Hey- the news is bad. Things are bad. As an artist (whether that’s a musician, poet, or any other kind of performer or person who shares art publicly), it can be overwhelming when we start to think about our role(s) in all this. When I am overwhelmed, I try to find a small step I can take. This post is about sharing one of those small steps: using arts space as activist space.
There are a million ways to do that, but I’ll keep this post down-to-earth. Here are FIVE examples of activist-oriented handouts, zines, or printed materials you can share, for free, at your merch table. I think part of our work, as artists, is to help get more cool stuff in front of more people. And that includes our art, of course, but it can also include more than that. This is a “small” idea, but its smallness makes it actionable.
A quick note that some of these examples are Minneapolis-focused, but the idea of them can be adapted to other communities, and similar resources already exist in some places.
1. A Handout Sharing a Bunch of Local Activist Groups and Possible Ways to Get Involved
This handout can be a powerful doorway into local activism, whether for someone brand new to the scene or someone who is just looking to get more plugged in. Print these front-and-back (on regular paper, black-and-white is fine), fold them in down the middle, and it’s a simple four-pager. Obviously, big lists of organizations are always imperfect; this doesn’t include every group doing good work, and the groups themselves can be imperfect too. But moving from an individual mindset to a collective one is a crucial step is, and getting a “snapshot” of the work happening where we are can help us figure out where we might fit in it.
Bonus link: check out Racket’s Nov. 2024 rundown of the local scene too.
2. A Zine Sharing Invitations into Movement Work
This zine covers similar ground, but is a bit less geographically-specific. These are some of my favorite links and resources to share with people I meet who are fired up, and want to show up and “do” something, but just don’t necessarily know where to start. This can be printed, just one-sided, on plain paper with black ink. The trick is the old “cut-and-z-fold” to turn a single sheet of paper into an 8-page zine. And here is the digital version of the zine for online reading and sharing.
3. MPD150’s: Enough Is Enough: A 150 Year People’s History of the Minneapolis Police Department
The MPD150 report will definitely be most relevant to folks in Minneapolis, but I’d also recommend it to anyone as a fantastic example of narrative organizing in action: 2017 was the 150 year anniversary of the founding of MPD, and a group of activists and artists put together this “performance review” and abolitionist toolkit to mark that occasion. It’s a beautiful, full-color, 140-page magazine, and it’s FREE. Pick up a box (or multiple boxes)of 25 at Moon Palace Books, or Boneshaker Books, or RLM Arts (or if you know me, I’ll get you as many as you want to take).
4. Share Info on Progressive Candidates in Local Elections
To use Minneapolis as an example, we have big local elections coming up in November 2025. If you don’t follow local politics, check out the endorsement pages from groups like MPLS for the Many, or TakeAction MN, TCDSA, or other trusted orgs; it’s still early, so more may be coming in, but hopefully those can be useful starting points. Depending on where you live, and where you share your art most regularly, there may be some natural connections; and whether or not you endorse any candidate, or perform at campaign events, just having some lit or flyers for cool progressive candidates can help bring lots of new people into caring about local government. You don’t have to tell people who to support if you’re not comfortable doing that; just share useful info.
A related resource here: I didn’t write this one, but a bunch of these “Don’t Rank Frey” handouts were given out at Pride and it’s a great example of this kind of thing. Easy to print (just need to cut the sheets in half since it prints two-to-a-page), ideally in color because of the rainbow theme. But it’s also about the spirit: you can use this, or make your own remix.
5. And Beyond. Be Creative.
I wanted to focus on specific resources, but I also think it’s important that this last point be a call-to-action to find more. Maybe a local activist org you support makes zines or stickers. Or maybe a local mutual aid group has a QR code flyer to take donations. Or maybe a school in your neighborhood is collecting signatures for some kind of initiative. It could even be as simple as having flyers out for the next action or training organized by a group going good work.
Again, the idea is that from concerts to craft fairs, art openings to poetry slams, raves to festivals—artists have access to people who may not already be plugged in. And that’s an opportunity.
To end with a personal example, I’ve been bringing my mobile zine library to my performances over the past couple years, and it’s been such a great conversation-starter, a way to share information I care about, and an avenue for connecting the stuff I talk about in my songs and poems (from consent, to Palestine, to abolition, to counter-narrative masculinity and beyond) to concrete next steps. Your version of this kind of thing may not look the same, but I hope something here can be useful. The last image here is the next local gig where I’ll have a bunch of the materials mentioned in this post: 7/13/25 for Rootbeer and Resistance at Boneshaker Books (free, 3-5pm)!
RELATED
- For Artists and Musicians Who Want to Speak Out About Palestine But Aren’t Sure How
- Lots more links and examples at Resource Hub: Activism and Organizing
- Finally, if local musicians are reading this post, I hope you already know about Twin Cities United Performers: “organizing to make Minnesota a state where musicians and performers are in community and solidarity with each other, treated with dignity, and supported to thrive as artists – not just survive.”
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