FROM NEW YORK, IT’S… THE PENNIES!
The Prestigious Award in Protest Signage!
Once again, it’s time for the Pennies, the World’s Most Prestigious Award in Protest Signage!
The Pennies: Mightier than the sword! Defining Protest Signage since 2006!1
Mayday, 20025 in New York’s Foley Square must rank as the most outstanding event in generations, at least from the viewpoint of our Impartial Jury. At least since 1968 in Paris, the heyday of protest signage.
There may be correlation. Mai, ‘68 began as a protest against the unrelenting violence of the State—psychic as well as physical: the terrible massacre at Charonne, the savage repression of Muslims, crackdowns in the University. As today, so in 1968. The first forms of protest were an affirmation of the Right to Joy. The Impartial Jury wasn’t present at the onset of the French Revolution, but they’ve studied enough to know that in 1789, also, the same affirmations of a right to pleasure shocked the reactionaries, who could only process it as irrational: “Blood and death are a celebration to us.”2
Irrational? There were plenty of actors at Foley Square who shared that suspicion—you know, the type whose sole experience of mass resistance comes from books. Foley Square came across as a kind of ideological sandwich, with the stage and the fringes facing one another over the question, who best represented ideological purity and rational (i.e., strategic) motivation. At the back the Marxist purists:
facing off against the speaker’s platform struggling to affirm inclusiveness:
But as with most any sandwich, the meaty stuff was in the middle:
Nary a manufactured typographic sign, except, tellingly, for a clever hustler stamping protest buttons with pre-printed messages. We Are the Money!
And now… THE PENNIES!
The Practice-What-You-Preach Prize:
The WTF Award:
Those are the names of the martyrs of the Haymarket rally of 1886, whose convictions sparked the first Mayday—but you knew that.
The DCCC Tweedledeedee Prize:
The sign said the exact same thing on the other side. The bearer didn’t seem to get his own joke.
The Mini-Me Consolation Prize
also known as the Amateur Thanks-for-Trying Prize:
and
The Thanks-for-Trying-Artist-Thither-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-go-I Prize:
The Revolutionary Lip-Balm Prize:
The Efficiency Awards:
This young woman had a bag full of handmade posters that she switched one for the other.
and
The Multi-Culti Working-Class Spangles Award:
The Klutz Award:
This troupe of clowns was preparing to do a skit on Capitalism, and falling on their faces. Maybe next time instead they’ll plan a skit about capitalists falling on their faces.
The Weird-is-Not-Where-You-Think-it-Is Award:
This participant was, as she explained, referencing some adventure in Florida involving an acorn and a cop. You can’t make this stuff up:
The These are too Good to Sort out Awards:
And finally,
The Grand Welcome Home Award:
Doan unda-estimate tha powa of ohganizing right naow in dis mowment!
Ever!
An’ Live from Noo Yawk! It’s da Pennies!
WOID XXIV-44
May 3, 2025
“From Vienna, Austria... it's THE PENNIES!”, WOID XIX-33 (May, 2010); https://theorangepress.com/woid/woid19/woidxix33.html; “From Paris! C'est... Les Pennies!”, WOID XXI-29 (February 23, 2017); https://theorangepress.com/woid/woid21/woidxxi29.html; “From New York! It’s The Pennies!”, WOID XXIII-31 (October 21, 2023) https://theorangepress.substack.com/p/from-new-york-its-the-pennies; et alia.
« Le sang, la mort, sont pour nous une fête. » Jean-Gabriel Peltier, « Le sang, la mort, sont pour nous une fête. » Histoire de l'année 1789," in Chansonnier historique du XVIIIe siècle, ed. Émile Raunié (Paris: A Quantin, 1880), p. 342.