When art meets activism: Jenna Freedman on making change, speaking out, and zines
A Q&A with a New York City-based activist who has used theater and zines to drive social progress since the 90s.
credit: Shinjoung Yeo
Jenna Freedman is an activist and librarian in New York City, with roots in local theater. She also is the founder and current director of the zine library at Barnard College. In this interview, Jenna talks about her journey in activism, the intersection it has with art, and the role of theater and zines.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about your experience as an activist in New York City?
I graduated from college in 1989 and moved to New York and was mostly involved in downtown theater kind of stuff, which in some ways, was pushing back against mainstream theater because it's like, oh, we're just doing our thing. Although I remember one time, it was, I think, the Obie awards off Broadway Awards, and I was running a spotlight at the Delacorte Theater, and there was much joking about the theme song from Dirty Dancing or “(I've Had) The Time Of My Life.” They were definitely mocking it.
One thing I remember that was more direct activism is when I was involved with a protest against the Casey decision [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey], which was a reproductive rights legislation in Pennsylvania. I was one of 200-ish people who got arrested blocking the Holland Tunnel on July 4th weekend. It was this big thing. Even those of us that were sitting down in traffic didn't know that some people were chaining themselves to the tunnel. Anyway, it was amazing.
Can you talk a little bit more about the intersection of activism and art? I know that that's super broad, but can you talk more about your transition from theater to working in a library doing zines.
I remember saying this once in a rehearsal. I always wanted to do theater and make revolution, so I felt strongly like I wanted to do work that could have an impact. I felt like there was a connection with zines in this experimental theater piece that was produced and ran at a place called the Gas Station.…
The spine of the show was people telling their own stories of their abortions or who had a baby. Some people had unplanned children and some people had terminated. For me, this is a through line that goes through to zines. Personal stories are the most impactful, more than statistics or drier facts.
Along with different mediums and mediums changing, are there ways that demonstrating and activism have changed since the nineties?
For sure. It's so funny, the way I got involved in the Holland Tunnel protest was when I saw a sign wheatpasted somewhere, and now there are so many different communication platforms for activists.
credit: Eric Goldhagen
Outside of media, how have you seen the activism scene change over the past few decades? Or has it?
I don't know whether there's a significant difference between the word changed and evolved, but I want to say evolved. And I mean, I was so impressed with the encampments [at Columbia University] and for the activism itself and the bravery and the creativity and just the sort of, I don't know, these are well-educated students who articulated their points of view both beautifully and also in really funny ways, which is not anything new. It's just the ways take different forms.
But what also really moved me was the movement that I saw Barnard and Columbia, I should say, because I don't know if Barnard students are getting enough credit for it when it seems like more than 50% of the students arrested were Barnard students. There was a lot of leadership coming from Barnard, and it was coming from women and non-binary people and women and non-binary people of color. I don't want to say that that's different from the past because I think that movements have always been led or often been led by Black women [and] Latinas, but I think mainstream movements, there's been a lot of the men holding the mic and the women holding the coffee pot. So that was really beautiful. Perhaps because of that, there also just seemed to be a lot of care. I guess I could parallel that to zine culture. When women really became more prominent in zine culture in the nineties, that's when zines got more personal.
Technology influences activism and vice versa, but zines are always online. What does that mean for the role of zines in activism?
It goes back to what I was saying about making the theater piece about unplanned pregnancy and abortion that was seen by only a hundred people a night. There's power in intimacy and one-to-one storytelling.
But also, some of the zines you may have seen or read online or in print lately have said things like, leave your cell phone at home [while organizing]. People can use it to track you or they can get into your contacts. It's just a security risk. So you can carry a zine in your pocket that tells you all of these things, or is an expansion of [for example] writing the number of the National Lawyers Guild on your arm in Sharpie. You can have this little pocket guide. We have a few [zines like this] in the zine library, including one that was made by some Barnard alums, which I love.
But there's also the matter of history. So many online links, even from the current wave of protests in support of Gaza and Palestine are already dead. But the zines that were made about them are collected. They're in libraries, and they'll endure in different ways. So I mean, I always say that activism requires a diversity of tactics. Zines and print culture are just one tactic. And I'm not saying that any one tactic is going to save the world, if the world even deserves saving. It's one tool in our toolbox, but I think it's a powerful one emotionally. And you can have a great impact on a small number of people, or you can have a small impact on a great number of people, perhaps. I don't know. I'm just personally moved by zines.