Red Emma’s

Through an abolitionist framework, Hughes will discuss the power of art in the long history of GIs organizing against US militarism. The discussion pulls from two new publications State Violence, Abolition, and GI Resistance (Justseeds, 2025) and Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024).

Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024) offers a groundbreaking exploration into the complex histories of US warfare and militarism, illuminating the pivotal role of art in cultivating justice, healing, and abolition. Inspired by Indigenous responses to the “American Indian Wars” and artists from the Greater Middle East and South Asia challenging the “Global War on Terror,” this volume examines the intersections between these legacies of creative rebellion and the experiences of contemporary Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) veterans. Informed by the emerging Veteran Art Movement and its ties to global struggles for demilitarization and abolition, the book advocates for solidarity and imaginative resistance against war and empire. Edited by Aaron Hughes Ronak K. Kapadia Therese Quinn Meranda Roberts and Amber Zora

State Violence, Abolition, and GI Resistance (Justseeds, 2025) highlights the long history of GIs rebelling against US militarism. Through an abolitionist framework, the zine highlights the legacy and revolutionary power of GI resistance against the backdrop of military mobilizations to violently suppress people’s movements.

Aaron Hughes is an artist, curator, and anti-war veteran whose interdisciplinary collaborative art practice spans drawing, printmaking, and performance. He is involved with a range of art and activist organizations including About Face: Veterans Against the War, emerging Veteran Art Movement, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. Recent exhibitions include Seeing Through Stone, UC Santa Cruz and San José Museum of Art (2025); Surviving the Long Wars, Chicago (2023); Autonomous Democracy, Arcade, London (2023); Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, & Reparations at DePaul Art Museum, Chicago (2022); and past exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, and Ashkal Alwan Beirut. Recent publications include Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024), Invitation to Tea: A Tea Project Archive & Recipe Book (StepSister Press, 2022), and Remaking the Exceptional: Tea Torture and Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo (DePaul Art Museum, 2022). Hughes lives and works in Chicago.

With the unplugged story-telling of traditional American folk music and the compassionate alarm of early political punk, Ryan Harvey’s songs are situated between the streets, the radical bookstores and cafes, and the DIY basement show. From Baltimore, Maryland, he has taken his powerful, insightful, and humorous songs and stories of activism and political analysis around the world for a decade, visiting 19 countries and performing in some of the epicenters of recent uprisings including Cairo, Athens, Madrid, Reykjavík, and Lisbon.

A co-founder of the Riot-Folk musician’s collective in 2004 and the veteran-focused anti-war group The Civilian-Soldier Alliance in 2007, he has committed himself to balancing and blending music and political activism. In addition to his own staggering 12 albums, Ryan has also co-produced two benefit CDs for anti-war veterans’ organizations, A Line in the Sand in 2008 and A Soundtrack for Refusal in 2011.