All posts tagged: George Washington

Occupy Wall Street: Handmade Signs and #Hashtags

September 24, 2011 Artists

“New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant” E.B. White

Occupy Wall Street (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And to the above list we might like to add the very, very rich.

“Occupy Wall Street” is the command of a loosely knit congregation of primarily young people who have set up a small colony in downtown since the 17th and, despite the armature of a police state surrounding them, these Millenials are questioning the economic structure of this millenium. Using D.I.Y signage, social media savy, and a fair amount of street theater, their message has been making it’s way far beyond the cavernous streets of the best know banking district in the country. Fortified with a heavy contingency of uniformed and plain clothesed officers with cameras and weapons at the ready, Wall Street became an iron clad citadel 10 years ago, an impenetrable marble and concrete castle to capital where tourists waddle and traders race daily past the steps on which George Washington took his oath of office. The stock market is here, the Federal Reserve, and so are all the banks.

Occupy Wall Street (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s understandable that a generation with bad prospects of finding work, saddled with high debt for their education and living with parents who are at their wits-end because of underwater mortgages, loss of health insurance and disappearing retirements would now fix their gaze upon the root causes of this permanent insecurity. In many people’s minds the class warfare has been in full effect for a while and these folks are now wondering about those basic tenets of free speech and right to assemble that Americans of previous generations fought to maintain, guaranteed by the constitution. As corporations continue to gain rights and citizens continue to cede them, these demonstrators say they feel like they have nothing to lose, except their entire country.

Occupy Wall Street (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Their camp is a nerve center of hi/low tech creativity where handmade signs on cardboard are painted with sharp slogans and laptops and handhelds are regularly updated with hashtags and twitpics. In the center of the camp a makeshift digital press office is ringed with faces glowing in the cool blue hue as communication with the rest of the world is continued under the watchful gaze of a ring of blue officers and street cameras. There is also joyful music performed live, with folks sharing food, books, blankets and stories.

Here are some images from the streets of Wall this week – with tourists alternately perturbed and pleased, police polite and alert, and demonstrators all over the place with messages and chants forced into a cyclical narrow path in the public space by temporary steel structures. 2011 has brought an Arab Spring where people have taken back the discourse from ever more entrenched power holders, and this spontaneous discontent appears to be encircling the globe as the shiny finish on corporate globalism seems to lose it’s luster. It makes perfect sense that these demonstrators are in this symbolic and actual nerve center of capitalism in such a public way, using public space to public issues.

Occupy Wall Street (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hail to the Street : Presidents Day Street Art

February 21, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street

Happy Presidents Day! In the US this is a holiday, officially to celebrate the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays were commemorated separately until about a decade ago when they were merged. A lot of New Yorkers think today about skiing, since it’s really the last 3 day weekend of the winter – and it’s snowing this morning so a lot of kids will be shoved outside by their parents to go play in it. Or they may take them to the Met , Guggenheim, or MOMA, which are all open today.

George Washington by the Street Artist named Senator (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But back to the gallery of the street, which is always open, we can get a little history lesson too. Everybody knows that Shepard Fairey nailed it with his Obama posters a couple of years ago, but did you realize that Street Artists have been putting up many presidential portraits over the last decade? One artist, Senator, sometimes confused people with wheat-pasted pieces in the late 2000s because his name signed to the image lead you to think it was about the subject, like the George Washington image above. His black and white coloring-book style depicted many presidents – Lincoln, Adams, Jefferson, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan. As you can see below, Senator is not the only Street Artists to find US presidents a worthy topic.

Senator (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Abraham Lincoln by Visual Resistance (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Smoking Jack Kennedy by Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Richard Nixon by Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Senator (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ronnie talk to Keith; The Gipper shaking the hand of a Photoshopped Keith Hernandez from a street art viral campaign a couple of years ago. Photo © Jaime Rojo

Sever focuses on the the Bush Cheney duo. Primary Flight Miami 2008 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The simple placement of a dollar sign was all this Street Artist needed to complete their portrait of George W. Bush. Photo © Jaime Rojo

President Obama’s image next to Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth is appropriated by Street Artist General Howe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One of the many Obama street art pieces from 2008, this one is similar to the ubiquitous Shepard Fairey images around at that time. © Jaime Rojo

Day 6: FINAL: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 27, 2010 Artists

This historic week for Brooklyn and the U.S. is being marked daily by New York Street Artist General Howe at the sites where the actual “Battle of Brooklyn” took place exactly 234 years earlier. Brooklyn Street Art is pleased to bring you daily updates on the plundering of boundaries between Street Art, performance art, and historical land-marking along with live social media updates by Kianga Ellis. All week we will travel around Brooklyn tracing the troop movements as General Howe stages small-scale battle scenes to connect us with history and possibly examine the childhood pastime of playing “war”.

“Largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War”

On this same ground, in these neighborhoods and streets that have names that are the same or similar to what they were 234 years ago today, the army of George Washington suffered it’s biggest loss.

Today the installations by Street Artist General Howe came to a booming crescendo as we raced after him across Brooklyn, erecting all manner of art pieces to commemorate the day when the American army was surrounded and nearly decimated. The largest battle fought in North America up to that point, the American Continental army suffered greatly – outnumbered, surrounded, and overpowered by the high-tech professional Brits and Hessians.

On this day, August 27^th, hundreds of soldiers were killed and hundreds more taken prisoner down to the Wallabout Bay (Navy Yard). During the night on the 29th the remaining Patriots escaped across the river by boat to Manhattan while the Brits hunkered down only a few hundred yards away.

© Jaime Rojo

General Howe: Greenwood Cemetery Area. The Battle Of Brooklyn begins here in a watermelon . Below the Cemetery and The Red Line Inn there was a watermellon patch. The Britsh soldiers were hungry and stop to eat. The Patriots saw them and fired on them and the rest of the war unfolded from here (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe describes August 27th:

The Action:

With an outstanding flanking maneuver begun the previous day, the British outsmart the American defense. Simultaneously, full-blown combat begins near a tavern close to the Greenwood Cemetery. As fighting ensues, many Patriot soldiers flee across the Gowanus Creek to a fortified location in Brooklyn Heights.

The Maryland 400 stay behind to hold off the British while their American comrades escape. A crucial battle takes place at the Vechte house, a farmhouse now known as the Old Stone House located in modern-day Park Slope. Many Patriot soldiers make it to safety thanks to this dedicated unit from Maryland, but some Americans are killed and drowned by the British in the Gowanus Creek. By the end of this day, the largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War will be fought and conclude in a devastating defeat for the Americans. About 300 Patriot soldiers are killed and over 1,000 captured. On the night of August 29, 1776, General George Washington personally leads an astonishing evacuation of the entire American army across the East River to Manhattan.

The Landscape: Greenwood Cemetery, Crown Heights, Prospect Park, Park Slope, Gowanus and Brooklyn Heights

General Howe: Americans retreated across the Gowanus and had to swim since the bridge was set on fire causing many soldiers to perish by drowning (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

Gowanus Canal. Brooklyn, NY (© Jaime Rojo)

At The Old Stone House the “Maryland 400” defended from this position and distracted the British while Patriots fled across the Gowanus for safety. General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

The actual Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. NYC (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe. (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe:The Corner of Atlantic Ave and Court St. in Brooklyn is a former location of a fort where General George Washington was observing how the Battle of Brooklyn was unfolding (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis) (subject hashtag “#RevWar” if you like)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

Day 5: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 26, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

20,000 Flanking Almost Every Side on the Eve of Battle

Today Street Artist General Howe installed soldiers at the Jamaica Pass (Evergreen Cemetery) where only 5 Patriots had been stationed to guard and were captured by the original General Howe’s forces, who had marched up the Kings Highway. And you thought that Kings Highway was just a subway stop on the D train on the way to the beach. In fact, Washington’s troops were becoming surrounded on all sides except the water.

Things start to get bad for everyone right about now. ” the people of Long Island were caught in a maelstrom between the two armies–their houses, fields, and gardens burned or pillaged by one side or the other. As the Provincial Congress finally took drastic action to starve Howe’s forces, the local farmers had been allowed to keep only a bare minimum of food, while the rest of their crops were destroyed.”*

“The Evergreen” Cemetery (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe explains what took place:

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Battle-26-August-MAP

The Action: With tension and anticipation rising, approximately 9,000 Patriot soldiers stand guard at several natural access points to the villages of Brooklyn. The British army begins a covert attack by flanking the Americans on their left side by traveling east to the Jamaica Pass, near modern-day Broadway Junction. With surprising ease, 20,000 British soldiers advance through the Jamaica Pass prepared to overwhelm the Americans by morning.

The Landscape: Park Slope and Broadway Junction/Cemetery of the Evergreens

General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis) (subject hashtag “#RevWar” if you like)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

* Quote from The Battle for New York The city at the heart of the American Revolution by Barnet Schecter

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

Day 4: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 25, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Battle-Brooklyn-August-25

“Consolidation of allies”

Today we traveled with General Howe within Red Hook to recall and honor the skirmishes and dead that began to pile up; also to stuff papers with proclamations by the actual General Howe in Park Slope. That political animal, the British General Howe whom our intrepid street artist has taken his name from, used propaganda in this handbill to try to convince new Americans living in Long Island to switch it up and be nice subjects of the King of England. In his handbill, he promised that all would be forgiven, generous General that he was;

Twisting their status as freedom lovers into dolts who had been duped, he offered those who were ” forced into rebellion, that on delivering themselves up at the head quarters of the army, they will be received as faithful subjects; have permits to return peaceably to their respective Dwellings, and meet with full protection for their persons and property.”*

Nice, right? Well don’t be so quick to judge because Mr. General absorbed the militia from four Kings County (Brooklyn) towns. Oh, snap! Brother’s got a silver tongue!

General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

General Howe the Street Artist explains what was happening August 25th:

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Battle-25-August-MAP

The Action: General Howe releases a proclamation as a hand bill soliciting support for the British in their pursuit to reclaim the colonies. Howe entreats both Loyalists and slaves who are promised freedom in exchange for fighting on the British side. German soldiers, hired by the British, arrive to assist in the war. Patriot soldiers from Manhattan and New Jersey continue to flow into Fulton Ferry to reinforce the American forces in Brooklyn.

The Landscape: Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Park Slope

General Howe’s gentle parody of himself shows his soldiers on a log of wood against a graffitied corrugated metal fence with razor wire. This nested self referential paste up is next to the proclamation by the original General Howe. Confused yet? (© Jaime Rojo)

“Read all about it! Todays’ insert tells how to surrender to the King!” General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

Sometimes irony is serendipity. General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn-Street-Art-WEB-HoweProclamation-1

* Quote from The Battle for New York The city at the heart of the American Revolution by Barnet Schecter

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis) (subject hashtag “#RevWar” if you like)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

Day 3: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 24, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

“American Forces Dig In While Quietly Circled”

Today we followed the General to Park Slope to stage some skirmishes on the hill as a sense of doom settled in. It wasn’t just the gray rainy miasma that cloaked Brooklyn today, or the giant leafy pumpkin plants that hovered over the mini-troops, but it was General Howe’s descriptions of how the Patriots nervously tried to fortify positions while the British began to appear in new locations all the time, as they began to make their path toward the elevated hills of “The Heights” to look down upon the land.

General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

Not only that but Washington wrote in a letter today to Putnam (his man in command) that he was pretty ticked off about the way some of the trigger-happy fools in the Patriots crew had the bad habit of shooting willy-nilly in an undisciplined way all over the place, sometimes just for the hell of it. If you read The Battle for New York The city at the heart of the American Revolution by Barnet Schecter, you’ll find that George hated horsing around with guns because he thought it was wasteful of valuable bullets and distracting for everybody, “as we know not the hour of the enemy’s approach to our lines but have every reason to apprehend that it will happen sudden & violent, whenever attempted; we shall have our men so scattered & (more then probable) without ammunition, that the consequences must prove fatal to us.”

General Howe talks about what happened on August 24th:

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Battle-24-August-MAP

The Action: Plagued by second thoughts about General Howe’s strategy, Washington reshuffles the command in Brooklyn putting the popular Israel Putnam in command. However, “Old Put” is ill equipped both experientially and temperamentally for the task. Among the American forces digging in for whatever is to come are the Maryland 400 comprised of six companies of soldiers from Maryland. This group of 400 will be the last soldiers to hold the line during the Battle of Brooklyn, providing cover while the rest of the Americans retreat.

The Landscape: Park Slope

A new wheat-paste by General Howe looks a lot like a coloring book page, while a strategically placed feather is placed over a bit of vulgar language. (© Jaime Rojo)

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis) (subject hashtag “#RevWar” if you like)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

Day 2: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 23, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, On the Street

“Gen. Washington Assesses Threats”

Not much of a ground battle in Red Hook and Flatbush Pass today, as Street Artist General Howe staged battles where Patriot troops first began seeing the arriving British, who were well equipped with better technology. As they encounter one another, almost by chance, minor skirmishes occur on this day in 1776. Ironically, the majority of deaths are because of faulty equipment, including cannons that misfire and kill Patriots.

General Howe explains what happened on August 23rd:

The Action: General George Washington and his army are uncertain of how and when the British will attack. Some minor skirmishes take place in the area of the Flatbush Pass. Patriot soldiers in Red Hook exchange cannon fire with British war ships. Washington fears that Howe will move his naval fleet upriver, blocking off escape routes north. Few perish on this day. The fatalities and injuries of Patriot soldiers that do occur result from the misuse of their own arsenal.

The Landscape: Red Hook and Flatbush Pass (Prospect Park)

General Howe. The majority of fatalities and injuries of Patriot soldiers that do occur result from the misuse of their own arsenal. (© Jaime Rojo)

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

DAY 1: General Howe’s “Battle of Brooklyn 2010”

August 22, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

“His Majesty’s Forces Arrive”

To begin the week the General went down to the waterfront where Staten Island connects to Brooklyn with New York’s youngest bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. This narrow pass through which all ships must go to get into New York City was the shore where over 20,000 British soldiers arrived today.

General Howe explains the events of this day thusly:

The Action: Before dawn on August 22, 1776, thousands of British soldiers land on the shores of Brooklyn, known then as Long Island. The British immediately control the entire coast from where the Verrazano Bridge is located today to Jamaica Bay. American loyalists by the hundreds welcome the large, bright-red mass of British soldiers. Aware that the long anticipated invasion had begun, Patriot riflemen withdraw into the hills burning fields and killing livestock as they flee. British General William Howe, Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in America, orders his troops to head north toward the Flatbush Pass, located in modern-day Prospect Park.

The Landscape: Dyker Beach Park, Fort Hamilton Park, Coney Island and Flatbush Pass (Prospect Park)

Amazingly, the history books remark on how the British soldiers were shocked by the fruitful bounty of food they discovered on the shoreline when they arrived in 1776 – and today’s installation reveals that it is currently apple season at the same location. Looking at these soldiers, the term “Big Apple” comes to mind. General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

Pointing out to the Atlantic Ocean at an incoming ship, this soldier discovers Marty Markowitz has put up a sign of welcome. General Howe (© Jaime Rojo)

While based on historical fact, the installations inject improvisational touches from an active childhood imagination. Here General Howe fashions a pizza box as a ship with sails on Coney Islands’ beach. (© Jaime Rojo)

This six-day event is shared live with the public complete with historical quotes, the General’s musings, and twitpics by Kianga Ellis on

Twitter (www.twitter.com/kiangaellis) (subject hashtag “#RevWar” if you like)

and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com/user/kiangaellis)

>>>>>>>>><><><><><>>><><><>><>><<<>>><<>

See our interview with General Howe, “WAR ON APATHY” on The Huffington Post

Link to other days in the Battle of Brooklyn – just click the date.

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