,
Dennis Brutus
Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 – 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid.
...
,
John Gerassi,
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponen ...
,
William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler (July 7, 1919 – September 4, 1995) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist, known for defending the Chicago Seven. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil ...
,
C. Clark Kissinger
C. Clark Kissinger (born 1940) was the National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society in 1964–1965. He visited the People's Republic of China twice during the Cultural Revolution, and is a devoted Maoist. His writings frequently appear i ...
,
Conrad Lynn
Conrad Joseph Lynn (November 4, 1908 – November 16, 1995) was an African-American civil rights lawyer and activist known for providing legal representation for activists, including many unpopular defendants. Among the causes he supported as a la ...
,
Sonia Sanchez, Rev. Fernando Santillana, and other activists who were concerned that the American government, epitomized by
U.S. President
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
, advocated a far right-wing political program directed against the political rights of its people.
[Se]
"A History of Refuse & Resist"
("Revised 7 January 2007") Accessed 15 March 2009.[Refuse & Resist! Founding Statement. June 1987.] Artist
Keith Haring created R&R!'s logo in 1988. The organization's national office was located in New York City, with chapters at various times in Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Honolulu, Hawaii; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization officially dissolved in 2006.
[ At that time, the national office closed, and the organization's files transferred to the Tamiment Library at ]New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
.
Refuse & Resist! opposed censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
, war, acts of police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
, in support of political prisoners and against the death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
. The organization advocated reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:
Reproductive rights rest on t ...
and played an active role in the defense of abortion clinics. It also supported rights for undocumented immigrants
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
. The group did not endorse candidates for elected public office.[
]
Governance and methods
The organization was made up of affiliated independent organizations, individuals, local chapters, and less formal national 'networks' organized around specific initiatives or interests. The central form of the organization was a National Council which met periodically to "identify new reactionary attacks and to encourage resistance to them."
From September 1987 through early 2002, Refuse & Resist! published the print periodical ''CounterAttack'' and from 1995 until 2006 it maintained the ''Refuse & Resist!'' website as media for information about political and social events of concern in the United States and internationally.
In 1988, R&R! organized ''Resist in Concert!'' at the New York Palladium, with performances by Sinéad O'Connor
Shuhada Sadaqat (born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor on 8 December 1966; ) is an Irish singer-songwriter. Her debut album, ''The Lion and the Cobra'', was released in 1987 and charted internationally. Her second album, ''I Do Not Want What ...
, Afrika Bambaataa, De La Soul, Ikey C & Easy-Ad, Karen Finley, Lenny Kaye
Lenny Kaye (''né'' Kusikoff; born December 27, 1946) is an American guitarist, composer, and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group.
Early life
Kaye was born to Jewish parents in the Washington Heights area of upper Ma ...
, Shinehead, and others.[
In addition to the ''Resist in Concert!'' initiative, Refuse & Resist! involved and supported progressive art and artists, including supporting artists and arts organizations whose work was the object of governmental repression. Visual and performing artists, especially in New York and Los Angeles, were active in the Artists' Network of Refuse & Resist! and experimented with ways to integrate political themes of resistance with aesthetic expression.
R&R! initiated a periodic Courageous Resister Award to recognize important individual acts of resistance and in support of ]civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
and civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
. Recipients included health care workers, activists against police brutality, artists, and even small towns. The first awards were presented at Resist in Concert! 1988, by Susan Sarandon, Robbie Conal
Robert "Robbie" Conal (born 1944) is an American guerrilla poster artist noted for his gnarled, grotesque depictions of U.S. political figures of note. A former hippie, he is noted for distributing his poster art throughout a city overnight usi ...
, and Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (; January 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008)Will Weissert"Ex-CIA Agent Philip Agee Dead in Cuba" Associated Press (sfgate.com), January 9, 2008. was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer of t ...
.
R&R! organized public demonstrations and other forms of protest in support of abortion rights, immigrants' rights, political prisoners, and for other causes. For example, R&R! activists were actively involved in demonstrations against the 1991 invasion of Iraq and marched with thousands in the streets of New York City to protest the politics of the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Campaigns
R&R! organized against many forms of censorship. For example, when in 1989 the U.S. Congress adopted the so-called Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was an American politician. A leader in the conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ...
Amendment, which required the National Endowment for the Art not to fund "obscene or indecent" art, R&R! organized both the "Jesse Helms Degenerate Art Show" and the "New Blasphemy Forum" in New York City as forums for artists to express opposition to the new restrictions. Likewise, R&R! came to the defense of artists, such as Ice T, whose art was the object of censorship.
R&R! opposed the invasion of privacy and government surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
. For example, when the 1990 Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...
was conducted, R&R! organized public demonstrations across the U.S., in which census forms were burned in protest of what they saw as intrusive questions asked on the forms.
R&R! upheld reproductive freedom for women and posed the slogan "Abortion on Demand & without Apology!" In this activity, they frequently defended physicians and women's health clinics. In response to the judicial opinions in ''Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
''Webster v. Reproductive Health Services'', 492 U.S. 490 (1989), was a Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court decision on upholding a Missouri law that imposed restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities, and employ ...
'' and ''Rust v. Sullivan
''Rust v. Sullivan'', 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was a case in the United States Supreme Court that upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patien ...
'', R&R! deliberately disrupted two sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
, which was the first time that court had ever experienced public protest. In related events, activists occupied the offices of U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde
Henry John Hyde (April 18, 1924 – November 29, 2007) was an American politician who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 2007, representing the 6th District of Illinois, an area of Chicago's ...
and the National Right to Life Committee, both whom opposed abortion. During the 1990s, R&R! were vocal and uncompromising opponents of Operation Rescue, a group known for staging protests and civil disobedience against abortion clinics. Refuse & Resist! also co-initiated the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers in 1996, which has since become an annual event.
R&R! supported the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an early member, who was accused and convicted of murder in 1982. Citing suppressed and allegedly falsified evidence presented against Mumia, R&R! joined with many others in exposing his trial and conviction as political persecution and a vendetta conducted by the Philadelphia Police Department. R&R! was active in the international "Free Mumia" campaign. in 1995, R&R initiated a series of "Philly Freedom Summers" in which students and other youth converged in Philadelphia, to raise public awareness and support for Abu-Jamal and for a new trial. It was during the first summer that they spoke out against Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge
Thomas Joseph Ridge (born August 26, 1945) is an American politician and author who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. ...
, who signed a death warrant for Abu-Jamal that June. That August the execution order was stayed, but Abu-Jamal remains in prison pending the outcome of his appeal.
R&R! supported the rights of all immigrants, raising the slogan "We Are All Illegals!" Activists often protested at the offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1933 to 1940 and the U.S. Department of Justice from 1940 to 2003.
Referred to by some as former INS and by others as legacy INS, ...
(INS) and at the United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mult ...
base in Miami, Florida, in opposition to the return of Haitian refugees back to Haiti. In Texas, activists were arrested for climbing the fences of a 'secret' INS detention facility and exposing its activities.
R&R! organized the first National Conference Against the War on Drugs. They revealed photographs of alleged "boot camps" supposedly being used to incarcerate youths as punishment for what they felt were victimless drug crimes.["What Refuse & Resist! Has Done: A Brief Biography: 1987–2001"]
Accessed March 15, 2009.
Notes
References
*Watrous, Peter.
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. New York Times Company
The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City.
History
The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. T ...
, December 2, 1988. Web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
. Accessed March 15, 2009.
External links
*
Refuse & Resist!
' – Official website. DEAD LINK
*
'.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Refuse and Resist!
Organizations based in New York City
Human rights organizations based in the United States
Political advocacy groups in the United States
Organizations established in 1987
Organizations disestablished in 2006
1987 establishments in New York City
2006 disestablishments in the United States