Poster of the Week

Wir Bringen die Pole zum Schmelzen
Klaus Staeck; Greenpeace
Offset, 1988
Germany: Heidelberg
13147

Translation:
We Bring the Poles to the Melting Point—Most Catastrophically Everybody only talks about the climate—we break it and make a good profit on it: by the production of 140000 tons of CFC’s [Chlorofluorocarbons] per year. Kali and Hoechst, the Climate killers.

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970 was marked by environmental teach-ins held throughout the U.S. Approximately 20 million Americans participated and this date marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Now, more than 40 years later, the situation is worse and the climate is changing rapidly and very noticeably. The polar ice caps are melting faster than scientists had predicted, extreme weather is becoming the norm, and expanding swaths of oceans and lakes are becoming dead zones where no marine life can survive due to depleted oxygen levels caused by pesticide runoff. In 2004, 146 dead zones in the world's oceans were reported. A 2008 study counted 405 dead zones worldwide. Meanwhile, new ways of polluting our air, soil and water are increasingly profitable therefore actively supported by industry and government alike: from deep sea oil drilling, to fracking, to transporting tar sands across some of the most fertile and fragile agricultural land in the country. When will we ever learn?

CSPG’s Poster of the Week was designed by Klaus Staeck, arguably the most prolific political poster designer in Europe, for Greenpeace, one of the oldest environmental organizations with offices in more than 40 countries.

Note:
CFC’s, sold under the trade name of Freons, were extensively used in refrigerators and air conditioners, in the production of plastics, as solvents for electronics, and as a propellant in spray cans. When CFC’s were shown to destroy the Ozone layer, causing a rise in skin cancer, severe sunburns and eye problems, their use as aerosol propellants was discontinued. However, due to improper disposal, they continued to leak into the atmosphere, destroying more of the Ozone layer. In the 1980s, Greenpeace launched a campaign against the largest producers of CFC’s in Europe: the chemical companies Kali-Chemie and Hoechst. Hoechst also translates as “Highest”, so the poster uses the double meaning of the name to both highlight the company, and its role in contributing to global warming. In the 1990s, many Hoechst and Kali-Chemie plants throughout the world ceased production of CFC’s.

Poster of the Week

Gone with the Wind

Bob Light; John Houston

Donnelly/Colt

Offset, 1980s

Hampton,  Connecticut

6468

Margaret Thatcher died this week.  She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and the only woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist called her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics.  Thatcher’s political philosophy and economic policies emphasized deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), privatization of state owned companies, and union busting.  Sound familiar? 

When two-thirds of the country's miners went on strike in 1984, she called them, “the enemy within…”   In March 1985, after a year out on strike, the union leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion.  Of 174 state-owned mines, most of which were profitable, 97 were closed by 1992, and those that remained were privatized by 1994. This resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.  And this is just the result of her attack on one sector of the working class.  Thatcher also presided over the Falklands War with Argentina and provided critical support to the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

As government officials and the corporate press eulogize her strengths and accomplishments, CSPG’s Poster of the Week focuses on her close relationship with President Ronald Reagan.  George Schultz , Reagan’s Secretary of State, called Reagan and Thatcher “ideological soulmates.”  No more need be said.

Poster Text:

The Film To End All Films

The most EXPLOSIVE  love story ever

Milton Friedman  in association with Pentagon Productions presents  "Gone With  The Wind"  Screenplay By  Henry Kissinger  Directed By Cap Weinberger  Music by Jerry Falwell 

Winner of Ten Academy  Awards 

She promised to follow him to the end of the earth.  He promised to organise it!

 "The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God."

- Phyllis Schlafly, Boston Globe, 7/15/80

G All Ages Eliminated  From an Idea Conceived By Phyllis Schlaughly [sic]

An IMF Picture  Now showing world-wide 

Bob Light/ John Houston for Socialist Worker  Published in the U.S. with permission by Donnelly/Colt, Box 1988, Hampton, CT 06247. [union bug] Local One New York  $4 per copy by mail Bulk rates available

Poster History:

Originally designed in 1982 for the Socialist Workers Party (London), it was then remade in the U.S and Germany.  This poster parodies the Reagan-Thatcher alliance as a remake of Gone with the Wind, with Reagan as Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) sweeping British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as Scarlet O'Hara (Vivienne Leigh) off her feet.

The poster was adopted by its opponents and decorated many a young conservative's apartment: It conveyed, more successfully than its designers had intended, a certain romantic quality in the "special relationship" between Reagan and Thatcher.

Others in the "cast" :

Jerry Falwell - fundamentalist right-wing Baptist minister who founded the Moral Majority in 1979.

Milton Friedman - a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

Henry Kissinger - Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford.  Was Reagan's Chairman of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (1983-84).

Phyllis Schlafly - a right wing antifeminist activist, who really did say, "The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God."  [Boston Globe, 7/15/80]

Cap (Caspar) Weinberger - Secretary of Defense under Reagan Administration, 1981 – 1987.

Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/8/margaret_thatcher_1925_2013_tariq_ali

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/08/ideological-soulmates.html

Poster of the Week UPDATE:  THATCHER PROTESTED IN MUSIC

Many British Pop stars wrote songs highly critical of Thatcher.  In 1988, Stephen Patrick Morrisey wrote a song titled 'Margaret on the Guillotine,' even featuring a sound effect of a blade cutting a neck.  In his 1989 song "Tramp The Dirt Down,” Elvis Costello prayed he'd live long enough to stamp on her grave. "I'd like....to savor/ when they finally put you in the ground/I'll stand on your put you in the grave/and tramp the dirt down,” he spat.  Since her death, Costello’s song has risen to #79 on iTunes. But Thatcher’s death is propelling an even older song to the top of iTunes:"Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” from The Wizard of Oz (1939).  A Facebook page established in 2007, encouraged people to download the “Witch” song when Thatcher died, to make it number one.  The BBC plays the top ten songs…the question is, will they play this one? The controversy is escalating amid charges of censorship vs free speech. Stay tuned.

 

Sources for the musical protests:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-closer-to-number-one-spot-as-it-reaches-top-five-following-margaret-thatchers-death-8566042.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-bbc-refuses-to-play-margaret-thatcher-death-song-in-full-on-radio-1-chart-show-8569691.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/british-pop-stars-mourning-margaret-thatcher-article-1.1311109

Poster of the Week

 

Make Civil Rights Equal for All People

Artist Unknown

Silkscreen, 2010

Los Angeles, California

32864

CSPG’s Poster of the Week refers to two historic cases about Marriage Equality being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this week.  The two cases (United States v. Windsor;  Perry v. Schwarzenegger) challenge the constitutionality of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8.  Both DOMA, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, and Proposition 8, passed in 2008, stipulate that marriage is only between a man and a woman, denying same sex couples the same rights and benefits of their heterosexual counterparts.

Additional Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/27/inside_the_landmark_same_sex_marriage

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/27/widower_of_first_openly_gay_congressman

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/27/a_historic_moment_california_couple_on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8

Poster of the Week

NO

David Gentleman

Stop the War Coalition

East End Offset

Offset, circa 2003

London, UK

24662

CSPG’s Poster of the Week marks the 10^th anniversary of the Iraq War.  This dramatic but simple poster uses David Gentleman’s signature blood splatter to escalate the written “NO” into a SCREAMED,  

NO

On February 15, 2013, a month before the war began, tens of millions of people demonstrated in approximately 800 cities around the world, trying to prevent the war—the largest protest in history.  This poster was carried in the London anti-war protest, where up to one million protestors gathered in Hyde Park.

DemocracyNow.org marked the 10^th anniversary by presenting "The Costs of War," a new report by a team of 30 economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts and physicians about the impact of the Iraq War. The report found the total number of people who have died from the Iraq War, including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and Iraqi civilians, has reached at least 189,000 people, including at least 123,000 civilians. Financially, the report estimates a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $2.2 trillion, a figure that could one day approach $4 trillion with the interest accrued on the borrowed money used to fund the war.

It is critical to remember that the war, as so many other U.S. wars, was started on a lie.  The lie behind the Iraq War claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  This lie was compounded by the continual linking by the George W. Bush Administration, that Saddam Hussein was directly involved with the September 11, 2001 attack on the U.S. It is also important to remember that the Viet Nam War escalated due to a lie that U.S. destroyers were attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. 

When will we ever learn?

Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/19/the_costs_of_war_10_years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5242/5363603894_44b1baed05_z.jpg

Poster of the Week

Viva la Lucha Antiimperialista
Offset, circa 2011
South America, possibly Venezuela
39439

Translation:

Long live the Struggle against Imperialism 

Internationalist and Proletarian Solidarity

CSPG’s Poster of the Week commemorates Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), President of Venezuela since 1999. Chávez died March 5, 2013, after two years of battling cancer.  He was 58. In this Ecuadoran poster he is shown in the center of past and current heroes of the Latin American left:

Bottom:  Current heroes, L-R

Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador

Raúl Castro, President of Cuba

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia

Fidel Castro, former President of Cuba  (1976 to 2008)

Top:  Past heroes, L-R:

Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Simon Bolivar and José Martí

Chávez promoted participatory democracy, the nationalization of several key industries, increased government funding of health care and education, and significant reductions in poverty.  He introduced a system of worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform. He was instrumental in creating the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), including Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. ALBA is the progressive alternative to the U.S. dominated Organization of American States (OAS).  Chávez was lauded by many for his anti-imperialism and his efforts to aid the poor. For these same reasons, he was reviled by the rich and powerful.

For an informative article on Hugo Chavez and his role in Venezuelan history, see:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/node/5787

Hugo Chavez

¡PRESENTE!

Poster of the Week

 BAZAAR

George Stowe Jr.

Offset, 1970

Los Angeles, CA

9528

Harper’s Bazaar, a haute couture fashion magazine, is spoofed with this faux cover showing anticipated fashions five years into the polluted future.  Unfortunately, the warning wasn’t heeded, and the situation is worse now than ever imagined forty years ago. 

As the polar ice caps melt faster than predicted, storms are more severe, and droughts are breaking records, there is still inaction and even denial about climate change.  In the aftermath of failed climate-change legislation last year, the Keystone XL Pipeline has become a lightning rod for the U.S environmental movement.

Last Sunday, February 17, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington D.C.—the  largest climate rally in history—to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline.  Simultaneous rallies were held throughout the country, including in Los Angeles, Oakland and Seattle.  President Obama seems to have HEARD the demands not to approve the pipeline, because he has repeatedly postponed his decision to allow or prevent the pipeline.  It remains to be seen, however, if he has LISTENED. 

This poster is part of CSPG’s “Decade of Dissent:  Democracy in Action 1965-1975” at the Santa Monica Art Studios, ARENA 1 Gallery, 3026 Airport Ave, Santa Monica, CA

Opening reception: Saturday, February 23, 6-8pm

Through March 23, 2013

Free admission

For more information: 310-397-7449

Sources:

http://climate-connections.org

http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/lawsuits/0476.aspx

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/16099-tens-of-thousands-rally-to-stop-keystone-xl-pipeline

Poster of the Week

February 14, 2013

Halte aux Violences Domestiques

Geoffroy de Boismenu

Amnesty International

Offset, circa 2007

Paris, France

28696

Translation:

Stop Domestic Violence 

Violence against women is a universal sport. 

Valentine’s Day, February 14, has long been used to evoke expressions of love—while simultaneously stimulating the economy —with the exchange of cards, flowers, candy and candlelit dinners.  But the romantic veneer of the one day a year called Valentine’s Day overlooks the more brutal reality of daily domestic violence.  But violence against women is an international epidemic, and the perpetrators are family, friends and strangers.   

From Valentine’s Day to V-Day

February 14, 2013, is also the 15^th anniversary of V-Day,  a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.  V-Day was founded in 1998 by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler, whose acclaimed 1996 The Vagina Monologues is credited with inspiring the formation of V-Day. V-Day generates broad attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sex slavery.

V-Day is now celebrated all over the world—in 2012, over 5,800 V-Day benefit events took place, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls. In conjunction with the 15th anniversary, V-Day launched its most ambitious campaign to date—ONE BILLION RISING.

The V-Day website explains the campaign:  “The concept of the campaign is simple. If you take into account the statistic that 1 out of 3 women will experience violence in her lifetime, you are left with the staggering statistic that over 1 billion women on this planet will be impacted by violence. On V-Day's 15th Anniversary, 2.14.13, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.”

Sources:

http://www.vday.org

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/14/one_billion_rising_playwright_eve_ensler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Day_%28movement%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues