Current & upcoming programs
It’s that time of year again! Please help Public Media Institute remain a home base for people who make and love independent culture in Chicago: Lumpen Radio and Lumpen TV, Co-Prosperity, Buddy, the MdW Coalition, and mutual aid projects like the Chicago Mutual Aid Guide. We’re entering our 35th year because people like you decide it matters enough to care. By becoming a member now, you help us hold this whole unruly long haul experiment together and push it further. Members will this year get some rad swag, and will also take part in a 2026 vote about how PMI should move forward as the world burns. Help us build the community of the future if the future is the apocalypse.
MEMBERSHIP LEVELS
1) Community Member: $5/month or a $50+ one-time donation
⋆｡°✩ Choose one:
Warehouse Poster, or Buddy Tumbler, or Choice of T-shirt (Chicago Handshake, Mojado Power, or Mutual Aid)
2) Collaborator: $10/month or a $100+ one-time donation
⋆｡°✩ Receive: Warehouse Poster, and Buddy Tumbler
⋆｡°✩ Pick One T-Shirt: Chicago Handshake, Mojado Power, or Mutual Aid
3) Co-Conspirator: $20/month or a $200+ one-time donation
⋆｡°✩ Receive: Warehouse Poster, Buddy Tumbler, and Lumpen Radio Hoodie
⋆｡°✩ Pick Two T-Shirts: Chicago Handshake, Mojado Power, or Mutual Aid
4) Co-Host: $50+/month or a $500+ one-time donation
⋆｡°✩ Receive: Warehouse Poster, Buddy Tumbler, and Lumpen Radio Hoodie
⋆｡°✩ Receive ALL THREE T-Shirts: Chicago Handshake, Mojado Power, and Mutual Aid
⋆｡°✩ AND: One month of Lumpen Radio underwriting for your business or project on WLPN-LP Chicago, 105.5FM
👇Buddy Tumbler:
Take a piece of the Buddy store with you everywhere! This 16oz/437 mL sandstone white tumbler with the iconic red Buddy's B is perfect taking your beverages out in style.
Available at any donation level
👇The Warehouse Poster:
The Warehouse is where the home is. Designed and written by Rachel Ko, this poster highlights the legacy of the iconic Chicago nightclub, the Warehouse, with a visual index that traces its origins to the birth of House music.
Available at any donation level
👇Mojado Power T-Shirt:
This limited-run shirt was hand-printed by our PMI team and features the logo from a film shown at this year’s “SubVersion Summer Camp!” The story follows an undocumented worker who, after a series of adventures, devises a plan to unite undocumented persons and Chicanos under the slogan “Mojado Power.”
Available at any donation level
👇Chicago Handshake T-Shirt:
Welcome to Chicago! This T-Shirt conveys what we think of ICE coming to terrorize our neighborhoods with a playful nod to our favorite Chicago poison, Malört. Governor Pritzker got one already!?
Available at any donation level
👇Mutual Aid T-Shirt:
Designed by our buddy, the legendary CHema Skandal! This shirt lets people care about your neighbors, and that you know that the ideals of anarchism live on our streets every day we organize to take care of one another. Check out PMI’s Mutual Aid Guide publication and Mutual Aid Report radio show for ways to get help and to get involved.
Available at any donation level
👇Lumpen Radio Hoodie:
Rep your favorite neighborhood radio station with this hoodie! Launched in 2016, Lumpen Radio is fueled by our small staff and a dedicated community of volunteers, including DJs, curators, producers, writers, and organizers, all committed to connecting you with the ideas and music we think you will love.
Yours for donations of $20/mo or $200+
Stuffed
Fat Pervs Unite
November 1st - December 12th, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1st, 4:00 - 6:00PM
Anti-fat bias is sometimes known as ‘the last acceptable bias.’ Though this is clearly both problematic and untrue, it does highlight how deeply rooted anti-fatness is in our society, and how uncomfortable many people are with confronting it. The history of anti-fat bias has always been intertwined with systemic racism, sexism, and classism; the burden of fatness is felt most acutely by communities marginalized in other ways by capitalist imperialism.
STUFFED eschews mainstream narratives about body positivity, instead harnessing the powerful dread conjured by the obesity epidemic, and explores the intersection of fat and queer communities through the frequent framing of both as kinds of perversion. It exposes the historical and contemporary intersections of fatphobia with anti-queerness and transphobia, as outgrowths of broader cultural pathologization in modern Western medicine. By featuring all fat queer artists in order to illuminate the vibrant communities that have blossomed at the intersection of fat liberation, queerness and anti-imperialist struggles, the exhibition will queer the notion of perversion itself by reframing and embracing it as solidarity-building, specifically between fat and queer/kinky communities.
STUFFED is informed by fat studies scholars like Dr. Caleb Luna, whose work against healthist-futurism is an outgrowth of queer theorist Lee Edelman's treatise against heteronormative reproductive futurism. Luna theorizes fatness as a confrontation with one’s own mortality, which in turn inspires fear and repulsion. The exhibition contains several artworks that explore the intersections of pathologization and perversion, ephemera and pleasure. STUFFED embraces the temporary fantasy realms that are created through solidarity between fat bodies and other ‘unruly’ subjectivities.These spaces of excess don’t last–they necessarily come together for a short period of time and then decompose; don't despair! Here, temporary pleasures are celebrated for their fleeting nature. We’re all just cruising through utopia.
Detrás de Nosotros Estamos Ustedes: Behind Us We Are You
Atlan Arceo-Witzl
November 1st - December 12th, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1st, 4:00 - 6:00PM
How might a public-facing commercial space be used to serve the voices of common people? A storefront that no longer sells products but instead tells stories of resistance. A place to pull up a chair and commune with neighbors. An autonomous printshop built to express dreams, ideals, and play. Each window display declares, “people over profit!” The collective of characters known as the Chican@ Mythmakers live in a hybrid world of the ancient-now where they speak of truth, dignity, and self-determination. Détras de Nosotros Estamos Ustedes reflects on the power of culture. The artist draws inspiration from liberatory political graphics, cultural ephemera of the Midwest, and the rich mythistory of marginalized people. In the face of societal tumult and rising American fascism, there are many roles to play in dismantling hierarchical systems of domination. ¡Manos a la obra!
Past PROGRAMS and exhibitions
About Co-Prosperity Chicago
Co-Prosperity is a gallery and HQ for Public Media Institute: a non-profit organization that brings you independent media projects like Lumpen Magazine, Lumpen Radio, and Lumpen TV, a gallery in upstate New York, Buddy (an artist store at the Chicago Cultural Center), and MdW: a coalition of artist-run organizations in the Midwest!
Come visit us at 3219 S MORGAN ST, Chicago, IL, and follow us on Instagram to see our Open Hours!