There are plenty of people in power making terrible decisions that jeopardize the lives of many. This is a simple way to give a big visual indication for how you feel! All you need is Cardboard and Tape (laser cutter can help make many really quickly too!)

Original Designs

These giant protest hands were originally designed by Kelli Anderson https://kellianderson.com/ with mechanics based on work by Yoojinkim.com. They published a nice simple single page instruction for how to make a puppet hand out of cardboard scraps that can quickly slide into 3 different poses:

  • Raised Hand ✋
  • Fist ✊
  • Middle Finger 🖕

Laser Cut Re-Design

I was building some hands based off Anderson's work, but i had 2 years of cardboard stored up in my lab I was trying to get rid of, and I quickly realized this was going to go far too slow to make these all by hand. 

The other challenge was that if I wanted to make really big hands, I needed to start with REALLY big sheets of continuous cardboard or else the original designs wouldn't work. Unfortunately I had just a couple big-ish pieces and mostly small scraps.

So i took the original design and broke it into pieces at the articulation points so that you could cut out the pieces rapidly with Laser Cutters, Vinyl Cutters, CNC's, whatever robots you have at hand. You can also now scale these designs pretty easily to match whatever the max size sheets of cardboard you have available are. The parts are also labeled by layer and hand section in order to make assembly rapid!

All files are available publicly on the github. Feel free to remix and redesign your own versions as well!

https://github.com/Digital-Naturalism-Laboratories/Giant-Articulated-Protest-Hands

Photo Credits / Protest for Human Rights in Panama

The photos of the design and assembly process were by A. Quitmeyer, and the photos of the hands shown in action were taken by Ana Sofía Camarga https://anasofiastudioart.portfoliobox.net/  and provided for use here in this instructable. Camarga took these while documenting the Trans-Rights protest against the supermarket "El Rey" in Panama led by the group Salva El Grillo https://www.instagram.com/salvaelgrillo/ .  During the Pandemic here in Panama the population has unfortunately been subjected to a binary-gender based quarantine. Besides being an absurd violation of human rights, this gendered quarantine is disgustingly discriminatory and it's shameful of Panama to be the only country enacting such a terrible policy. For months Trans and Gender-Non-conforming have not been allowed out of their houses due to fear of harassment, violence, and hefty fines since days have been divided strictly into either "Man" or "Woman" days. Supermarkets like El Rey have been some of the biggest enforces of these unjust rules, and have been preventing people who simply want to purchase the basic necessities to live.

Hopefully after getting the finger, these people will revoke their terrible, discriminatory policies and never bring them back.

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