Anti-War Activism

Trump’s Military Parade


Year(s): 2018

New York City’s 33rd Annual April Fools’ Day Parade kicked off with a satirical take on Trump’s Military Parade. President Trump astride a tricycle mounted sling-shot launcher with a 10 foot tall rocket was joined by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un who had his own smaller rocket. 

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Trump’s Golden Throne


Year(s): 2017

April Fools’ Day is Joey Skaggs’ favorite holiday. Every year since 1986, to commemorate and celebrate the folly of mankind, he has organized New York City’s Annual April Fools’ Day Parade. Over the years, the parade has grown in stature and has now joined the ranks of beloved New York parades. In 2017, unlike other years when the parades have attracted major media coverage but have basically been a figment of Joey’s imagination, there actually was a parade. It was a Trumpathon!

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Santa’s Missile Tow


Year(s): 2012

On November 13, 2012, Santa Claus (aka Joey Skaggs), armed with a mobile rocket launcher and accompanied by an army of elves, targeted the United Nations in New York City.

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Art Attack


Year(s): 2002

In February 2001, Joey Skaggs was invited to participate in an exhibition at the Espai D’Art Contemporani (EACC) in Castellon, Spain. The show, entitled “En el Lado de la Television” [In the Side of Television] was intended to explore the relationships, contradictions and paradoxes between art and the mass media. Skaggs proposed a concept dealing with terrorism, violence and the media…

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Bush!


Year(s): 2004

President George W. Bush, flanked by his loyal Cabinet and special friends, made a rare public spectacle of himself taking care of business in New York City’s Washington Square Park on July 4, 2004.

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April Fools’ Day Parade


Year(s): 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

For more than three decades, New York City’s Annual April Fools’ Day Parade has offered the public an opportunity to express, in a comical way, its outrage against the foolishness of mankind. Thousands of participants in look-alike costumes with satirical floats creatively mock the thoughtless, corrupt and selfish acts of the past year. The parade marches down 5th Avenue from 59th Street to Washington Square Park where revelers rejoice and party. The event ends with the annual crowning of the King of Fools.

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Thanksgiving Dinner


Year(s): 1981

Joey Skaggs, with the help of friends and some of his students from the School of Visual Arts, created a stark portrayal of a Thanksgiving feast at the United Nations Plaza on Thanksgiving Day.

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Nuclear Hot Potato


Year(s): 1982

To promote nuclear disarmament, Joey Skaggs, with friends and SVA students, created the Nuclear Hot Potato performance during an anti-nuclear demonstration.

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Grotesque Statues


Year(s): 1969

On the 4th of July, 1969, to protest the war in Vietnam, Skaggs erected four obscenely grotesque sculptures of the Statue of Liberty at Cooper Square in the East Village of New York. They were life size mannequins painted green and wrapped in barbed wire. One was in a wheelchair. Several were holding dismembered baby doll bodies instead of torches.

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Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning


Year(s): 1968

On Christmas Day, Joey Skaggs and friends constructed a life size Vietnamese Nativity scene in New York’s Central Park and, dressed as American soldiers with plastic and wooden weapons, attempted to burn it to the ground to protest the war in Vietnam.

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