Welcome to Stuytown! A neighbourhood with a rich history of protest: anti-segregation, anti-eviction, rallies for rent control. Stuytown continues to have an active culture of protesting. The Tenant Welcome package includes a collection of furniture and accompanying handbook. When read one way, the handbook outlines how the collection can be used as innocent furniture. In the middle, the handbook can be flipped inside out and becomes a protest manual, describing the many ways the system can be adapted to support all aspects of a protest: spectacle, acts of care, organizing, fundraising, direct action and publicity. It is formatted intentionally to be covert, so that its true purpose, to protest, remains a secret from “public safety”. The system can be used to occupy, barricade, educate, picket and care. It is flexible to be able to adapt to the nuance and specificity of future protests. Protesting is often a community activity: there is strength in numbers, and so the system can perform different functions when aggregated with others.
