Proclaiming, gesticulating, cajoling and even flailing, poet Pamela Sneed chanted a litany of fear, strength and tragedy, but ultimately admonished the cheering crowd to act with the words “Always Uprising.” The J20 event at the Whitney Museum, organized by Occupy Museums and Megan Heuer, Director of Public Programs and Public Engagement at the museum, offered a passionate alternative to the morbid events taking place simultaneously on the steps of the capitol on what Noah Fisher of Occupy Museums referred repeatedly to as “this Horrible day.” On a gray morning with intermittent showers, the Whitney became a wide umbrella shielding a vibrant and motley crew of cultural actors and activists in what is becoming an ever widening definition of art and artistic practice including environmentalists, low-income housing activists and community organizers, and advocates for the differently-abled who stood for a few minutes each to speak to the standing-room only crowd in the Hess Family Theater. Some plans were laid, narratives of both betrayal and progress were related, and a forward momentum and the groundwork for action through artistic channels were laid in amorphous but possibly practicable terms.

While the initial intent of J20 was a strike in which all museums would close in a nationwide demonstration of defiance against a bigoted, sexist and anti-intellectual administration taking power, the Whitney offered pay-what-you-wish entry and a venue for what could only really be called a group-therapy session to deal with a surreal transition in American and world politics. The speakers fell into roughly three categories, all co-mingled. The first were speakers who sought to verbalize the collective sense of anxiety and anger and by expressing it artfully, to expiate it and move the crowd briskly along the stops of denial, anger, bargaining, depression to acceptance (and then change). Pamela Sneed fell into this group with her plaintive and desperate petition to the crown not to allow this political set-back to reach catastrophic proportions, while Martha Rosler spoke of struggle to regain mental composure after being “just a little thunderstruck by an orange comet” and Aruna D’Souza plainly stated “everything we fear has already happened.”

A second varietal were activists who presented firm data, often describing successful collective action taken as well as cautionary anecdotes of failures precipitated by the status quo, which will become de rigeur in this new regime. Alicia Boyd of Movement to Protect the People described her ongoing battle to keep Crown Heights and the areas around Prospect Park accessible to low income Brooklynites and maintain a decent standard of living by requiring height restrictions on housing built around the park. She called out the Brooklyn Museum for its real estate entanglements and demanded that all museums be responsive to the need of local communities irrespective of median income. Kim Fraczek of the Sane Energy Project provided the most cringeworthy moment of the event, looking defiantly into the crowd and challenging the Whitney to divest itself of patronage from the fossil fuel industry. She explained the campaign she had participated in raising awareness of the dangerous natural gas pipeline running directly under the museum’s front steps which had been the target of local residents and activists alike. Their requests for dialogue had been flatly rejected by the museum administration. As she stood in the auditorium, listing the museum’s intransigencies, there was a satisfying sense of arrival, ironically caused by the Inauguration.

Avram Finkelstein and Dread Scott, who were among the planners of the event, characterized the third subset of speakers by suggesting ways forward. Scott immediately drew acclamation by walking to the front of the room carrying a poster with the words “BY READING THIS, YOU AGREE TO OVERTHROW DICTATORS”, implying there is no alternative at this point. Reminding those present that Nixon was re-elected by a landslide and still was removed from power within a year-and-a-half of that show of public support, he ended with “don’t wait until 2020.” Finkelstein talked about his own philosophy as a founding member of Silence=Death Collective and the artists’ collective Gran Fury: to avoid goals and instead pursue activism as a life-long occupation. This would prevent the normalization of dangerous, censorious, and exclusionary practices and generate a corps of activists always nimble and prepared to deal with the curve-balls tossed by an unpredictable despot. Leading the chorus of the group Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter who recited the names of police-murdered black women, Simone Lee made a simple but effective request of the crowd—simply start trusting black women.

Martha Rosler’s pronouncement “Thank you Whitney, fuck you Whitney,” were the final words, highlighting the contradictory nature of the presence of museum and artist in the context of activist politics. Many of the speakers decried the presence of patronage from wealthy individuals and corporations in the art world, a contradiction of philosophies for many artists that will be very difficult to change and has been the norm for the production of art objects for millennia. Laura Raicovich, President of the Queens Museum, and Carin Kuoni, Director of the Vera List Center, opening the program of speakers, pledged to support, promote and encourage the increased politicization of art, and the production of political art, but as with the entire political system, it is not the good intentions of galleries and curators in the art world that will effect any lasting change, it is the need to disseminate the ideas beyond the choir that was being preached to in a room on a rainy Friday afternoon at the Whitney Museum. A paradigm shift in the practices of artists and institutions away from capital will be the only way to generate truly collective art and promote a collective society, but even at this dreadful juncture in American history, after all the lessons of the 20th Century, is that what we want either?

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A few years ago, a prominent artist got herself invited to the audience of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. When its then host Jon Stewart started to warm up the crowd, our painter friend called out “The art world loves you, Jon” to which Mr. Stewart replied, “Oh, art has its own world, does it?”

This incident came to mind as I pondered how to respond to the J20 group’s call for “An Act of Noncompliance on Inauguration Day”. One thing no one wants on this dark day in history is any kind of divisiveness in how cultured, civilized people should oppose the coming mayhem, ineptitude and violation of rights and norms that promise to constitute US government over the next four years. Many artists and organizations I follow have responded positively to J20s defiant call for “No work, no school, no business”—kudos to them for their noble sentiment. Museums that have waived entrance fees as a gesture against “business as usual” deserve especial praise. The Whitney Museum is hosting an “Occupy Museums” event in solidarity with J20. But while there is absolutely nothing to disagree with in J20’s characterization of Trumpism—“a toxic mix of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, militarism, and oligarchic rule” – the thought does occur: On this of all days, did the art world have to do its own special thing?

Today is a day for mourning, tomorrow for action. I will be joining friends in New York Saturday to show solidarity with the Women’s March on DC. Although the president-elect has already indicated his intention to abolish the NEA and to eviscerate public broadcasting, a focus on women makes special sense in view of the vindictive and callous assaults on women’s rights and dignity that characterized the Trump campaign. To deflect in any way from that seems like letting off a few bazookas ahead of a pyrotechnic display.

In my view, protesters should be gathering their strength Friday, resting their voices and feet, and focusing with millions of Americans across all industrial sectors on tomorrow’s properly organized, media-savvy activity. The world will be counting the number of live bodies on the National Mall and sister sites across the country. Someone arrested in a spontaneous demonstration today won’t be there tomorrow. Hopefully, TV cameras will pick out some great placards, some of which have been made by artists like Andrea Champlin, pictured here, and James Esber, our cover artist this weekend. January 21 is a day when the efficacy of focused and inclusive protest can be measured: in the years ahead, we need all the focus and inclusivity that can be mustered.

A call for an art strike on a day when other sectors are not planning industrial action also puts out a strange message about art. It somehow implies that the victims of this strike will all be Ivanka Trumps who won’t be able to go out today and buy a Richard Prince. There is a whiff of the sentiment that art is frivolous: fiddling while Rome burns. In fact, a more likely victim of the strike is a protester revving up for tomorrow’s activities. In that spirit, artcritical salutes the sentiments of Galerie St. Etienne in their response to a survey at Hyperallergic magazine:

Galerie St. Etienne will remain open on January 20. Our current exhibition on American Artists and the Communist Party, installed just down the block from Trump Tower, is especially relevant in the wake of the election. As the administration takes a big step to the right, we stand committed to socially-conscious art. The works on display make it all too obvious that Depression-era inequities are no less rampant or socially destructive today.

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