Though the manifold problems of money pouring into our campaigns have become a source of daily news and mounting public backlash, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission is an opportunity to review how this transformative decision was reached – the perfect storm of politicized jurisprudence, corporate entitlement, and a narrowly tilted bench.

As Chief Justice, John Roberts has expressed such concern over corporate rights, one might think he was found as a boy abandoned, taken in, and raised by some corporations. It was Roberts who directed the narrow issue of FEC penalties over ads for Hillary: The Movie to be rewritten and re-argued as a much broader debate over the right for corporations to spend money freely on third party advertisements.

The murky reasoning in the 5-4 decision is a swirl of citations to numerous codes that apparently somehow offer sufficient paradox that a century of laws passed by lawmakers over generations of Congress that restrictions on the federal and state level had to be knocked down, leaving almost no sense of legal authority on the subject.

How has this decision stood, two years later? Well, people have literally been taking to the streets across the country in outrage over this decision and corporate influence on public policy. In fact, this decidedly undemocratic ruling — five opinions against American law and overwhelming public opinion — has been such a galvanizing injection into the populace, Citizens United vs. FEC may prove to be the birth to an era of reform. Read more »

This year during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, amongst the corporate carpet bombing of branded swag up and down Main Street, there will be a venue for voices other than studio buzz machines, celebrity side projects, and gossip columnists. While the exclusivity of the Sundance Film Festival has long fostered start-up film fests to showcase other independent films alongside the star-studded lineup, this year brings a new kind of screening event to the cinephile maelstrom.

Filmmaker Donn “D.J.” Viola was struck by the odds of inclusion in the coveted landmark independent film festival: Out of 11,700 entries, only 180 were chosen, 1.538%. Parallel to the Occupy Movement’s empowering the bottom 99%, Viola sought to provide some kind of platform for the approximately 32 films made every day of the last year.

Going further, such a context could allow for more political films than might usually be included in the crop of Sundance selections. While Sundance has long been a strong supporter of environmental topics, the timeliness of a film festival is a unique challenge — where the transformative Occupy Wall Street movement sprung up in October and swept the national discourse, the deadline for submissions to Sundance was in September. Read more »

Sunday, Jan. 8, will be the final day of Mr. Brainwash’s Art Show 2011, an exhibition which has drawn thousands each day to behold the childlike imagination of Thierry Guetta. This abandoned industrial space also happens to be adorned with a significant contribution from the street art community of Los Angeles, after Brainwash allowed 20,000 square feet of the ground floor to be entirely covered with other people’s posters, paintings, stickers and spray paint.

This mammoth art show will not be viewable somewhere else down the line. In fact, after this last day of viewing, the building is reportedly slated to be demolished. Street art is not intended to last, and here it won’t even last inside an empty building. Read more »

2011 has been a pivotal, inspiring year, and a turning point promising big things for 2012. And it’s maybe because people were broke and taking to the streets that, culturally, 2011 was somewhat uneventful. I suspect 2012 will bring the creative explosion of a culture reignited by shared awareness and new-found confidence. But looking back at 2011, the seeds of a cultural revolution did not seem to be penetrating the airwaves.

But where most of Hip Hop seemed to descend into a clatter of techno-fused beats and hooks about either partying in the club or partying in the strip club, there stood out a surprisingly positive groove that seems to best put a face on this year of the Occupy genesis.

Weaving an interpolation of Modest Mouse’s 2004 upbeat hit “Float On,” Lupe Fiasco uses his verses to unify the impoverished and privileged alike, urging courage to resist everyday oppressors, drawing strength from both childhood dreams and the power that a rarefied performer gets to observe when audiences are chanting his lyrics back to him around the world. Read more »

When you’re Thierry Guetta, your biggest challenge may be how to top yourself. After an extravagant debut art show that drew thousands in 2008, and starring in the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, there may be little else but to live the life of an artist whose work is in demand. But it might be Thierry’s trademark enthusiasm to take on much more than he probably should that inspires him to do anything.

And in the center of Los Angeles, just off Santa Monica and La Brea, he found an urban adversary worthy of his determination: an abandoned industrial complex, over 80,000 square feet. What first seemed like a Russian temple waiting to be christened became a never-ending barrage of repairs, inspectors and maintenance, while he was hoping to use it as an art studio rather than an urban renewal project. “I almost gave up,” he says wearily. “It was too much.” Read more »

Over his career, Ron English has taken a love of pop art and transformed the aesthetic into his own vision of appropriating icons and subverting corporate cartoons with photo-realism. His outdoors work in murals, billboard takeovers, and brand parodies since the 1980’s is why English is considered to be a father of street art, bridging the wild style graffiti genre with gallery pop art impact. English has long established his distinct voice through childhood iconography with provocative social criticisms, and evolves as an artist into an ever-increasing number of directions. Read more »

December 6, 2011, was a national day of action targeting homes facing foreclosure, organized by a coalition of community groups behind the movement Occupy Our Homes. Protests were held across the country, in cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Portland, OR, and more.

Actions included “reclaiming” houses that banks are leaving vacant, and “home defense” to stop banks from foreclosing and accept payments from the homeowners, which banks like Chase and Wells Fargo are refusing to do in some cases.

Some of the groups involved in the community resistance effort include ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), The New Bottom Line, ReFund California, New York Communities for Change, Occupy Wall Street, Take Back the Land, SOUL (Chicago), SEIU, and The Coffee Party.

In South Gate, CA, twenty minutes south of Los Angeles, dozens of supporters rallied around the home of Ana Casas Wilson, with several pledging to camp out in her front yard while she defies eviction, and face arrest if necessary. Read more »

Reverend Jen arrived in Los Angeles to promote the release of her memoir on Simon & Schuster, Elf Girl, and I soon realized that this legendary art star from New York’s Lower East Side was somewhat out of her element in L.A. For one, she did not know what a Prius was.

As one might gather from her tales of debauchery, outrageous performances, and much wandering, Rev. Jen is a creature of New York, pedestrian and poor but outlasting the thriving gentrification which has seen her neighborhood evolve from immigrant marketplace to artist haven to college town. It was there, in that last century, she launched her own open mike to support oddball performers and alternative comics. Her hapless theatrical endeavors and self-deprecating humor won her a cult following among lovers of ironic and quirky comedy, including Janeane Garofolo, Moby, Jonathan Ames, and Amy Poehler. Above all, her stories of perseverance through bizarre part time jobs and continually disappointing relationships won her attention for their realness, disarmingly delivered in a chirpy voice by a girl wearing elf ears and dressed like a go-go dancer. Read more »

by John Wellington Ennis

Ohioans go to the polls tomorrow to decide on SB5, a bill passed by the Ohio legislature that intends to dissolve public employee unions. This law is similar to one that was enacted in Wisconsin earlier in the year, but it goes further, to include the dissolution of firefighters and police unions. The placement of this ballot measure to be able to vote down SB5 was achieved by a referendum submitted with over 300,000 signatures. Along with a referendum on whether Ohio will recognize any national healthcare legislation, this off-year election has shaped up to be a contentious one, with significant Get Out The Vote efforts on both sides. Read more »