Projects

The Davis Square Tiles Project

In 1980, Jackson Gregory and Joan Wye of the Belfast Bay Tile Works worked with children aged five to thirteen at Somerville's Powderhouse Community School to create 249 tiles that were later installed in the Davis Square T stop. This project collects the personal histories of the people who made these tiles thirty years ago. 

There are plans to add new public transit stops in Somerville soon. We decided to collect these stories as a way of bringing the voices of the people who lived in Somerville at the time that the earlier stop was opened into the discussion of how the these new stops will affect the community. 

Visit DavisSquareTilesProject.com to see the tiles and participate in the project.

The Davis Square Tiles Project is a collaboration between The Action Mill and the Think Tank that is yet to be named. 

Enough Fear

The Enough Fear campaign is an international effort to prevent war between the US and Iran. Working with bloggers and allies in Iran, we are developing ways for Americans and Iranians to work together for peace.

We started out in 2006 collecting photos of Americans and Iranians on the Enough Fear website to demonstrate our solidarity in this cause. Over 450 photos from both countries have been collected so far.

In late 2007, the Enough Fear campaign began holding a series of events in public spaces in the US where people are invited to use iconic, old-fashioned red phones to talk directly to volunteers in Iran. This campaign has been covered extensively in both the US and Iran, and was the subject of a New Yorker article. Phone calls have been made from public spaces in Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Seattle, and Ithaca, NY. For more information on this campaign go to EnoughFear.org.

Turn Your Back on Bush

Launched as the final results were being tallied on the night of the 2004 presidential election, Turn Your Back on Bush began as a call for a symbolic direct action to challenge the President’s claim to a mandate on Inauguration Day. Soon after launching the site, we had interest from people wanting to organize their communities to participate across the country.

Our work included recruiting and training state organizers who brought thousands of citizens from 47 states and also developed their own media and fundraising efforts with our training and support. We also built alliances with other groups, like Iraq Veterans Against the War, to help them amplify their voices at this critical time.

We organized through the website, email, conference calls, text messaging systems, postcards and direct meetings with other groups, and trained a 15-person all-volunteer staff to coordinate the action. On inauguration day, 5000 people participated along the parade route, and simultaneous actions were held in Brussels, London and Mexico City.

Coverage of the action started months before inauguration day, with articles about local organizers, coverage by the AP and CNN, and a mention on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. We embedded reporters on buses coming from around the country, and wound up with hundreds of articles about participants in the weeks preceding and following the action. The Onion parodied the action on the front page of the following week’s paper. As Organizing Director for the action, Jethro provided commentary about inauguration day on the BBC.

Turn Your Back on Bush started with two people and a website, but the final action would not have been possible without the help of Emilie Surrusco and Ray Abernathy and Associates, who managed our press relations and donated office space, SmartMeme, which helped us with strategic planning, messaging, and organizing, the hundreds of volunteers who took this idea and made it theirs, and especially our volunteer staff in DC. You can learn more about the Turn Your Back on Bush action at www.TurnYourBackonBush.org

Social Media for Social Change

Social Media for Social Change is a design research project that investigates how networked technologies and social media may be used to create hybrid public spaces — bridging the physical and the virtual — where civil discourse and meaningful democratic participation are facilitated, organized, and nurtured at a grass-roots level. There are many assumptions about how the internet and social media facilitate democracy and interaction. This project aims to break down some of these assumptions and test them out in controlled environments so that we can better understand how to create space for real civic discourse. 

SMSC is a collaboration between The Action Mill and faculty (Professor Jeremy Beaudry) and students (Ona Krass, Hunter Augeri, and Alie Thomer) from the College of Media and Communication at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Funding for SMSC is provided by The Philadelphia Applied Research Project.

Project website: teach.boxwith.com/socialmedia

America Stands Watch

America Stands Watch was an anti-war action designed to remove the barriers between the public and Congress by bringing citizens inside the House and Senate chambers on the day that the Congress reconvened after their summer break in 2007. Once we were inside, a group of Iraq war veterans gave a signal, and the participants rose up together and stood watch over Congress to let them know that we expect them to take action to bring this war to an end. You can find more information at AmericaStandsWatch.org.

Action Storm

The Action Mill is committed to keeping our ideas fresh and sharing what we are doing with our allies and supporters. We engage in weekly brainstorming sessions to build our creative action muscles. These "action storms" lead to ideas for actions and potential campaigns, ongoing efforts and work with clients and collaborators.