When We Fight, We Win! | ¡Cuando luchamos, ganamos!
2016-2022
In 2016, the book WHEN WE FIGHT, WE WIN!: Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World was born through a collaboration between writer and activist Greg Jobin-Leeds (Author) and AgitArte (Art Direction/Editing). The book documents the lessons, themes, and creative strategies that have surfaced in social movements between 2000 and 2015 in the United States. Through a five year research and interview process with organizers across transformative movements, the book manifests in six chapters, highlighting six intersectional struggles in the US: LGBTQ liberation, the fight for public education, immigrant rights, the struggle for economic power of the 1%, and environmental justice. The artwork featured in the book creates a visual pulse elevating and connecting the stories, interviews and reflections that together proclaim the rallying cry: “When We Fight, We Win!”
THE CULTURAL TOUR + EXHIBITION
In 2017, the When We Fight, We Win! team launched a Cultural Tour highlighting the cultural and creative work in the book, as well as new work by AgitArte. The tour launched with a mural project in Chicago dedicated to Puerto Rican political prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, and culminated in New York City with the When We Fight, We Win! / ¡Cuando luchamos, Ganamos! exhibition.
Similar to the book, the When We Fight, We Win! / ¡Cuando Luchamos, Ganamos! exhibition features over 40 artists, cultural organizers and collectives whose work bolsters people’s movements and builds solidarity across place, culture and struggle. Moving from the page to the gallery walls, the exhibition provided space to share and interact with movement art in tactile and visceral ways, breaking the barriers of two dimensional form, to invite performance, moving image, installation, artwork used in direct actions, and collective art making. At the opening reception of the exhibition, AgitArte presented the inaugural performance of the End the Debt! Decolonize! Liberate Puerto Rico! Scroll.
THE PODCAST
When We Fight, We Win!: The Podcast reveals the stories behind the fight. And the wins! We’re here for everyone who’s ready to get a switch flipped in their brain. For everyone who’s ready to go from being an organizer in theory, to a transformative one in practice. Because every organizer started somewhere. The podcast launched in 2020 and completed three seasons of interviews, live episodes and music, as well as original artwork and illustrations of the Word of the Day segment for each episode.
