If You Don’t They Will presents: no. NOT EVER.

This summer, the Henry hosts a new project by If You Don’t They Will, a collaborative, Seattle-based group that provides creative and concrete tools for countering white nationalism through a cultural lens. In early 2016, the group began interviewing a network of rural and suburban activists who fought against white nationalism in their communities during the 1980s and 1990s at the height of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, a white nationalist call to create a white separatist homeland in the Pacific Northwest.

In the Henry Test Site, If You Don’t They Will presents video interviews with community organizers from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho that celebrate and recognize the breadth and diversity of their efforts to counter white nationalism. In the no. NOT EVER. installation, interview footage functions as a “living archive” rather than a linear documentary to create a participatory toolbox and intergenerational bridge for organizers who are working to resist the white nationalist social movement. 

If You Don’t They Will is the ongoing work of Cristien Storm, Kate Boyd, and Molly Mac. Storm and Boyd met in 2000 while working at Home Alive and the Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, and began If You Don’t They Will in 2006. Video artist and curator Molly Mac joined the team in 2015 to help conceptualize and produce the no. NOT EVER. archive. This particular installation in the Henry Test Site grew from the group’s participation in the Labor and Working-Class History Association Annual Conference held at the University of Washington in June 2017.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website