The City of Troy's harassment of The Sanctuary for Independent Media has created an urgent need to raise funds for building improvements: if you can manage it, please make a secure online financial contribution!
If you prefer to send a check or money order, make it payable to "The Sanctuary for Independent Media" and send it to us at:
PO Box 35
Troy NY 12181
Thanks for your support!
The bulk of our support comes from volunteer labor plus hundreds of small (and some large) individual donations. Thank you! We also receive contributions from these organizations:
The New York State Music Fund
The Stewart's Foundation
The Sanctuary for Independent Media, closed by the City of Troy on March 11 in an action currently under investigation by the New York Civil Liberties Union, re-opened on Saturday, April 26, 2008 with a celebration featuring the
inauguration of a major traveling art exhibit, "An Atlas of Radical Cartography," at 6 PM, followed at 8 PM by the Capital Region premiere of noted New York City-based jazz vocalist Fay Victor and her ensemble.
The opening of “An Atlas of Radical Cartography,” a new gallery show curated by Lize Mogel and former Capital Region resident Alexis Bhagat, took place from 6-8 PM on Saturday, April 26, 2008 in the Underground Gallery at The Sanctuary for Independent Media (3361 6th Avenue in north Troy) and runs through June 14, 2008. The exhibit will be open to the public an hour before, during and an hour after events at The Sanctuary for Independent Media.
"An Atlas of Radical Cartography" is a traveling gallery show based on a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites to social change. The exhibition, which has been staged at galleries from coast-to-coast, is complemented by a boxed set of essays and reproductions of each map in the show.
Hudson Mohawk Indymedia has produced a definitive account of the whirlwind of events surrounding Wafaa Bilal's controversial art exhibit, "Virtual Jihadi."
"Art ≠ Terrorism" goes beyond the sound bites to find out what happened when an Iraqi artist came to Troy, NY only to be censored--not once, but twice.
First, Wafaa Bilal was chased off campus after his artwork was mis-characterized as terrorist propaganda by undergraduate bloggers.
When the exhibition was given refuge by The Sanctuary for Independent Media, the city government responded by shutting down the space.
An art installation closed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on March 5 was shut down by the City of Troy the morning of March 11, a day after it re-opened at The Sanctuary for Independent Media.
