Like many workers in the U.S., artists often make ends meet in non-traditional and resourceful ways, holding multiple jobs, cycling in and out of roles, and engaging in artistic practice through self-employment. These ways of working in turn may limit artists' financial security and their ability to access workplace protections and employer benefits. They also make it difficult to identify artists in existing research. To better serve artists, we must see the full complexity and reality of how they earn a living and piece together support for their creative lives.

In order to meet the dire challenges that face us, social movements are going to need new and creative strategies. We are going to need groups that are willing to escalate and take risks. And when breakthrough “movement moments” arrive, we are going to need organizations nimble and adaptive enough to jump into the fray, heighten the impact of mass mobilizations and create mechanisms to help absorb the energy created.

“The date 13 May will be forever etched in my mind,” former Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode wrote in an article for The Guardian this past May. In the piece, Goode called on the city of Philadelphia to formally apologize for the infamous MOVE bombing that took place on May 13, 1985, which targeted the commune owned by members of the militant Black liberation group MOVE. “There can never be an excuse for dropping an explosive from a helicopter on to a house with men, women, and children inside and then letting the fire burn,” he wrote.