Protest has always been a great way to get your voice heard, to alert those in your community that something is going on that you don’t agree with. For the most part, protest means a group of folks holding signs and shouting out their message in unison. This can be pretty powerful on its own, but when folks with a message get creative and start to use other methods to get their point across it can be pretty inspirational!   A little over a week ago, here in New York City, a group joining in an effort to have their union recognized in their workplace took ideas of protest to this next level.

The Tenement Museum Union met at Chelsea Piers on March 4th to share their opinions, but they did so not as themselves but as famous characters from history related to their cause - like Emma Goldman and Abraham Lincoln. This was especially fitting as the Tenement Museum works to educate people on New York City’s immigrant history, as one of the protesters explains:

I have always been a fan of creative means of protest, and calling attention to a cause in a meaningful way, and the rest of the union members agreed that we should make our presence at the gala a theatrical one. Because there is a large degree of absurdity in a museum that celebrates the struggles of immigrants in the past misrepresenting and denying its own workers struggle for union recognition, we felt we could have some fun with our leafleting effort. Through an interactive and fanciful display about immigrants and labor struggles we wanted to make our message clear- That we are part of a proud tradition of workers organizing to improve their workplace, and that workers everywhere deserve the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining. [Tal Bar-Zemer]

Using old fashioned fashion to get an old fashioned message across in a fresh way = pretty cool!

to learn more about the efforts of the Tenement Museum Union.