“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then off themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
The first tenet of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is “Do not obey in advance.” In other words, do not be silent. Do not do nothing. We worry all the time whether we are doing “enough” (no doubt we’re not), but paralysis and stasis are what they want of us, and doing something is always better than doing nothing at all. This print project is one such *small* resistance–a way to remind others of the patterns identified by historians, a way to see our current political moment from a wider perspective, and a way to put something out into the world that is both informative and, we hope, beautiful.
This tenet sums up what Claire has been up to (since at least 2016) with her organization of printmaking protest parties, protest postcard design projects and writing parties, gallery exhibits of protest art, and various other similarly themed projects and events–as well as the work Mandolin has been doing using vintage postage stamps to create art prints that resist mainstream values and sentiments and aim to posit alternative messages that remind us both of our responsibility for one another and of our shared humanity.
We have found Omkari Williams’ Micro Activism to be an essential text when thinking about political action and resistance, since she acknowledges there are many types of activists and not all of us are meant to be holding a megaphone. As Williams puts it: “If the only people who qualified as activists were those in the spotlight, nothing would get done [and] it is the critical mass of people standing up for what they believe in that ultimately moves the needle toward justice (21-22).” No doubt we will mess up at times. No doubt we will get it wrong at times. The important thing is to do something at all.
Hear Timothy Snyder speak about this tenet on YouTube.
This lesson was letterpress printed in Rubine Red ink on a Vandercook proofing press.
