January 2020

BSA Film Friday: 01.31.20

BSA Film Friday: 01.31.20

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. How Art Saved Swoon’s Life
2. The Masters: Futura 2000

BSA Special Feature: How Art Saved Swoon’s Life / The C Files with Maria Brito

In 2011 we had a show in Los Angeles called “Street Art Saved My Life”. It sounded like some humorous hyperbole but in reality, it was a sentiment we had heard many times in graffiti as well – including from tough-guy and tough-girl types who have told us with tears in their eyes that graffiti saved their lives. So the transformative power of art is not merely anecdotal at this juncture, and we patiently await the fields of science embracing it as well.

Witnessing the evolution of Street Artist/fine artist Swoon has been moving, and she’s generously opened the trip to you over the last decade. Because of this bravery, her painful growth and their accompanying revelations have enabled others to examine their own path. Certainly, you can relate to her when she says she realized, “There was damage. It was psychological and emotional… and it could be healed.”

“The thing about art-making for me is that it’s kind of like this pole that is in the center of your world and that the wind is blowing and your feet are off the ground and you feel like you are getting sucked away, but there is one thing that you can hold on to.”  

Dude, whatever it takes for any of us to be healed, let it be.

The Masters: Futura 2000

Essentially a tour through Futura’s creative and personal life, here you can see the fluid linearity of the creative spirit as it’s channeled through art, music, fashion, branding, the street and merchandising. We’re just thankful he shares the ride and gives us insights and observations along the way with his disarming humor and canny pronouncements.

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Dont Fret BK Studio Visit/BedStuy Art Residency: Sausages, Lotto Cards, and “Springfield, Springfield!”

Dont Fret BK Studio Visit/BedStuy Art Residency: Sausages, Lotto Cards, and “Springfield, Springfield!”

“Sociologist, psychiatrist, and anthropologist – probably in that order – DONT FRET is more invested than you may appreciate at first, and the underside of American division and inequality bubbles quickly to the surface when he is asked if the country is beyond class.

“Whoever is saying that clearly has the luxury to do so. Look at our cities,” he says.


~ Steven P. Harrington in the introduction to DONT FRET’s monograph, “Life Thus Far”


Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

His Brooklyn residency has been a blur full of old buds from college, new bars in Bedstuy, and of course, sausage makers. He stands in the middle of an artist’s hazard zone of crumpled paper, opened pots of paint, and discarded laundry with brush poised in hand describing his recent quandary about finding a meat mecca in Bushwick and realizing that he couldn’t buy everything he saw once he spoke to the owner.

“She just started her own sausage company and we definitely want to do collaborations,” he says. “There were so many sausages at her place that I wanted to buy.” So you know he’s feeling comfortable here, surrounded by fine meats.

Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

His characters are all here, wondering aloud about physical insecurities and decoding social navigation; cryptically critiquing the absurdities of our class system and the underlying savagery of corporate capital and the perverting power of cloying advertising across the culture. In so many words.

Some hand-painted posters are still wet, some boards for future magazine covers (Thrasher, Sportsball Weekly, The New Yorker) have backgrounds prepared for him to paint featured personalities, a scattered pile of painted lottery players are grinning gamely from shiny Lotto cards, and larger new canvasses are built up with dense color and swarming symbols that dance around the heads of his imagined sitters.

Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“In this kind of stuff I wouldn’t say it’s autobiographical but they are definitely my generation of people navigating the city, looking at life and nightlife,” he says as you look into the rolling eyes of figures that have transformed into slot machines, perhaps hoping to win the jackpot. He points to his enthrallment with “The Simpsons” as he grew up and sees the bewildered savviness of the players in himself and in most of his peers as they navigate “adulting”. It’s chaos, but an entertaining one.

“There are clips of the Simpsons that go around in my head again and again,” he says. “There is one with Bart and Millhouse find twenty dollars and they get a Super Squishy, which is basically a crack squishy, and they go on this bender,” which makes him laugh. He turns to the blottoed bloke on his new canvas and describes the scene.

Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It’s like a song and dance. They’re singing (and he breaks into singing) Springfield! Springfield! It’s a helluva town! – and there is this scene of them wandering Springfield,” he says.

You can see this is a stand-in for this month in the BK in this case and DONT FRET’s active imagination about the lore of this dirty metropolis. “You see this neon popping up, and the animation just swirls. And then it just wakes up to Bart, hungover in bed.”

“I don’t know, I always just like those images. For me, these are like Brooklyn and Manhattan,” he says with glassy star-struck dizziness in his eyes.

Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Catch DONT FRET tonight at his opening at the Bedstuy Artists Residency, and you can swirl around colorfully with other symbols of this time, and this electrified city full of promise.  BSA co-founder will be there to sign his introduction essay inside fresh copies of “Life Thus Far”, DONT FRET’s giant new monograph.

A hummus plate is promised.

Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret. Studio Visit. BedStuy Art Residency. January 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thank you to Kathy, Erwin, and Marshall at the BedStuy Art Residency for your love and support to the arts. Always.

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Taquen and Sonja Ben for Contorno Urbano Foundation/ 12 +1 Project in Barcelona

Taquen and Sonja Ben for Contorno Urbano Foundation/ 12 +1 Project in Barcelona

Today we visit the newest installations by Spanish artists who are participating in the community mural project that invites many disciplines and approaches to the public sphere, the “12+1 Project” in Sant Vicenç dels Horts, a neighborhood of Barcelona. In its third year, Contorno Urbano occupies a unique position in the public art world that stays clear of commercialism – as well as Street Art and graffiti – although it borrows from both. Today we see two of the newest participants and their walls.

Taquen. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)

Marking a decade as a muralist, Gonzalo Martin (1992) aka Taquen is a Spanish visual artist and illustrator with a clean linear style that may remind you of embroidery or stained glass design. His new wall for the Contorno Urbano 2020 program features a pigeon gently cradled in two hands. It calls to mind the fragility of life, and of nature.

Taquen. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)
Taquen. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)

He says that much of his work reflects a dialogue between our natural environment and our social behaviors. It’s a delicate balance, this organic relationship between us and our earth – and Taquen subtly appears to remind us that the balance is in our hands.

Taquen. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)

“Equilibrium is where I find the best way to integrate ourselves,” he says. “Without shocks, without exaggeration, leaving a camouflaged footprint that will become part of that environment naturally, without destabilizing it.”

Sonja Ben. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)

His creative partner on this outing is Barcelona born Sonja Ben, who is creating a brash and athletic counterpoint to this world of Taquen, popping with color. Performance comes to mind, seeing these animated figures punching forward like characters in a video game, avatars of aspiration and adventure.

Using symbols as actors, her work is representing the real world – in a child’s language; processing the travelogue of the inner explorer as seen through anime and saturated digital colorways.

Sonja Ben. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)
Sonja Ben. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)
Sonja Ben. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project. Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Clara Antón)
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MrKAS Goes Sprays Anamorphic in Porto, Portugal

MrKAS Goes Sprays Anamorphic in Porto, Portugal

With his own particular brand of magic realism and optic art that is sometimes referred to as anamorphic, MrKas has a command of the fact-based world that enables him to fool viewers into seeing something else when they are standing in the right place.

MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)

A regular participant in Street Art festivals with commercial sensibility and the wide-eyed wonder of newly discovered adventure, MrKAS has a sense of humor as well, and he’s ready to play – at least with your perceptions.

Born in Porto and now living in Brussels, the aerosol painter has travelled to countries like China, Malaysia, UAE, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, Malta, France, the Netherlands with realism that goes askew.

MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)

Here back in his Portuguese hometown, MrKas is spraying in multiple directions, playing with your perceptions some more in an abandoned factory.

MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)
MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)
MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)
MrKas. Porto, Portugal. (photo courtesy of MrKas)
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Dont Fret Hits Streets With Inner Dialogue and Rotten Bananas

Dont Fret Hits Streets With Inner Dialogue and Rotten Bananas

If you are wondering why you are seeing a lot more lumpen and average people than usual on the streets of NYC recently it may be attributable to the wheat-pasted everymen and everywomen from the Chicago humorist and existential list maker named DONT FRET.

Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hand-painted and one of a kind, the painfully quotidian is also often entertaining, perhaps granting permission to not take yourself too seriously. With characters who are reacting to and possibly resisting the subtle indoctrination of civil society guidelines and values, DONT FRET is giving you a look inside his head as well. A devout Simpsons follower, he knows our foibles are freeing. Is there drama in the mundane? Of course. Humor in our contradictions? Without a doubt. Laughter at Street Art? Try not to smile at these, we dare you.

Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dont Fret with Bedstuy Art Residency. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 01.26.20

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.26.20

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The city is in mid-winter “blah” mode. We suffered a fire at the New York City’s Museum of Chinese in America this week, and the Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams used his Martin Luther King Day speech to tell recent arrivals to ‘Go back to Iowa,’ Things can be tough out here people.

In Street Art and graffiti news, New York has had some “whole car” pieces on the subway line recently, including one that looked like a whole train! Old timers were rubbing their eyes. According to a local media outlet, legendary graffiti artist Chris “Freedom” Pape gave his assessment; “..based on the artist’s philosophy, he gives it an “A” but based on the quality of the graffiti on old subways, he gives it a “C”. Also a new film about New York octogenarian Street Artist Robert Janz opened this week at the Anthology Film Archives. Janz in the Moment is the passion project of Filmmaker Joanna Kiernan that features many corners and crazy details of New York’s streets that are familiar to us – and probably to you.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring Add Fuel, Atomik, Bisco Smith, CRKSHNK, Dal East, Feik, Hysterical Men, Jilly Ballistic, Kai, Mr. June, Pure Genius, Rick Azevedo, WCKT, What Will You Leave Behind, Will Power, and Winston Tseng.

London Kaye gives a shout out to the Australian’s wildlife, and of course to the people as well. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
London Kaye gives a shout out to the Australian’s wildlife, and of course to the people as well. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Feik. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Will Power (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Will Power (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jilly Ballistic (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CRKSHNK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bisco Smith. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Add Fuel. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Atomik. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hysterical Men (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Winston Tseng (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Kai. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Pure Genius (photo © Jaime Rojo)
What Will You Leave Behind (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WCKT (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mr. June. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ric Azevedo. Wynwood. Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. NYC Subway. January 2020. Manhattan, NY.(photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Bordalo II Builds “Trash Animals” in Northern Norway

Bordalo II Builds “Trash Animals” in Northern Norway

“Big Trash Animal” is the name of this series of installations for the UpNorth Festival by Portuguese Street Artist Bordalo II, here in a seaside city in the northern sector of Norway called Bodø.

Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)

The artist has been using his recycled sculptures as commentary on a modern culture of consumerism (and its deleterious effect on ecological matters) for the last decade or so, which great success.

His animals are a marvel in their likenesses; his talents for evoking their character by sculpting with people’s detritus are unrivaled. The connection he makes is between mindless garbage-making and the lives of animals. It’s a powerful one, a testament to the potential role of the Street Artist as a mindful citizen who contributes to the greater good.

Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)

Last autumn he researched, collected materials, and methodically created 12 of these animals for a recycling company rooted to this seaside town of 50,000 which boasts the Norwegian Aviation Museum. In the case of this region, bringing Bordalo II is not simply to “artwash” a brand or city, as some companies and municipalities try to do.

Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)

According to UpNorth Festival organizers the region has laser-focused their attention on recycling – reportedly planning to reach the European Union’s target for recycling 65% of municipal waste by this year, about 10 years ahead of schedule.

Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)

Reading a press release from the events, it looks like the people of nearby Salten took it upon themselves to clear coastal waters of pollution a couple of years ago. “In 2017 they placed 50 tons of marine litter in front of the public library in Stormen.” The marine litter was collected as a stunt to motivate the community and show them that collecting litter is of great value.

Bordalo II has now given them additional ideas for what to do with it.

Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)
Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)
Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)
Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)
Bordalo II. Up North Festival 2019. Bodø, Norway. (photo © courtesy of Up North Festival)
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BSA Film Friday: 01.24.20

BSA Film Friday: 01.24.20

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. “Gestures of Caring” Jan Vormann
2. Drones Printing Walls, Stop Us if You’ve Heard This One.
3. Dan Kitchener x Wynwood Walls 2019
4. El Mac: Making a mural of Hope in San Jose
5. Jeff Parker and the New Breed – “Max Brown”

BSA Special Feature: “Gestures of Caring” Jan Vormann

Gestures of Caring

Monuments. Architecture. Mosaics. Street Art.

These interests provided Street Artist Jan Vormann with a launchpad for a cute idea when he began repairing broken walls and filling in street crevices with children’s colorful plastic building blocks. Now along with those miniature interventions he’s added oil stains to his repertoire. He acknowledges the ecological disaster that these gorgeous iridescent patterns imitate, and says somehow these attractive mosaics may start maybe, in the best case, a discussion about it.

Here’s another conversation starter: The outdated and dirty fossil fuel industry continues to spill millions of gallons into our groundwater, streams, lakes, and oceans and has for decades. Also, most wars in this century have been about securing access to oil, or outright stealing it.

Jan Vormann – “Gestures of Caring” Bien Urbain 2019. A film by MZM Projects

Drones Printing Walls, Stop Us if You’ve Heard This One.

Katsu may have started this, or the original developers of a mechanized printer called SprayPrinter, both of whom we published years ago, but now there are other pretenders to the throne, like Urban Flying Opera. Let’s see them hit the high notes!

Dan Kitchener x Wynwood Walls 2019

El Mac: Making a mural of Hope in San Jose

Jeff Parker and the New Breed – “Max Brown”

Time to let go, do a few dance moves, relax and revel into the weekend with some serious masters.

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Wild Animals Run in the Streets: Wynwood Is A Zoo

Wild Animals Run in the Streets: Wynwood Is A Zoo

Yes, Wynwood was a zoo this year.

Martin Whatson. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Maybe its because animals are safe subjects to paint and make it past the neighborhood censors, maybe its because they are handily metaphoric when it comes to communicating a complicated or difficult idea. Maybe it is just because they are cute and everybody on Instagram is going to offer a clever rejoinder on your new painting in Miami, you cool dude/dudette.

Ernesto Maranje. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From unicorns to hippos to lions and alligators, the street is full of them right now around every corner in the Wynwood District and you can still enjoy them until the neighborhood becomes so developed that they kill them all. Well not all of them. One or two will still be creeping up on you in the occasional abandoned lot that has a high tax bill or a hefty remediation of toxic soil that still makes it too pricey for potential investors.

All of that wild conjuring aside, here is a selection of currently running creatures of the gritty urban jungle in this humid and hot southern city for you to marvel at.

Woes. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Telmo & Miel. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Telmo & Miel. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sonny Sundancer. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SkyOne. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Feik. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bublegum Sr. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Saturno. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Saturno. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ron English. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mr. Dheo. Wynwood, Miami. December 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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ELFO: The Most Boring Things in Street Art

ELFO: The Most Boring Things in Street Art

You’ve probably already seen this wall by Elfo so its probably a boring topic. But we also enjoy his self-deprecation – after all he is marketing this wall to us to display digitally. Who knows if it’s even real. It’s better than just another portrait of 2Pac.

ELFO (photo © ELFO)
ELFO (photo © ELFO)
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Giacomo RUN x Basik Wrestle with the Renaissance and Modern Economics in Florence

Giacomo RUN x Basik Wrestle with the Renaissance and Modern Economics in Florence

The Church of Santa Maria Novella, The Opera del Duomo Museum, the Uffizi Gallery. Florence is forever tied to Renaissance art history and shares its cultural riches with the world daily, including an endless stream of graphic design and art history students who study in this Italian city every year. The only drawback is, there is often a complaint by people creating art today that there is only proper reverence and space given to those dead artists in this city – not the ones whose hearts beat today.

Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)

Which may be why RUN and Basik had to run to a suburban area of the city to paint this new large scale mural. “Not much renaissance around,” RUN tells us. “Nothing like the center of the city with all the untouchable art from the past.” The Italian graffiti artist has matured into a fully realized modernist interpreter of form and sophisticated master of color on the street. Here he joins with Basik to depict a rumble between two wrestlers.

Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)

The style of these wrestlers may not be evocative of the style of Hercules and Antaeus” by Antonio del Pollaiuolo at Ufizzi, but it definitely commands modern Florencians’ attention on the street today – a spectacular example of art on the street for everyone, not just a privileged few. In fact, RUN tells us that these wrestlers are more of an allegory for the people and the struggles people are having right now.

“We feel that people here are put in a constant challenge to combat conditions of poverty and ignorance.” Seeing this work here we are reminded of something BSA has been saying for some time; It is evident with the work of Street Artists globally over the last decade and a half that we have entered into a New Renaissance, but this time it is happening around the world. It is exciting to see this latest example present in the outskirts of Florence to help us put it into context.

Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
Giacomo RUN x Basik. Florence, Italy. 01.2020 (photo courtesy of the artists)
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MLK and a 2020 Vision of Poverty In America

MLK and a 2020 Vision of Poverty In America

Today we celebrate the life of and honor the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. on this very cold winters’ day in New York.

Among his many writings and speeches are the ones that ultimately identified the class system and the power dynamic that underlies systemic inequalities. While the country is now more than ever in the deadly embrace of an entrenched military industrial complex that looks to perpetuate its own income by starting wars, eating up the lions share of our annual budgets, we realize how some of MLKs harder truths about financial inequality were the ones that made him most hated as well because they threatened a status quo. As bad as it looks to you, it looks absolutely perfect to some.

Chris Stain’s “Winter in America” (courtesy the artist)

As we have watched a precipitous decline in the average American’s standard of living in the last 40 years, we can now see that the poor are poor not because of some moral failing but because the system is deliberate; designed to keep them there. With robots and other forms of automation preparing to sideswipe the workers of the world in the next five years, MLK’s ideas about a guaranteed annual income seem not only fair and wise, but also pragmatic and prophetic.

Seen in the NYC Subway

Banner photo credit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. locks arms with his aides as he leads a march of several thousands on March 17, 1965 in Montgomery, Ala. (Credit: AP)

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