Artist Call To Action: Part 3
Training for Transformation: How Artists Can Organize Beauty into Power
July 8, 2025
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston
This is a year that answers.
We launched this blog series to respond to the acute political and social threats facing our communities and our democracy.
In Part I, we issued a call for artists to come together in the face of a resurgent authoritarianism that manipulates discontent, fuels hatred, and deepens inequality.
In Part II, we lifted up coalition as the antidote to division, reminding ourselves that if isolation is the tool of the oppressor, then solidarity is the weapon of the people.
Now, in Part III, we take the next step: training.
Introducing: Beauty Salons
Launching July 25, 2025
Beauty Salons is a five-part training series for artists ready to meet this moment — not only with courage, but with skill. Over five consecutive sessions (ending August 15), we’ll equip Los Angeles-based artists with essential community organizing tools to build beauty, power, and solidarity across neighborhoods, practices, and disciplines.
Why “Beauty Salons”?
We chose this name intentionally — not as an aesthetic flourish, but as a political metaphor.
In Black, queer, and immigrant communities across history, beauty salons have been more than places of adornment. They’ve been sites of sanctuary, organizing, mutual aid, and kinship. Places where people come to be seen — fully — and prepare themselves to face the world with pride and purpose.
We believe art should do the same.
Beauty is not a luxury. It’s a declaration of existence — a counterpunch to erasure, a balm and a battle cry. In a time when democracy is under attack, beauty is a form of resistance — and the salon becomes a training ground.
Organizing the Organizers: What Artists Must Learn Now
The authoritarian playbook depends on disconnection. It thrives when people don’t know each other, trust each other, or feel responsible for each other. It needs us fragmented — and in the U.S., that fragmentation includes the arts.
Even justice-minded artists can get trapped in the cycle of individualism. We chase recognition and funding, often at the expense of collective purpose.
Beauty Salons is our attempt to reverse that tide.
If we want to help shape a new narrative — one rooted in liberation, equity, and care — we need more than vision. We need infrastructure. Tools. Allies. Deep relationships.
That’s where organizing comes in.
Art + Organizing: Not a New Idea
Think of the Harlem Renaissance — not as an isolated cultural moment, but as a precursor to political alignment. Artists like Langston Hughes, Augusta Savage, and Aaron Douglas didn’t just create beauty. They joined forces with labor movements and working-class struggles in the decades that followed.
Transformation Arts draws direct inspiration from that legacy.
A century ago, thinkers like Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson believed that art could shape national consciousness — and that organized artists could help deliver transformation, not just inspiration.
What to Expect: Workshop Overview
We’re honored to partner with Marcus Hatcher, a 16-year Labor Studies instructor at Los Angeles Trade Tech College, who brings decades of experience in coalition-building, worker education, and grassroots organizing.
Each session runs ~2.5 hours and focuses on:
1. The History and Strategy of Social Movements
From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Standing Rock to the George Floyd uprisings — learn how artists have shaped public imagination and helped shift the political landscape.
2. Principles of Community Organizing
Understand the mechanics of change: power-mapping, base-building, one-on-one conversations, campaign planning.
3. Building Relationships Across Difference
Learn how to bridge silos across race, class, gender, and discipline to build coalitions strong enough to withstand pressure.
4. Messaging for the Movement
Develop narratives that invite solidarity, not spectacle — and tools to translate complex issues into emotionally resonant stories.
5. From Theory to Practice
Put it all into action through real-time fieldwork with community partners. This final session marks the beginning of our long-term capacity building.
Why Now? Because It Works.
Political scientists have studied how authoritarian regimes rise and fall — and found that organized, nonviolent resistance works.
Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard professor and expert on civil resistance, analyzed over 100 years of global data and found that it takes just 3.5% of a population engaging in sustained, nonviolent resistance to topple an authoritarian regime.
Let that sink in: 3.5%. Not 30. Not 50.
That’s roughly 11.5 million people in the U.S.
Artists — with our visibility, creativity, and power to connect across boundaries — are uniquely positioned to help spark and sustain that 3.5%.
We must organize ourselves to help organize others.
Let us not mince words. The stakes are enormous.
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has rolled out a systematic assault on democratic institutions, human rights, and the very idea of a shared national story. We’ve seen mass federal layoffs, state-sanctioned kidnappings of immigrants, book bans, transphobic policy attacks, and a steady drumbeat of violent, dehumanizing rhetoric.
The 1930s saw a similar crisis: economic collapse, rising authoritarianism, and a deep hunger for belonging. The Nazi Party filled that void with a message of hate. We must fill it with something else. Something better. Something rooted in truth, inclusion, and care.
What We Hope to Build
Beauty Salons is just the beginning.
We aim to seed a long-term collective of artists committed to working in solidarity with immigrant communities, labor unions, tenants’ rights groups, and other grassroots movements across Los Angeles.
We envision:
Artist-organizers supporting direct actions with sound, visuals, and storytelling
Creative interventions alongside labor actions, tenants’ unions, and immigrant defense efforts
Mutual aid projects co-created with neighbors
A new culture of creative solidarity, rooted in equity, joy, and deep connection
Join Us
Let’s train. Let’s build. Let’s act. Together.
Beauty Salons workshop series (July 25–August 15, 2025).
📍 Location: DMST Atelier, 4614 W Washington Blvd., Los Angeles
In this time of fear and fragmentation, artists can help bring us back to one another — not just with beauty, but with power.