Beautiful Trouble touring Canada in June…
“[Latest Press Release]
STREET PROTEST GETS SMART: ACTIVIST TOOLBOX TO TOUR CANADA
‘BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE’ ASSEMBLES CREATIVE PROTEST TACTICS FROM YES MEN, OCCUPY & OTHERS FOR A NEW GENERATION OF ACTIVISTS
CANADIAN LAUNCH EVENTS:
Ottawa, June 18; Montreal, June 19; Toronto, June 23; Regina, June 27; Saskatoon, June 28
“THE CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT CALLS FOR BOLD LEAPS OF IMAGINATION, NEW FORMS OF ORGANIZING AND A FEARLESS BLEND OF CONFRONTATION AND CELEBRATION. BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE IS A CRASH COURSE IN THE EMERGING FIELD OF CARNIVALESQUE REALPOLITIK, BOTH ELEGANT AND INCENDIARY.”
Flash mobs, glitter bombs, occupations, hijacked press conferences and pot-banging protests.
From Cairo to cyberspace, from Main Street to Wall Street, today’s social movements have a creative new edge. Social activism in the digital age is melding prank and PR; blurring the boundaries between artist and activist, direct action protest and pop art. The ingredients that make for successful creative action are finding their way into more people’s hands than ever today—with the “casserole” pot banging protests sweeping Québec and the country just the most recent example—but the art and the science of successful creative activism hasn’t been hashed out or written down until now.
In the irreverent activist tradition of Steal This Book and The Anarchist Cookbook comes Beautiful Trouble. Assembled by over 70 activists from across Canada and the United States, the book will be launching in Canadian cities Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Regina and Saskatoon in the coming weeks to spread the tools of creative activism. Core team members and local contributors will present on some of the book’s key ideas and discuss the state and future of creative activism in Canada.
In Beautiful Trouble, editor-activists Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswald Mitchell have pulled together the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest in order to place it in the hands of the next generation of change-makers. Beautiful Trouble is not another how-to manual; it’s a how-to-think manual. In the face of austerity and ecological crisis, Beautiful Trouble is a game-changing resource for anyone looking to build a better world – or simply defend what’s beautiful in the one we’ve got.
FOR COMMENT, CONTACT ANDREW BOYD (347-228-7416) or DAVE OSWALD MITCHELL (daveomitchell@gmail.com)
FOR PRESS ACCESS TO ANY EVENT OR TO REQUEST REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT:
MEDIA Contact: Fern DIaz | Fernanda.Diaz@orbooks.com | (212) 514-6485
