David Solnit: Arts Organizer and Lifetime Activist

David Solnit and Co-Chair Emily Pecore at the 2025 BAYCS Inauguration Rally

David Solnit is an activist, arts organizer, and printmaker of 50+ years who resides in Berkeley but works in Richmond. Solnit has worked on several notable activism projects regarding the climate and workers rights; in 1999, he helped organize more than 10,000 people to protest the World Trade Organization, preventing what would have been the most detrimental corporate globalization in history. If successful, the WTO planned on reducing environmental standards, trading standards, and worker protections as. Additionally, it would have irreversibly harmed the sovereignty of entire economies.

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, Solnit always had a profound passion for painting, printmaking, and visual arts. However, upon graduation and at the beginning of Solnit's career, he found that he couldn’t achieve or promote change in the world through art alone, prompting him to turn towards community organizing and raw activism. However, at protests he organized he saw the vast amount of art and media being used and furthermore how effective it was. This experience re-invigorated the spark he had lost, enabling him to shift the entire focus of his career onto fusing art with activism. Today, Solnit’s work primarily focuses on addressing humanitarian crises, workers rights, and the climate crisis. 

“DIGNIDAD (Dignity in English) This is one of several painted on fabric pages of a storytelling “cantastoria” made with Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity- a group of religious leaders and immigrants who have been held in ICE detention facilities.”

How did your career start? What sparked interest in pursuing art activism.

I just loved art in school, grade school, and high school. I loved making art. It's my favorite thing to do and to be able to work with some different artists and take classes outside of school. So I sort of wanted to be an artist, but then as an activist and organizer, I was like, well, how is art going to change anything? I didn't see how selling paintings in the gallery was going to change the world. So I sort of set it aside. I did construction to fund my organizing, and organized in the anti nuclear and anti war movements in the 80s and 90s and then. And then, our demonstrations were kind of boring, and I saw people using art. And so I was like, we should be using more art in our demonstrations and our public action. So I started to recruit artists and puppeteers and performers and so that got me back into art.

“ART BUILD SIGN: A spray paint stencil led sign for “art builds” art making workshops.”

What projects propelled your organizing, activism and art career forward?

I was part of a network of art collectives called Art and Revolution, and we started to organize when the World Trade Organization was coming to meet in Seattle. It had been all over the world, and we saw it as an opportunity to use art and direct action to try and stop it. A few years after the Zapatistas had risen up in southern Mexico, which we found very inspiring. So that was why our network of art and revolution collectives initiated a coalition called Direct Action Network, and we actually said, we're going to try and physically stop them from meeting, and we're going to make lots of art to educate people about the issues. 

And art was really good for that, because nobody really knew what corporate globalization was. So we're able to use a puppet show and music and storytelling to educate people and then activate them. And then at the demonstrations we had, the streets were full of art. We didn't even call it a protest. We called it a festival of resistance. Yeah, and, and everybody was surprised, but, you know, we trained people to do non violence, disobedience, and made lots of art, and we actually shut down the meetings for the first day. 

And this was the World Trade Organization. They were the most powerful institution on the planet. They were going to try and use it to extend corporate power to get rid of environmental protections, labor protections, and basically make a few people richer, more powerful. So we were able to stop it and stop their plans. As a result of it, the result of the talk, the protests in the street, together with people in the Global South, protesting in their home countries and pressuring their delegates, the talks were unsuccessful, and so they weren't able to pass it at a global agreement, which was good for good for ordinary people, but bad for corporations.

How were you able to organize protests as large as 10,000 people?

Two parts, one is trying to form groups with people that I work well with, and so that one is having a strong, strong organization where people work well together, and then the other is trying to articulate how issues affect people's lives and invite them to participate in powerful ways, whether it's making art or doing so disobedience.`

“ART AND REVOLUTION CONVERGENCE: a screen printed sign for the Art and Revolution Convergence training and skills shares. Designs by Jo Christian and David Solnit.”

What are the biggest problems impacting the environment in general and the Bay Area?

I think corporate power or corporate capitalism. It's created an ecological crisis for the climate, but also our other, our other ecological systems, like our water and air, think that the core of it is to control or or overthrow corporate power capitalism. But you know, it's an emergency, so we have to do whatever we can to try and especially protect the climate, but also protect our other systems. 

[There’s a] benefit of also asserting people power and creating more democratic just societies for our communities too… we're about a quarter mile from the Richmond Chevron refinery, and it's the biggest greenhouse gas polluter, which means it exacerbates the climate crisis and also pollutes the communities around Richmond and the whole Bay Area. It's one of five historic refineries in the Bay Area. So I think the refineries are sort of our biggest single problem, but also, you know, just the structure of our society that there's not enough money for public transit. Cities are not designed for people to be able to get around without having private automobiles.

“CHEVRON FLAG: a screen printed flag made for protests against the Richmond Chevron Refineries role in climate chaos, oil wars and toxic pollution. Designed by Jason Justice, 2005.”

What is the importance of youth organizations like BAYCS?

It's super important. I mean the biggest breakthrough we've had in my almost 20 years of climate organizing came from high school students during the climate strikes just before the pandemic…they mobilized millions of people in the streets, on every continent in the world, [and] that had a huge impact…. But also, you know, as a former high school organizer, I think movements make breakthroughs when people try new things and innovate, and so it's good to get to see what's been done before and learn from it, but also to figure out how to do things in different ways that surprise your opponent or have more impact.

“MY VOICE, MY RIGHTS, MY FUTURE: screenprint design for speech bubble shaped signs made for Our Children’s Trust, a group of youth suing the US government for wrecking our climate and young people's future.”

What is your message to the world? Pertaining activism and in general?

There's no guarantee that activism will make change. So it's like [how] there's no guarantee playing a soccer game that you'll win. Similarly, you have to figure out how to be strategic and learn from movements that have one about why some movements win and others [don’t],doing research and finding the movements that were successful and trying to learn from them. So just do what you can and find ways to try and make it work, even if it doesn't, even if there's no guarantee it will. And also, if you're crossing a river, you need stepping stones to get across. So rather than looking at like we can't cross the river right now, [asking],, well, what's one thing we can do that will have an impact where we live, and what's one step towards that one thing. Actually breaking it down and turning it into a belief that it's campaigns, not single protests, but campaigns of connected activities that build power and engagement — that actually is what wins.

“END FOSSIL FUELS: Design by Favianna Rodriguez. One of a series of posters available at bit.ly/arttoendfossilfuels.”

Solnit's reach has spanned from preventing corporate globalization to lobbying for greater restrictions on oil refineries in the Bay. He stresses the importance of prioritizing the rights of the earth, the people, and the oppressed over the enrichment of the few, and encourages a mindset that looks forward and stems from a place of hope, resilience, and persistence. While pursuits of equality, justice, and environmentalism can seem daunting and impossible at times, he reminds us that we have more power than society would like us to believe. Solnit’s work and achievements are evidence that when you put your mind to the right cause, and collaborate with like minded people, immense change can be accomplished.