Visuals, Art, and Propaganda

• Ask bicycle couriers to fly a small flag on the back of their bikes (or wear a sticker or patch) that says FIGHT GLOBAL AIDS or ACT UP TEXAS.
• Banner drop. Sure it’s been done before, but it still gladdens the heart and makes the news.  Check out these images from the Ruckus Society: http://ruckus.org/gallery/actions.html These don’t even include their giant, giant banner that read: ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.
• Have a funeral wealth delivered to policymaker. (ACT UP New York)
• For events where it is important to be low-key, make up and hand out business cards with your propaganda on them. You can use the templates that come from word processing programs like Microsoft Word to make the cards, print them out, and then take them to a copy shop to be xeroxed onto card stock and cut into cards.
  
• Care packages for backward politicians. Make sure your press release lists the contents and the reasons for them.)
• Fruit baskets to remind them where their support comes from (the gay community). This is great if you want to do press around it, or it can be a private message. —ACT UP Golden Gate, now called SurviveAIDS.
• Balloon banners that hang 20 feet above the ground, suspended by 10 strings held by 10 different people. A balloon banner is a banner, with a stick to stabilize its top and bottom edges, that is held aloft with large bunches of helium-inflated balloons at each end.—South Korean anti-war protesters, 12/ 2002.
• Set up outdoor movies about global AIDS or AIDS activism; use them for outreach, recruiting and awareness. Play them on the sides of downtown buildings. Or set up outdoor slide shows, for the same reason. These are their own media events. This idea is much better than it sounds; it once started an anticensorship movement. Created by DC anti-censorship activists.
• Line a demonstration route with paper bags filled with votive candles. Fill each bag with a half cup or more of sand to stabilize them. Then test them where you will use them. —From Gary, a civil rights activist in Philadelphia.
• Do outdoors laser projection of photo or message on the side of a huge public building. —From activists in London and Davos. Laser Grafix is a British company that uses a self-contained projector unit in the form of a 7000 watt xenon projector mobile unit with generator to move around the country to do projections.
• Colored smoke on the end of tall sticks at demonstrations is beautiful, photogenic and French Revolution. Orange smoke things can be bought at a nautical supply store. Where do other colors come from? AIDS activists have forgotten how to do this.

  

  Here's an example from a lovely Medicaid managed care protest organized by ACT UP Philadelphia.

• Make a stencil of your message out of heavy cardboard and stencil a few messages on a busy downtown sidewalk.
  
• Chalk messages on the sidewalk. Sounds boring, but can be powerful, cheap, easy, and convivial.
  
• Sticker up and down a major street, or near your target.
  
• Billboard liberation:http://www.billboardliberation.com/resources/manual.html
  
• Plant 500 cheap white crosses and markers with the Star of David on the Mall in Washington, DC, with the Capitol in the background (ACT UP Paris put them under the Eiffel Tower).
  
• Get 600 used pair of shoes and drop them on the sidewalk, either in a pile or in neat rows (ACT UP New York).
  
• Fax photos of American loved ones who have died of AIDS to decisionmakers along with personal notes asking for money for Global AIDS.
  
• Press event in which you actually re-invent the wheel (ACT UP Philadelphia).
• Office takeover of a listless ally to remind them what time it is (AIDS Policy Project and many others).
  
• Foot dragging with a giant papermache foot, piles of flip flops, or bread crumbs.
  And finally,
  
• Five little words: GLOW IN THE DARK PAINT. Check out sites like www.hobbyglow.com.
  

Ideas for Quick and Cheap Banners that look better than they sound
(Thanks to Eric Joselyn and Bread and Roses Community Fund)

Masking tape banner

Materials:

Cloth of any size you choose (old sheets work well, too),

Masking tape of different widths (including very wide)

Cans of spray paint, enough to paint the whole cloth.
1. Tape your message onto the cloth, spelling out letters with the tape. Use very wide masking tape for large lettering, narrowers for smaller lettering. The wider the masking tape, the more time you are saving.
2. Spray paint over the tape and all over the banner. Make sure the edges around the tape get enough paint, but not that much is needed. Use one color or make it multi-color with different colors of spray cans.
3. Wait for paint to dry.
4. Peel off the tape and voila! A banner is finished.

Felt Banner
Materials: one large piece of felt cloth (the size of the banner), a contrasting color of felt cloth to make letters, scissors, glue.

1. Cut the contrasting color of felt into strips the size of the letters you want for the banner.
2. Lay the strips on the banner and figure out how many letters you need, cut the strips into pieces for each letter.
3. Cut the pieces into letters (you may need to practice this a few times to get the hang of quick-cutting.
4. Glue letters onto felt banner. Elmers glue or a glue gun work well.

Sign with your favorite villain

1. Photocopy photos of chosen politician or other target (the photos should be generally recognizable) so that there are many small photos on each page, about 4-5 inches high each.
2. Cut out photos and use them to spell out a word or two in large letters.
Favorites of some are using Bush to spell "LIAR" and Cheney to spell "THUG."

Spell out letters or words on signs and have each person hold a sign to spell
out message. You can turn the signs over to finish the message. This can be
used for passing (car/foot) traffic. This can be done at large events with a
spectator audience, too.

Foamboard makes great signs because it won't bend and will last forever. It
can also be cut to make artwork such as skeletons (bones attached with string),
prison bars... Try to find free foamboard at frame stores, since it's rather
expensive to purchase.

Use sticks, dowels, large bamboo sticks (free if you can find growing bamboo
nearby), old cardboard rolls to attach cloth or felt flags with your message.
Height creates a great 3-D effect to any demonstration or event no matter how many people.