I found today’s title photo years and years ago on the net. The little old lady’s tagging says: “Nazis are garbage. Believe me, I have experienced them myself.”

It is somewhat ironic that I now AM that old woman and can report that the experiences are no longer just in the past. How dreadful is that. Luckily there are plenty of people resisting.

German cartoonist Tobias Vogel, known under the tag name @Krieg Und Freitag, is in the middle of a fundraising campaign to support an organization that fights Nazis. (The name translates as War and Friday, and was coined when the artist looked for war and peace on his phone and mistyped Frieden – peace – as Friday.)

Vogel has created a signature collection of little stick people who comment on the travails of everyday life and politics online and with prints that can be purchased. He received multiple prizes, including the Grim Online Award, for his work across the last years.

Gallery exhibition of Tobias Vogel at Affenfaust

The current project raises money for a non-profit with the name of Kein Bock of Nazis (KBAN, No Desire for Nazis.) Since 2006 they support, network and inform adolescents and young adults on the topic of the extreme right, racism and the Neo-Nazi scene.

” In recent years, we have distributed hundreds of thousands of free youth magazines and more than one million information flyers. We organize concerts and protest actions, and we continuously provide initiatives, groups and individuals who are committed to fighting the right with information material, posters and stickers. Through our social media accounts, we help to mobilize protest actions. We finance our work exclusively through donations.”

Here is the idea: A little stick person appeared on social media with a sign: Stick-People Demonstration against Nazis – where are all the others?

For each $5 donation, one stick-person gets added to the group, and there will be a life session of the artist drawing all these “participants” across the span of several days in an art gallery, Affenfaust Gallery, in Hamburg. The drawings will be projected against the walls, and there is a live stream of the event at https://www.twitch.tv/affenfaustgalerie, starting on July 12, and the mural can be visited during the following week. (The name of the gallery is a pun: monkey’s fist refers to a nested knot used in merchant shipping to weigh down the sweatline during mooring of ships. They see themselves as knotting art and culture together creatively.)

Gallery at Paul Roosen Str.

So far, they have collected over 6000 “people” for the anti-Nazi demo, and I wonder if the artist will get severe tendonitis from drawing them all live. All proceeds go to the non-profit. I just marvel at the conceptual cleverness of having people create a visual mass, representing what it could look like if we all got our act together and ourselves out into the streets.

I contributed two litte stick-people at the link below, who I will never be able to identify, but then again that is a good thing during political demonstrations, ain’t it? https://www.betterplace.org/de/fundraising-events/47070-strichmenschen-demo-von-kriegundfreitag

Music today: The Revolution will not be televised – perfect call for action, and perfect foil for the fact that the stick-people WILL be televised.

From my Hamburg Series (2018) Seeing Strange. Those containers are water recycling plants in the harbor, colloquially know as rotten eggs. Wish Nazis old be described as a few rotten eggs, but there are just too many and counting…