Overview: Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the 2008 Obama Hope poster, joined communications strategist Lara Bergthold at The Ebell of Los Angeles to discuss the power of art in inspiring change. Fairey emphasized that the most powerful art does not provoke people but lures them towards solutions. He also highlighted the importance of tangible art in an era when activism plays out increasingly in social feeds. Fairey voiced concerns about the business model behind social media and how platforms reward engagement through anger, fear, and conspiracy.
Aryana Noroozi
Long before the internet gave protest a digital dimension, Shepard Fairey was pasting wheat paste to city walls. The artist behind the 2008 Obama Hope poster is the same one who has been arrested 18 times for his street art; and he still makes the case that a well-crafted image can change minds when a policy speech cannot.
On Wednesday, June 10, Fairey joined communications strategist Lara Bergthold at The Ebell of Los Angeles for a Writers Bloc Presents event centered on the newly released “The Art of Saving Democracy: An Action Kit for Making Change”, a People for the American Way project featuring a handbook, postcards, mini posters, sticker sheets and conversation cards, with a foreword by Jamie Lee Curtis. Victoria Casanova, another artist at the core of the project, also signed copies alongside Fairey.
The conversation ranged from Fairey’s punk rock origins to the algorithmic incentives of social media, but returned the simple idea that the most powerful art does not provoke people, but it lures them.
“I don’t want to just agitate and diagnose problems,” Fairey said. “I want to figure out how to encourage people to move towards solutions.”
Fairey explained that this philosophy emerged from decades of artistic evolution: as a teenager, he channeled the confrontational energy of musicians Bob Marley and Black Flag. Decades later he describes using his own art to deliberately design images that attracted audiences who might otherwise look away. Fairey described his approach as finding a way to reach what he called “the best part of people’s humanity.”
He drew that line explicitly when asked about the far right’s growing use of imagery and AI-generated content to spread ideology.
“It’s more challenging to inspire people than it is to trigger their fears and anger,” he said. “That’s why there’s a lot less of it than there is the stuff that takes the low road, scapegoats and divides and stokes fear.”
The distinction between art and propaganda, he argued, comes down to intent. Fairley maintained that his work aims to spark a counter-narrative that opens conversation. Propaganda, by contrast, is designed to shut all conversation down except the one that reinforces a predetermined agenda he explained.
In an era when activism plays out increasingly in social feeds, Fairey emphasized the importance of tangible art you can hold in your hands or encounter on the side of a building.
“The most satisfying thing is a meaningful, tangible, visceral connection,” he said.
Fairley voiced concerns about the business model behind social media and how platforms reward engagement through anger, fear and conspiracy. He noted that posts about reproductive rights often generated the most traffic from right-wing trolls.
“I’m trying to speak the language that young people speak,” he said, “but I also don’t want to be part of the race to the bottom.”
When the conversation turned to civil disobedience, Fairey spoke from his own experience with facing law enforcement’s power directly. With his 18 arrests, he experienced abuse the majority of those encounters, including having his insulin confiscated for days at a time as a Type 1 diabetic.
He cited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi as enduring leaders with strategy. “It didn’t give any justification to the way in which people were violently targeted just for saying the system is not just,” he said of disciplined nonviolence.
Fairey recounted attending an early ICE protest alongside his daughter, where the peaceful demonstration he witnessed firsthand bore no resemblance to how certain media outlets framed the night. The gap between lived experience and media narrative causes movements to be defined by their worst moments, not their purpose.
He cited the murders of George Floyd, Renee Goode and Alex Pretti as moments that rapidly shifted public sentiment toward accountability, and that the act of protest remains essential.
“Protest still matters,” he said, “because it shows that people are willing to go out there and put their bodies on the line.”
To emerging creatives feeling pressure to adapt to a culture that moves fast and renders judgment faster, Fairey offered the advice to not chase trends.
“If you have an idea that’s unique, or an aesthetic that’s unique, it will take sharing it over time for people to get with it,” he said. “If the trend changes and you change what you’re doing to chase that trend, you’re never a leader, you’re always a follower.”
His own process remains hands-on in ways that surprise people: he illustrates by hand, trained in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, then scans and refines digitally. He cited Robert Rauschenberg, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein and Carrie Mae Weems among his influences, and called being included in People for the American Way’s artist program alongside them a genuine honor.
His wife is his first and most trusted critic. Beyond that he offered the advice to seek out mentors – those few people whose honest feedback sharpens your thinking.
When asked about his optimism amid a political moment that continues to decline, Fairey points to his parents: a preppy couple whose values of honesty and decency seeped into their punk-rock, skateboarding son without his awareness.
“I believe that there is good in most people,” he said. “They’ve just been sold the wrong story. And you have to just redirect the story for them.”
Bergthold closed the evening, referencing the uplifting spirit of People for the American Way founder Norman Lear. Lear, at 101 never stopped reminding Americans to vote. Fairey created a portrait of Lear after his passing.
“Your pieces are always asking us to think of our better selves and our better angels,” Bergthold said.
The Art of Saving Democracy: An Action Kit for Making Change is available at peoplefortheamericanway.org.