And another one right next to it went up last week:

A coincidence?? Right after my short doc on him and his work was featured on Wooster Collective?

Probably.

Interested in acquiring an original Alec Monopoly artwork?  Pick some up and help our film PAY 2 PLAY!

“Computer”

Blackface

Digable Planets ‘ emcee Butterfly once declared, “The city’s a museum with its posters and graffiti.” While the urban gallery of Los Angeles exhibits colorful murals and tagging scrawled in the city’s margins, there is a subculture that lurks in the dead of night to adorn utility boxes, street signs, dumpsters, and unclaimed walls with paint, posters and paste, in the pursuit of what is simply known as “street art.”

Less than a year ago, the recognizable Monopoly Man figure began appearing around town plastered against traffic light boxes, lampposts, and building tops. The tuxedoed icon would be recognizable with his pocket watch and top hat, but now he was spinning turntables, or needing healthcare. In an era of billion dollar bailouts for banks that already own the country and moguls decrying regulation as un-American, the re-contextualization of the childhood symbol of success and wealth almost needed no explanation.

Except, maybe an explanation for who the hell was putting all these imaginative renditions of the Monopoly Man all over LA, from the ocean to downtown, from West Hollywood to the canyons. And why.

After patience and persistence, the elusive Alec Monopoly granted me an interview. Because others might technically deem his artwork a destruction of property or some such notion, he asked that his likeliness be kept hidden, and that he would come to me. The interview we filmed is below, along with a slide show of some of Alec Monopoly pieces around Los Angeles.

Visit www.alecartshow.com

www.pay2play.tv

Please, donate a quick couple bucks to our all-or-none fund raising effort on Kickstarter:

Candidates and political parties already face challenges in maintaining a voice in democracy through the costs to get their message out, and voters have increasing difficulty determining just who is sending them all these mailers, and if the propositions are termed in the affirmative or the negative. Corporations exert increasing influence through advertising and donations, for and against candidates and issues. Now that the Supreme Court has rephrased the existence of corporations into personhood, we should continue to demand new legislation that curtails their unchecked spending without accountability.

Among potential remedies pursuant to this reasoning could be laws explicit that corporations must pay all of their corporate taxes before making any political expenditures. Currently, about 2% of corporate taxes are collected. Even the oil industry gets billions of tax breaks, while making billions in record profits, and inflicting billions of dollars of damaging. If they have money to spend on elections that affect how much they make, they shouldn’t they have to pay taxes that run those elections, and the government they are expecting things from?

Here are photos from the protest, which drew a diverse group of people compelled to speak out against corporate influence in Washington.

My current project, PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes, documents the fight to keep our elections from being bought.

Street Art just up on Melrose.