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Want to be in an art exhibit at Fort Myers Rauschenberg Gallery? All you need is a stamp, a postcard and a little creativity.

Thats the beauty of the new Postcards For Democracy exhibit, says renowned artist/musician Beatie Wolfe.

Its an exhibit inspired by the post office and democracy. But its also a democratic exhibit: Anyone can take part, no matter who they are or where they live.

You dont even have to be an artist.

We just wanted this to be as open and inclusive as possible, Wolfe says, and just have everyone and anyone that wanted to send a card. And whatever that card ended up being was great.

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"US Mail" by Denise Woodward, one of many postcard-art works featured in the "Postcards for Democracy" exhibit.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Wolfe created the art project with singer/composer Mark Mothersbaugh of art-rock legends Devo.

The idea was to championthe U.S. Postal Service and its essential role during the 2020presidential election. Both Beatie and Mothersbaugh are longtime fans of the postal service, and the friendslove to collect stamps and send letters (and often art) through the mail.

It kind of inspired us, Mothersbaugh says. I think we were impressed when our government started talking about eliminating the post office which was something we just thought was an integral part of our democracy and something that was very important to keep alive.

The project started as a collective art demonstration supportingthe U.S. Postal Service, mail-in voting and the right to vote. But it eventually grew into much more than that.

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Artists/musicians Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo and Beatie Wolfe co-created the new "Postcards for Democracy" exhibit.(Photo: Ross Harris)

People from all over the world submitted postcards decorated with all sorts of topics: The 2020 election, of course. And the post office. And Trump. And Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. But also Black Lives Matter. Human kindness. Racism. Feminism. QAnon. Science. The environment.

And there were other, less political topics, too: A one-eyed alien holding its arms out for a hug. The leg lamp from A Christmas Story. A monkey astronaut declaring I dont wanna go to space! A sun rising over the planet Earth. And lots of Devo-themed art, including the bands famous energy dome hats and their slogan, Are we not men? We are Devo!

Moresubmissions are arriving every day, Mothersbaugh says.

We love the post office and we love what its about, he says. And it (the art project)just happened to coincide with what was happening at the time in the country.

But, you know, theres still things coming in today. We have new cards sitting on the table today. And theyre not talking about the election. Theyre talking about other things. Theyre about other aspects of human existence.

The Postcards For Democracy exhibit features decorated postcards from people around the world, including this one by Dan Opalenik.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Thats why gallery director Jade Dellinger plans to change up the postcards in the world-premiere exhibit. At least twice during the shows three-month run, hell take down all the old postcards from their narrow shelves and replace them with an entirely new batch.

Dellinger expects that people who visit the gallery might be inspired to go home and create some art of their own, in fact. And those postcards might pop up later in the exhibit.

Its very much an ongoing thing," he says, "and were encouraging people to participate.

Wolfe and Mothersbaugh say theyve gotten sacks full of postcards for the exhibit, but they have no idea how many theyve collected. Thousands, they guess.

Its a bunch! Mothersbaugh says. Sorry, neither of us wanted to count.

Now about 1,000 of those postcards are being shown at Rauschenberg Gallery (Dellinger hasnt counted those either).

Wolfe says she's impressed with the creativity on display. The postcardscover a wide spectrum of the human experience and touch on some of the issues and feelings we've all had over the last year.

Its almost like this physical time capsule, a time portal in some ways, to whats been going on," she says. "I think its so wonderful that its being preserved in physical form in a very much digital age.

You look at those cards, and you see so many different facets of our collective human experience and identity, and I think thats whats really powerful about it. It feels very much like it represents what weve been going through.

Ron Logan's "Help Your Neighbor," one of many postcard-art works featured in the "Postcards for Democracy" exhibit.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Mothersbaugh and Wolfe say they wanted to do what they couldto help something they love: The U.S. Postal Service.

We just wanted to bring an awareness, Mothersbaugh says. We werent hearing anybody speaking up for the post office, so we said, Well dang it, were gonna do it! Because we had many reasons to be thankful.

Dellinger loves the idea of making the postal service participants in the exhibit, as well.

Youre kinda challenging the postal service, he says. At the same time, youre sort of entertaining and being grateful toward them by allowing them to be art handlers.

The project started last year, but the Fort Myers show will be the first time the postcards have been shown in an art exhibit. The world premiere sprang from Dellingers long relationship with Mothersbaugh and Devo, the 2021Rock n Roll Hall of Fame nomineesbest known for their 1980 hit "Whip It."

Guy Adams' "The World," one of many postcard-art works featured in the "Postcards for Democracy" exhibit.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Dellinger wrote the bands 2003 biography, We Are Devo, and he also worked with Mothersbaugh on a Tampa museum exhibit of his work. Theyd been talking about doing something for Rauschenberg Gallery, too, and then Postcards for Democracy happened.

Dellinger says hes impressed with the mountains ofpostcards that poured in after Beatie and Mothersbaugh announced the project last year.

They were getting thousands of postcards coming in the mail, and some people doing things daily and sending it to them, Dellinger says. And many people going to great effort and doing really clever, really beautiful, really wonderful artworks.

Sometimes it was a simple message, but many times it was a real labor of love that was trusted to the USPS letter carriers. And of course, everyone loved that idea.

The exhibit includes three authentic USPS stamp machines near the gallery entrance. For $1 in quarters, visitors can buy an art stamp featuring the exhibit logo anda drawing of Wolfe and Mothersbaugh.

Then theres the music Mothersbaugh contributed to the show: Seven hours of stream-of-consciousness organ music playing on a loop in the gallery.

Mothersbaugh who has a thriving career as a composer for TV, film and video games wrote and performed the song on an old home organ. He titled it The Most Powerful Healing Music in the World.

An anonymous piece featured in the "Postcards for Democracy" exhibit.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

The exhibit, he jokes, will do more than just entertain and enlighten visitors. You can go in and not only see all these cards, but you can come out healthier at the other end. I had the first clue when I had a cut on my finger. And while I was playing the music, I watched it heal.

Mothersbaugh and Wolfe have no plans to stop the art project anytime soon. Theyre continuing to accept postcards and might eventually show the exhibit elsewhere.

They hope it helps their beloved post office and spreads their mutual love of mail something Wolfe says helped her immensely during the pandemic.

Mail during lockdown, it was really the one thing that was keeping me sane, she says. I was just writing tons of letters and mailing art to people.

And a lot of people, it seems, love mail and the post office as much as they do.

We had no idea that it would get such an overwhelming response, Wolfe says. I think a big part of the whole project is just the joy of mail.

I think so many people have remembered how wonderful it is to make something and send it. Its so much more than just being a means to an end. It brings all this kind of joy.

The exhibit opened May 17, but its not too late to send your artwork through the U.S. Postal Service. In fact, Dellinger hopes that happens.

Its really a project that can truly be open-ended, hesays. Its really about continuing to participate in this ongoing kind of conversation thats happening.

To take part in the exhibit, make a postcard and mail it to 8760 Sunset Blvd., CA 90069-2206. For more information, visit postartfordemocracy.com.

Connect with this reporter:Email crunnells@gannett.com or connect on social media at Charles Runnells (Facebook),@charlesrunnells (Twitter) and@crunnells1 (Instagram).

What: Postcards For Democracy

When: Now through Aug. 8

Where: Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College, 8099 College Parkway S.W.,Building L, south Fort Myers.

Admission: Free

COVID rules: Masks and social distancing required

Info: 489-9313 orrauschenberggallery.com

Read or Share this story: https://www.news-press.com/story/entertainment/2021/05/18/fort-myers-exhibit-postcards-democracy-mark-mothersbaugh-beatie-wolfe/4869542001/

The rest is here:
Exhibit takes on U.S. mail, 2020 election. 'We love the post office,' says Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh - News-Press

The dark is rising. Anger, hate and violence are running rampant across the land. Hardly a day goes by without a mass shooting. Lies, half-truths and innuendoes all flow like water from a mountain spring. What can be done to stem the tide of ignorance and irrationality gripping the nation? Who will light a candle against the darkness?

American democracy is on the auction block. Did you ever think you would live to see the day when a president of the United States would assemble an unruly mob and direct them to the Capital in order to prevent the certification of an election? Few would have imagined such a thing. Yet here we are running down and sentencing the worst of the storm-troopers. What a sorry state of affairs.

Whatever happened to the American dream of truth, justice and the democratic way? Somewhere along the way the country took a wrong turn. People bought into the delusional thinking of Donald Trump, the conspiracy theories of QAnon, and the big lie of a stolen election.

How are we going to get ourselves out of the mess we have created? An old proverb tells us that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. All the institutions of our society government, corporate, media and education will need to join forces to promote democratic values. Lighting a candle against the darkness may be the first step toward saving the nation.

Stanley Ivie

Richfield

More:
Letter: American democracy is on the auction block - Deseret News

Most United States citizens consider ourselves fortunate to live in a modern, maturedemocracy. We appreciate the great freedoms and abundant material things our democracy affordsus. But while we all know the old adage that freedom is not free, neither is democracy. Our systemdepends on citizens being in ultimate control of the government through a written constitutionwith checks and balances, frequent elections, term limits, free speech, free press, the right topetition the government, the right to bring lawsuits against the government, referendums, recalls,and more. Unfortunately, too few of us take the time to actively participate in our democracy.

Which brings up another adageyou only get as much out of a thing as you put into it.So, how much are we putting into our democracy? How much are we as a countryinvesting in making sure our citizens are informed, knowledgeable, and prepared to fullyparticipate in our continuing experiment in self-government?

Our Current Investment in Civics EducationSchools can help prepare our youngest citizens for their critical role in our democracy. In fact, public education in the United States historically had the three related purposes of preparingstudents to participate in life as citizens, to engage in adult work and careers, and to becomefunctioning members of their communities.

The first goal is essentially civics education. What value do we place on achieving thisgoal today? Governments at all levels have given little support to developing civics educationover the last thirty years, according to the March 2, 2021, Educating for American Democracyreport sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department ofEducation. At the federal level, we spend five cents on civics education per student each year,significantly less than the fifty-four dollars per student for Science, Technology, Engineering, andMathematics education. Danielle Allen, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethicsat Harvard University, discussed this disparity in an Oct. 8, 2020, interview on Harvard EdCasttitled The Role of Education in Democracy. Her point was not that less money should be spenton STEM, but that the lack of support for civics education results in an inability for young peopleto understand democracy, be motivated to participate in it, [and] to have the skills and tools theyneed to participate effectively in democratic self-government.

The Cost of Neglecting CivicsIn a wonderful, wide-ranging discussion sponsored by the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies on April 14, 2021, titled Civics as a National Security Imperative, UnitedStates Supreme Court Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch discussed the importance ofcivics from their perspective as judges of the highest court in our country. Justice Sotomayor citedthe wide disparity on STEM and civics spending discussed above. Both Justices discussed thetroubling lack of knowledge about how our government functions, the low rate of participation ingovernment, the surprisingly large number of people who disapprove of democracy, and howpervasive false information is in our society, especially as spread by social media.

The Justices identified these dangers as resulting from a lack of civics knowledge, whichequips citizens to discern false information regarding our government and its functioning. JusticeGorsuch noted that more often in history, democracies fall not from external threat but frominternal discord. He noted democracy is not an automatic thing. Recently, foreign enemiescapitalized on our internal divisions and discord to further divide us, and Justice Gorsuch noted, it is no surprise that a lot of the false misinformation spread on social media is deliberately spread by our enemies to sow disagreement internally in the country.

Our democracy suffers when we as citizens are unable to fulfil our responsibility as theultimate control of government. We have to make reasoned decisions at the ballot box and in theother means of exercising our power. We cannot fulfill this responsibility when we do not knowhow our government functions. As Justice Gorsuch stated, when we are uninformed, not only dowe allow unresponsive and dysfunctional government, but we also allow foreign and domesticthreats to endanger our democracy.

Among the strengths of the American legal system are civility, civil discourse, constructivedisagreement, critical thinking, and respectful dialogue. Both Justices spoke of how society atlarge could use these principles, practiced every day in our courts, to bridge the divides we nowface.

By failing to educate our young people and ourselves on our government and our civicresponsibilities, we risk losing the freedoms we value so highly. We may have well-educatedSTEM students, but if we lose our democracy, in what kind of country will they live? In thatevent, we will all have to ask ourselves, did we pay the appropriate price for democracy?

Curtis L. CollierUnited States District JudgeChair, Eastern District of Tennessee Civics and Outreach Committee

Carrie Brown StefaniakLaw Clerk to the Honorable Curtis L. CollierImmediate Past President, Chattanooga Chapter of the Federal Bar Association

Eliza L. TaylorLaw Clerk to the Honorable Curtis L. Collier

* * *

In the recent opinion What is the Price of Democracy?, the authors advocate a return of basic civics in the education curriculum. I wholeheartedly agree and thank them for their advocacy. However, I find it somewhat disturbing the learned authors used the term democracy 15 times, but not once used the term Republic in their writing. Both terms are necessary to accurately substantiate and better explain the authors advocacy.

To illustrate, the opening paragraph should have read Most United States citizens consider ourselves fortunate to live in a modern, mature democratic Republic. We appreciate the great freedoms and abundant material things our democracy affords us. But while we all know the old adage that freedom is not free, neither is democracy.

There are other places in the opinion where Republic rather than democracy is the proper term to describe our country. By using the noun Republic appropriately to accurately describe the United States, and the use of democracy to describe the political process used to operate our Republic, the authors would demonstrate the difference and help inform a reader who may not have the benefits of a Civics class.

Ironically, the misused terminology helps to show the need and necessity to return a course in United States civics to our Republics education curriculum.

Bryan Bowen

Read the original:
What Is The Price Of Democracy? - The Chattanoogan

Published: 5/7/2021 6:40:36 PM

There seems to be much gnashing of teeth about how the Charter Review Committee is destroying democracy by raising the bar for overturning City Council decisions. What actually destroys democracy is 300 people being able to hold an entire town hostage (and cost us an extra $500k+!) when a decision has been made by a democratically elected council.

Exhibit A: the anti-library petition that almost cost the town $10M in grant funds and backed up construction by most of a year.

Obviously there needs to be a way for citizens to petition their government, but it has to be a high-enough bar that a small group cant just stop our city from functioning. 1200/5% seems like a reasonable minimum, but perhaps give more than two weeks to gather the signatures.

If 300 people stopped the budget every year because of something they didnt like it in, we could quickly run into a constitutional/charter crisis.

Garth Shaneyfelt

Greenfield

See original here:
Democracy - The Recorder

Over the last year, American workers have attempted to make their workplaces sites of social change and political discourse. Employees have fought for action, hoping the firms they work for will be agents in the fight against, among other things, systemic racism and harassment.

But recent changes at Basecamp, a workplace collaboration software company with approximately 60 employees, show why it is so hard to make American businesses respond to these problems. At the end of the day, the American workplace is not a democracy, it's an autocracy. In a democratic workplace, bosses would be accountable to the employees through a union or because employees held a significant number of seats on the corporate board, or, among other things, the law made it much more difficult to terminate employees. But in America, owners, managers, and bosses have the final say, and if political questions challenge their rule or even just inconvenience them they will be shut down.

On April 26, Basecamp cofounder and CEO Jason Fried and cofounder David Heinemeier Hansson posted a message on Fried's blog entitled "Changes at Basecamp." The post announced a suspension of employee benefits for gym memberships and farmer's market shares, but, more ominously, highlighted a new ban on political discussions at work and a dissolution of all committees.

Fried noted that discussions "related to politics, advocacy, or society at large" are "not healthy, [they haven't] served us well. And we're done with it at Basecamp." Fried added that the company could no longer dwell on past mistakes.

"Who's responsible for these changes?" Fried asked rhetorically, "David and I are. Who made the changes? David and I did." Fried and Hansson had unilaterally changed the workplace policies with a tone that could be read as hostile to disagreement. "The responsibility for negotiating use restrictions and moral quandaries returns to me and David," Fried wrote.

While the letter was vague about what had caused this policy change, a few days later, The Verge reported that the push came because what Fried construed as a political discussion really concerned a potential instance of workplace harassment.

In the last year or so, Basecamp employees had grown increasingly concerned about what was known as the "Best Names Ever" list a collection of Basecamp customer names that employees had presumably found funny. While the list included many Nordic or American names, it also included some names of apparent African and Asian descent. In the wake of the uprisings for racial equality in the last year and particularly the wave of anti-Asian violence, workers were demanding to know why this list, which both Fried and Hansson had known about since at least 2016, had festered for so long. Some employees had revived a dormant diversity, equity, and inclusion channel in order to address these and other concerns.

One employee cited the Anti-Defamation League's "pyramid of hate," suggesting that allowing this "Best Names Ever" list to exist was a dangerous precedent, and felt that Hansson and Fried should be held accountable. Hansson fired back in his own blog post saying that he thought this was an unfair argument and that this employee themself had tolerated the list. Two weeks later, on a Monday, Fried posted "Changes at Basecamp." After Friday's all-hands meeting, more than 20 employees resigned.

Much like a similar announcement by Coinbase, the uproar at Basecamp is an example of the reaction by bosses to workers' demands that workplaces address discrimination, harassment, and the political and structural factors that perpetuate racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Basecamp also demonstrates why addressing those issues in the workplace is so challenging in America. Companies are structured like an unaccountable totalitarian regime. Fried and Hansson, legally, have the power to end discussions. That is, they have the unilateral power to silence speech they don't like.

This seemed to be at odds with that fact that Basecamp, as a company, had been explicitly political in the past. They donated their office space in Chicago to a political candidate running for mayor, and the owners testified about Apple's monopolistic practices, and Fried even published an article in Inc. about Basecamp's failure and attempts to address workplace diversity.

None of this surprises University of Michigan philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson, author of the book "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)." In her book, she argues that while Americans aspire to democracy, most American workplaces are, structurally, dictatorships. Workers have little to no say in who is in charge of them and almost no free speech protections. Bosses can hire whomever they want, determine pay, control who does what work and when, and fire employees for almost any reason.

The latter is enabled by "at will" employment provisions, which give employers freedom to terminate workers. Our legal system is such that founders like Fried and Hansson are largely unaccountable to employees, unlike the situation in many other countries, like Germany, where it is much more difficult to fire employees, and the inclusion of workers in managerial decisions is often the norm. This often takes place via "workers councils" in which a certain number of seats on corporate boards are reserved for workers.

Researchers of the role of politics in the workplace note that increasing democracy in the workplace and giving workers a say in the rules that govern their conduct trains people for democratic life in general. New York University Law Professor Cynthia Estlund says that there used to be a more robust discussion 80 years ago about what was then called "industrial democracy," and about the workplace as a "school for democracy."

Unions were growing, and they fought for worker protections that limited the bosses' ability to unilaterally fire workers and dictate the terms of work. Such protections empowered workers to speak out against unfair, discriminatory, or harassing conduct in the workplace. Today, we spend most of our time at work, so it's no wonder that many workers want their workplaces to be sites of societal and political change, or at least be a place where people can talk freely about current issues.

Estlund said that there are additional benefits to worker protections for open political discussion: The workplace is one of the few places in life in which we engage with a relatively politically diverse group of people. Coworkers are generally not people we grew up with or freely choose to associate with. They are a "bridge to the larger citizenry," Estlund said. If we hope to create a less divided country and get outside our ideological bubbles, "it's mainly in the workplace that we actually interact on a sustained basis with once-strangers."

In fact, the workplace protections against racial harassment that sprang up in the post-war period may have been violated at Basecamp, Anderson told me in an email.

"All employers are legally obligated to act against racial harassment including hostile environment harassment that need not target an identified employee," she wrote. "So the racist spreadsheet is clearly covered by already existing requirements. Instead, Basecamp really wanted to shut down criticism of Basecamp's racist working conditions, even though labor law clearly protects the right of workers to complain about working conditions, even if they are not organized into a union."

It's unclear why exactly employers prefer this top-down arrangement that is so opposed to the values of American life, though for Fried and Hansson the benefit is clear. They alone can end a discussion that implicates their conduct. Instead of engaging with what they found to be a bad argument and find a path forward, they shut down the discussion completely. And the result was catastrophic for the company not only for how they look, but because they lost more than a third of their employees, suggesting that leaning on authoritarian tactics is detrimental for retention.

To make the workplace more democratic, we could, among other things, strengthen laws and norms protecting employment, make cooperative ownership easier, dramatically bolster unionization and collective bargaining, and give workers a say in managerial decisions. But until then, firms' prerogatives will only reflect a minority of opinions (a minority that skews heavily white and male) and workers' voices will continue to be silenced.

And as calls by workers for their firms to be agents of social change increase for businesses to take stances on systemic racism, the climate emergency, and to make the workplace free of harassment Basecamp demonstrates why that is so difficult in America. Without any legal accountability or widespread union representation, change will only happen at the whim of owners and managers.

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein writes about economic life in America.

View original post here:
Basecamp politics ban is reminder that the workplace isn't a democracy - Business Insider