‘Till We’re Excluded No More

MoMA PS1 screens the Fund Excluded Workers (FEW) Coalition’s latest film, ‘Till We’re Excluded No More, continuously from June 17 – July 25, 2022. The film highlights the use of art and music as a tool for resistance, including banners featured in the Nuevayorkinos activation of Homeroom, and new campaign graphics designed by After the Fire artist Layqa Nuna Yawar.

FEW is a coalition of grassroots organizations across New York State created in response to hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Since August 2020, PS1 has partnered with FEW Coalition member Make the Road, a national immigrants rights organization headquartered in Corona, Queens, on a variety of initiatives including social media “takeovers”, resource and space sharing, and a collaborative mural project unveiling on July 23rd, 2022, led by artists Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Nanibah Chacon, and Layqa Nuna Yawar. As a result of the FEW Coalition’s advocacy and direct action, the New York State Legislature approved a budget for a $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund, the largest ever economic assistance program in the history of the country for informal and undocumented workers,in April of 2021.

In the fall of 2021, Coalition members Make the Road, New York Communities for Change, and the Street Vendor Project worked with artist Djali Brown-Cepeda of Nuevayorkinos to transform Homeroom into a site for celebrating immigrant culture and labor in New York, and Queens specifically. The activation, which ran from October 22, 2021 - January 10 2022, centered on the hunger strikers, organizers, and decision-makers who secured the historic 2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund in 2021.

Six months after the activation and fourteen months after the fund was created, the FEW Coalition returns to PS1 with their latest campaign film, produced by Joseph Green and edited by Memento films, which offers an update on their work and a set of concrete demands for the future.