Benjamin Shepard

Peter Brooke, in his book The Empty Space, teaches that a theater is just that -- empty, devoid, even -- until people create in it. As beautiful as that is (and as much as those involved with this event may agree) there is a harsher, far less poetic battle for...

Throughout the weeks spent planning for the anti-austerity protest planned for May 12, I wondered how the ambitious plans, including teach-ins, unpermitted marches and mass civil disobedience, would play out in the streets of New York City. Immigrant groups planned to march, joined by housing and public health...

I work with a group called Times Up! Toward the end of our recent Pies of March ride, we engaged in a pie fight at the house of one of our political opponents. As the ride ended, there were some negative tweets about our tactics. It made me wonder whether...

Anthropologist Jeff Ferrell has suggested that while the term hegemony is often an overused term, when one talks about influence of the automobile on U.S. political economy, energy, and urban policy, such a description does not feel unreasonable. Cars dominate urban space in countless ways. In spite of this, the...

When Paul Revere sounded his bell to announce to Lexington Mass, all he had was his voice and his bell to sound the alarm: "The Patriots are coming!" In the case of the July 29, 2010, Paul Revere bike ride organized by Times Up!, a two-decade-old direct action environmental...