Protests

  • Consumer Justice: Baltimore’s Buy Where You Can Work Campaign

    The 1930s in Baltimore, MD, can be characterized as a watershed for the freedom movement. Baltimore was the nation’s seventh-largest city, heavily industrialized, and there was a long history of labor strife. The city was a border city within a border state, resembling a northern industrial city with Black people enjoying more rights than in the south; however, Jim Crow was still a reality.

  • A Soundtrack for Success: How Music Fueled the American Civil Rights Movement

    “We sing the freedom songs today for the same reason the slaves sang them, because we too are in bondage and the songs add hope to our determination that ‘We shall overcome, Black and white together, We shall overcome someday’... These songs bind us together, give us courage together, help us to march together.” - Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. 

  • The Struggle for Accessibility: Disability Rights at UW-Madison

    UW-Madison's path to equal opportunity has been shaped by resilience, from the early struggles of students in the 1940s to grassroots efforts to establish accessible resources for students. While significant strides have been made, the history of disability rights at UW-Madison portrays that the fight for inclusion and accessibility is not over.

  • “Soapbox” in Review

    From September 2023 to December 2024, Axell Boomer hosted a radio show titled "Soapbox" on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student radio station, WSUM 91.7FM Madison. Using songs as primary sources or thematic markers, he developed the show to explore protest movements throughout history and the music genres that communicated their goals.

  • Syncopating Survival

    In music, syncopation can be understood as a site of invention, an off-beat from the given beat of an arrangement. For example, if a piece of music were in a 2/4 time signature, a syncopated beat would be an experimental site of play that precedes, follows, or interrupts the given two beats of the measure. In a conversation with the scholar and musician Dr. Kwami Coleman, the idea of syncopation was expanded to “something new.”

  • More United States Protests posts
  • More Wisconsin Protests posts