As New Yorkers flock to the polls amidst a flurry of “Get Out the Vote” campaigns, many of them celebrity-driven, we’re here to tell you about a street-savvy group called The Wide Awakes. They are artists and activists who take their name and inspiration from an 1860 abolitionist group, with an eye toward promoting voting rights while fostering “civic joy.”

Artist Hank Willis Thomas learned about the 1860 group after Googling the word “woke.” He read about their lively torchlight parades around Manhattan, full of fireworks and music, and decided that he and his friends and fellow artists should revive the movement. He gathered them in his studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they agreed to do the usual protest-y things: marching, making public art, putting up billboards around the country with sayings like, "All Lies Matter." The group has also staged colorful public processions under the rubric, “Joy is a form of resistance.”

Specifically civic joy, as Wide Awake member Claudia Peña explained: “Civic joy plays a role in having folks engaged and participating in what’s going on around them. Specifically, registering to vote and actually submitting your vote. And folks that are not eligible to do so encouraging others to do it.”

Though the term functions largely as an inspiring abstraction, the group’s program is pragmatic. “A small act of civic joy might be assisting a parent fill out their ballot or doing the translations, or whatever is needed,” Peña said. “A big act of civic joy would be running for office or working on someone’s campaign.”

The approach makes the group somewhat distinctive: denouncing social wrongs while announcing ways to correct them by working within the system.

“We are the system,” Thomas contends. “So for us to try to tear it apart doesn’t quite make sense. We can change it — and that’s what we plan to do. What artists do is create and they channel energy, whether negative or positive, and transcends all barriers.”

The original Wide Awakes of 1860 were a raucous group of Abraham Lincoln supporters. They were mechanics, clerks and farmers, and mostly young. They supported the Union and were fed up with corrupt accommodations to the abomination of slavery. They wore oilcloth caps and capes, which protected them from the leaky kerosene torches they carried overhead.

Thomas was taken in by these and other particulars when he read a New York Times article from the time that breathlessly described a night-time march by the group through Lower Manhattan.

“Brilliantly gleam the many-colored, fiery lamp-writings in front of the various theatres and concert halls,” they reported. “Proudly flap the Lincoln and Hamlin banners.”

Thomas said he was impressed by the Wide Awakes’ focus on electoral politics. “They really drove the election campaign, including ushering Abraham Lincoln into the White House and changing the world forever through their adamant insistence on emancipation,” he said.

That gave him and his group an idea. “We thought it would be fitting, in this year of 2020 with so much radical change and great awakening, to create an event in memoriam and salute to this emancipation movement,” said Thomas.

This past October 6th, on the 160th anniversary of the original Wide Awakes march, the group held their own procession that started in Harlem, wound through Times Square and Washington Square Park, and ended at Federal Hall on Wall Street. The marchers jammed to live music and vogued in Mylar capes festooned with the original Wide Awakes symbol: a pair of large, open eyes.

Note: the group is offering virtual events this coming week:

  • Starting at Midnight, November 4th: Fridman Gallery and the Wide Awakes will launch a 24-hour broadcast promoting civic engagement through art, live sounds, and moving images. With performance art, music, and joy, the virtual gallery will create a container for complex emotions, fear, and trauma, post elections. The Gallery will be live on Fridman's website. 
  • On Election Day itself: For Freedoms, a group associated with The Wide Awakes, will be hosting a Global Meditation Series. In this time of heightened anxiety, frustration, fear and loss, co-founder Michelle Woo, artist Tony Patrick, Earthways Minister Miguel Rivera, Pivot Coach Elaine Porcher, and Zen Buddhist Nun Sr. Peace will lead participants to breathe, connect, and care for one another. The meditation will focus on the theme of resilience, and will start at 4 p.m. at this zoom link.