We have entered a critical era for storytelling in the streets, and we have a role to play in transforming our city and refusing authoritarian overreach. From No Kings marches and ICE watch groups to electing Zohran Mamdani, our movements are rising to the moment.
The Many Hands Workshop is a convergence space for NYC’s pro-democracy movements—serving as physical and social infrastructure for coordination. Beginning in February 2026, the Workshop will mobilize cultural workers, organizers, and communities in New York City to create visual and cultural interventions that resist authoritarianism and activate mass participation at moments of urgent political threat. Through shared production, community art builds, and training, we will build the cultural power needed to shape this moment and expand democratic possibility in NYC and beyond.
Convergence spaces help us take back the story from centrists, soothe internal tensions, and ignite hope when it barely exists. Anti-globalization movements used convergence spaces to challenge World Bank and IMF negotiations before the “Battle of Seattle.” In NYC, the climate justice movement used a convergence space for the 2014 People’s Climate March.
The Many Hands Workshop operationalizes this tradition as a staffed production and training hub led by a seasoned cohort of cultural workers who design, fabricate, and deploy visual strategies aligned with frontline organizing and mobilizations. The Workshop combines community making with coordinated planning, skill-sharing, and strategic facilitation—providing access to tools, materials, and production time needed to create banners, props, and other public-facing cultural interventions with clear purpose and public salience.
Many Hands Workshop begins as an eight-week pilot in NYC—skilling up and growing our movement ability to use art and culture to fortify and narrate our shared power and resistance to authoritarian over reach. The pilot headquarters will open a new front door to the movement, expanding networks of organizers, cultural producers, and everyday people to ignite visual interventions that strengthen our collective power in the months and years to come. By bringing infrastructure, training, and strategic cultural production under one roof, the Workshop strengthens cross-movement coordination, increases rapid-response capacity, and strengthens pro-democracy movements’ ability to shape popular understandings, clarify political demands, and show up powerfully in the streets and public imagination.
The winter is an important time to build the infrastructure in NYC that our frontline movements will need in the spring. During the initial pilot, the Workshop will provide targeted support to Hands Off and the New York Immigration Coalition, including:
Hands Off NYC community assembly line: Hand-produce signs and banners needed for the work of Hands Off NYC community groups and mobilizations.
Noncompliance fashion lab: Making shirts, tote bags and other apparel with communities for movement reach.
Tactical Spectacle Workshops: For performing artists and online content creators to create outreach and popular education tools.
Rapid response action: Centralized visual production and training support for mobilizations that emerge.
Borough-wide community distribution: Distributing literature, printed materials, hand-made visuals, and D.I.Y. kits for self-organized communities.
Skill shares and trainings: Training politically engaged artists in the design and technical skills needed to make their ideas into reality.
Our Values engage front line organizing and grassroots intersectionality, ecosystem support, and building the cultural power necessary to define strategic perspectives, shape popular narratives, and skill up the movement.
Many Hands Workshop is a cohort of seasoned cultural workers including leaders affiliated with No Kings March, People over Planet, Desis Rising Up and Moving, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Naming the Lost Memorials project, ACT UP NY, Gender Liberation Project, and Jews for Zorhan. Anchor organizations for the Many Hands Workshop include Hands Off and Look Loud, with Action Lab as fiscal sponsor.
Rachel Schragis is a cultural worker, organizer, and co-lead of the visual strategy team Look Loud. Her work focuses on developing visual tools, props, and curricula that support grassroots movements and mass mobilization. Rachel is a recipient of the Rauschenberg Foundation Artist-as-Activist Award (with People’s Collective Arts), an Earth Day New York Advocate of the Year, and a Grace Paley Fellow at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Her artwork has been featured at the International Center of Photography, in Art in America, and acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Formerly part of the visuals team for Sunrise Movement and the People’s Climate March, she continues to collaborate with movement groups nationwide and is a core member of the Brooklyn activist-arts space Building Stories.
Ange Tran is a cultural worker and strategic designer with over 20 years of experience in creative strategy and movement-based visual arts. For more than a decade, they have designed and led training programs for Netroots Nation that build the technical capacity, strategic effectiveness, and leadership of cultural workers, organizers, and activists. Ange partners with cultural institutions, labor unions, community organizations and their coalitions to deliver branding, campaign, and strategic visual communications in support of social, economic, and racial justice. Their work includes producing banners, props, and large-scale visual materials that increase media visibility, shape popular understandings, and mobilize participation—from Occupy Wall Street to present-day No Kings Marches. They have work included in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert (London), and Brooklyn Museum (NYC).
Ariel Friedlander is a cultural worker, organizer, and educator whose practice spans visual art, public education, and large-scale cultural organizing at the intersection of gender justice, LGBTQ liberation, and progressive electoral politics. She collaborates with grassroots organizations, political campaigns, and cultural spaces to build community power and civic engagement. Her recent work includes producing an educational ranked-choice voting demonstration with NYC Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s campaign to reach queer voters, organizing the Rise Up for Trans Youth Rally in Union Square in February 2025, and producing nightlife and cultural events that foster movement connection through broad grassroots partnerships. Ariel holds a BA in History of Art and an MA in Art & Design Education, and brings years of organizing experience through work with ACT UP NY, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Gender Liberation Movement.
Akash Singh is Communications Director at Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), a multigenerational, membership-led grassroots organization of low-wage South Asian and Indo-Caribbean workers, youth, and families in New York City. DRUM builds community power to advance economic, educational, civil, and immigrant rights through base building, leadership development, policy campaigns, and cross-community alliance work. At DRUM, Akash shapes narrative strategy and communications that amplify working-class voices and strengthen ties between community organizing and broader justice movements. He supported DRUM’s role in mobilizing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean voters through DRUM Beats during the pivotal 2025 NYC mayoral campaign, helping translate grassroots energy into political influence. Akash’s work centers movement-rooted communication that strengthens shared power and collective action across communities.
Ricky Gonzalez is Organizing Director at Planet Over Profit (POP), a youth-led climate justice movement fighting for a livable future by challenging the fossil fuel industry and the racial capitalist systems driving both environmental destruction and economic inequality. His work focuses on connecting climate struggles to broader movements for migrant justice, economic democracy, and collective liberation—particularly in the context of climate displacement and rising authoritarianism. He advances coalition building, direct action, and community training that connects frontline climate impacts to systemic political and economic change. Planet Over Profit targets fossil fuel infrastructure, finance, and wealth hoarding while building people power to demand a just transition and equitable redistribution of resources. At Planet Over Profit, Ricky works to build organizational infrastructure for collective action, transforming isolated efforts into a unified, strategic force. His organizing practice challenges entrenched power while cultivating resilience, solidarity, and shared purpose across movements.