Refuse & Resist! - Campaigns

Campaigns

R&R! organized against many forms of censorship. For example, when in 1989 the U.S. Congress adopted the so-called Jesse Helms Amendment, which required the National Endowment for the Art not to fund "obscene or indecent" art, R&R! organized both the "Jesse Helms Degenerate Art Show" and the "New Blasphemy Forum" in New York City as forums for artists to express opposition to the new restrictions. Likewise, R&R! came to the defense of artists, such as Ice T, whose art was the object of censorship.

R&R! opposed the invasion of privacy and government surveillance. For example, when the 1990 Census was conducted, R&R! organized public demonstrations across the U.S., in which census forms were burned in protest of what they saw as intrusive questions asked on the forms.

R&R! upheld reproductive freedom for women and posed the slogan "Abortion on Demand & without Apology!" In this activity, they frequently defended physicians and women's health clinics. In response to the judicial opinions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and Rust v. Sullivan, R&R! deliberately disrupted two sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which was the first time that court had ever experienced public protest. In related events, activists occupied the offices of U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde and the National Right to Life Committee, both whom opposed abortion. During the 1990s, R&R! were vocal and uncompromising opponents of Operation Rescue, a group known for staging protests and civil disobedience against abortion clinics. Refuse & Resist! also co-initiated the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers in 1996, which has since become an annual event.

R&R! supported the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an early member, who was accused and convicted of murder in 1982. Citing suppressed and allegedly falsified evidence presented against Mumia, R&R! joined with many others in exposing his trial and conviction as political persecution and a vendetta conducted by the Philadelphia Police Department. R&R! was active in the international "Free Mumia" campaign. in 1995, R&R initiated a series of "Philly Freedom Summers" in which students and other youth converged in Philadelphia, to raise public awareness and support for Abu-Jamal and for a new trial. It was during the first summer that they spoke out against Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who signed a death warrant for Abu-Jamal that June. That August the execution order was stayed, but Abu-Jamal remains in prison pending the outcome of his appeal.

R&R! supported the rights of all immigrants, raising the slogan "We Are All Illegals!" Activists often protested at the offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and at the United States Coast Guard base in Miami, Florida, in opposition to the return of Haitian refugees back to Haiti. In Texas, activists were arrested for climbing the fences of a 'secret' INS detention facility and exposing its activities.

R&R! organized the first National Conference Against the War on Drugs. They revealed photographs of alleged "boot camps" supposedly being used to incarcerate youths as punishment for what they felt were victimless drug crimes.