OCCUPY YOUR GIVING
You don’t have to contribute to large charity organizations who distribute your money for you. Many of them use a significant portion of the money they collect to maintain their organization rather than benefit their cause
Look around. It’s easy to go freelance with your giving. Who needs something? The single neighbor with the baby? The older woman with the dangerous porch? The street reporter dedicated to transmitting the truth? Choose your cause according to your heart.
Choose an amount. You’d be surprised at what $5 can do if you open your eyes and find opportunities. At this point in my life my amount is $50 per month, but when I started it was a dollar. Really. And it usually went to people on the street, but of course a dollar went a lot further back then. If you don't have money, give what you do have: your time, your ear, your effort
Now, find your target. It is not hard. Just open your heart and your radar will go off when you find your opportunity. It is easy to put cash in mailboxes, electric heaters at the backdoor, and boxes of clothing on porches. Have you given toys and blankets to dogs in the shelter or craft kits and money for haircuts to nursing homes? The list goes on! Your community is your charity.
No need to embarrass anyone or seek reward. Giving is its own reward. In fact, giving without expecting anything in return is called love. Love is what should fuel this planet. Giving heals your heart, because when you reach beyond yourself, your problems and pains seem smaller.
Giving spreads. When someone gives to you, you are likely to think later of doing the same. When you give to someone, your heart grows, and your act affects the world in ways you may never know. Your act reaches people that you will never see, the people who are helped by the people you helped and who will help others in turn. One person can affect the planet this way.
-- Angelique
Photo: May 1, 1915. Friendship charity fete, A May Day benefit for the Washington Diet Kitchen Association at Friendship
Photo: May 1, 1915. Friendship charity fete, A May Day benefit for the Washington Diet Kitchen Association at Friendship
PRINT YOUR VOICE & PLACE IT IN PUBLIC
Anyone can do it. It's fun and it works! Create a statement, print it out, and place it in someone's way! Place it on the ground, a transit seat, or tape it to a wall.
FLOWERS ALL AROUND WITH MAY DAY IN MIND!
Spring into action anytime with flowers! Flowers make us feel and look beautiful, but they also add to the flavor of goodness, peace, and the power of people. Flowers of any size announce peace yet power. Wear flowers in your hair, pinned to your clothes, make a necklace or a crown using real flowers, purchased fake flowers, or handmade ones. Make or purchase your flowers to pin to clothing or place in your hair. You can make headbands, bracelets, or necklaces too. Wear your flowers each day, if you have extra you can share them. Wear flowers on the streets, on the train, while riding your bike, when marching, or holding a sign to spread the fun.
Be inspired by Frieda Kahlo, John and Yoko, Noble Prize winner Emily Green Blach, Hawaiian friends, Anna Schuleit Installation at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Greek students who offer riot police flowers in Athens central square, and Chicago Spring.
Helpful links for DIY flowers Paper flowers Green Wedding Shoes’huge crepe paper roses, Coffee filter flowers, Martha Stewart’s crepe paper flowers and large tissue paper poms Life’s tiny delicate tissue flowers
Videos on YouTube Coffee filter roses, Paper flowers, Paper pansies, Paper towel roses, Simple tissue paper flower, Thai Paperflowers Fabric Flowersfabric flowers by Michonne, Billie monster’s rolled fabric roses, Burda Style’s Valentine’s Bouquet, Hello My Name Is Heather’s Pop Garden Scrap Flower, Icandy handmade’s box-fold felt flower, Little Birdie Secrets’ pretty organza flowers, Make It Do’s Ribbon Flower Pin, Matsutake’s t-shirt flowers
STICK A STICKER
Think about your cause and how to say it in few words. You can make cards, tags, stickers, or a mini zine and leave them about on the sly. One issue to think through is how not to leave any permanent damage to other's property. Think it all through.
COSTUME DAY
Being silly and absurd dates back centuries.
we can learn from the past,
to understand our future
and what needs to be done.
Artist, Edith Raw makes a statement about plastic and trash.
SAY IT ON TAPE
Dress up your jacket, your bag, or your windows. It is easy and affordable and you can pass strips out to your friends. You can also change your mind easily as you decide how to voice your ideas.
GOT CASH?
An idea worth continuing if you care about local providers. Arrange an outing of many friends that dissent on a local establishment to spend money! Here is the GOOD article that describes the movement. Below is a Los Angeles Cash Mob and a Chicago Cash Mob, there are lots of startups.
JUST SAY STOP
It is easy. Find wide tape and spell out your issue and stick it on a stop sign.
LET THE TOYS SPEAK
A mound of toys, stuffed animals, or dolls holding signs is an attention grabber. It puts thrift store items to work and once the set up begins, toys can be taken and shared.
DAY OF DANCING
Dancing is contagious and doing it in a public space with or without music is taking a stand. In Gillian Wearing's 1994 artwork Dancing in Peckham, she took to a south London shopping centre and danced as if no one was watching. It does send a message that you are a free thinker. Could you dance uninhibitedly
Photo by Jason Cuddy
START A WALL
Candy Chang, a New Orleans-based artist, designer and urban planner, painted a wall around a run down home in early 2011 and added "Before I die I want to __________. She has a site, beforeidie, to help others start their own walls and see the walls that have been created around the world.
HAVE A PARADE WITH POTS AND PANS
Remember this...
OCCUPY TV SPOTS
Have an idea for a public service announcement? Get a crowd together, crowd source and buy some space!
POETRY BOMBING
Poetry Bombing is fun. Artist Agustina Woodgate's approach involves clothing labels. Surprise, the poem can be placed anywhere! You can even find a poem that speaks to you and recite it for others to hear, or shout it for yourself.
Article: Subway poetry project connects NYers PBS NEWSHOUR about Madeline Schwatzman's mission with her project "365 Day Subway: Poems by New Yorkers"
HOLD YOUR HANDS TOGETHER
They did in Moscow and gained national attention to their cause for economic equality.
SEED BOMB
There are many reasons as to why Guerrilla Garden is the greatest! Beauty for the public, green, nurture the soil...food for bees, we need more trees, reclaim abandon lots, learning about how things grow... and don't forget: May 1st is International Sunflower Guerrilla Day! Find some seeds and get ready to help pollinators! Research, find native flowering seeds and gentle methods.
MAKE A BILLBOARD
In pictures or words, these artists orchestrated ways to put beauty and poetry in the public sphere. Robert Montgomery placed thoughtful words in unexpected places, while Etienne Lavie used art from antiquity to evoke a double-take.
FINDING STUFF
Artist Yoonjin Lee uses found objects from the public, things lost or discarded, and makes them visible with express wording. The "Little Lost Project" is an ongoing project based in New York City.
LEAVE IT ON THE DOORSTEP, ON A SHELF, OR THE BUSAbandon a cherish-able artistic item in a public place. Visit Michael deMeng's Facebook page called Art Abandonment to learn more about this action that feels good inside and out!
GATHER LOTS OF FRIENDS TOGETHER
In a public space you can all spell out what's on your mind. Below is the Guggenheim Museum, where forty people gathered to sprawl out banners, chant, and drop leafs to highlight labor conditions in a franchised Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.
PLACE A SANDWICH BOARD IN SIGHT
With the Route 66 Project artist Naoko Ito placed a sign on the street to send a sweet message to the drivers.
TRANSFORM AN OBJECT TO MAKE A POINT
A Palestinian woman in the village of Bilin has planted a garden full of flowers grown inside of spent tear-gas grenades used in battles between Israeli soldiers and local Palestinians.
