This is an excerpt from the comic art book Hands Up, Herbie! by Joey Perr, based on the life of his father, art teacher and art activist Herb Perr. Born into a mob-connected, lower-middle-class Jewish family, Herb studies art, works with leading Abstract Expressionists, joins the radical movements of the 1960s, and co-founds Political Arts Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D) in the 1980s. As depicted in this excerpt, PAD/D — led by Village Voice art critic Lucy Lippard, among others — offers artists a way to oppose Reaganism and its war-mongering policies and attacks on women’s rights.

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