CSPG Blog

Poster of the Week

2012-02-09T20:17:00.001-08:00

Gay-In
Gay Liberation Front
Silkscreen, circa 1970
Los Angeles, California
34390

CSPG’s featured Poster of the Week announces an annual Gay-In that took place in Griffith Park. The celebratory image in this 40+ year old poster is a fitting tribute to the court ruling this week, overturning California’s ban on gay marriage, in effect since voters passed Proposition 8 in 2008. It is also one of the featured posters in Decade of Dissent: Democracy in Action 1965-1975, currently on display at the West Hollywood Library, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. through April 28, 2012.

The first of three annual Griffith Park Gay-Ins was held on May 30, 1968. It was a precursor to gay pride festivals that took place in major cities following the Stonewall riots of 1969. The Gay-In festivals suffered constant police harassment.

Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of a number of Gay Liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. The Los Angeles chapter of the GLF was created in December 1969. One of the GLF's first acts was to organize a march in response to Stonewall, and to demand an end to the persecution of homosexuals. The GLF had a broad political platform, denouncing racism and declaring support for various Third World struggles and the Black Panther Party—some of whom would return the gesture of solidarity. They took an anti-capitalist stance, and attacked the nuclear family and traditional gender roles.

Poster Mystery – Help needed to clarify the history of the Gay-ins.
1. First Griffith Park Gay-In
The flyer advertising the first Griffith Park Gay-In, on Thursday, May 30, 1968, Memorial Day, can be seen on http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/The_first_Griffith_Park_Gay-In.

2. There is a reference to the 2nd Gay-In, July 1969 – but no specific date
http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Griffith_Park_Gay-In

3. A poster announcing the 3rd Griffith Park Gay-In, is dated Labor Day, 1970.

4. The event for which this poster was made is thus a mystery. Were there more than 3 Griffith Park Gay-Ins? Were there 2 Gay-In’s in one year? We hope to hear from anyone with information to clarify this poster mystery.

Thank you to Lincoln Cushing and the AOUON Archives for providing this image. CSPG does not have a copy of this poster, and if anyone has one, please consider donating it to this unique archive.

Poster of the Week

2012-01-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

Community Solutions, Not Jail Expansion

Mary Sutton, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, CURB, Youth Justice Coalition

2012

Los Angeles

Los Angeles— Over two hundred community members showed an enthusiastic display of opposition to
the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Department’s move to expand LA County’s jails. After noting much
community pressure, the Supervisors immediately backed down from the $1.4 billion dollar expansion
plan that Sheriff Baca proposed in October. While the supervisors did not decide to withdraw the
county’s application for state AB 900 Phase 2 jail construction funding, they did slow the pace on the
commissioning of a $5.7 million report on possible jail expansion.

Throughout the meeting a series of reports from the Vera Justice Institute, ACLU, and the anticipated
report form expert Jim Austin were cited, outlining countless solutions to LA’s notorious jail conditions
and overcrowding. “If the Board of Supervisors is so concerned about improving conditions in the jail then
let’s do what we know. The only solution is to reduce the jail population, not to build more cells” notes
Emily Harris, Statewide Coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget. “We know the
Supervisors won’t vote for an outright $1.4 billion dollar expansion, but moving forward with the AB 900
applications shows that the Supervisors are still investing in moving forward with failed expansion policies.
We fear that in the place of a one-time massive allocation, they will try to deceive LA residents by pushing
forward a series of small expansion plans that amount to the same thing.

Outside the Kenneth Hahn administrative building, nearly a dozen LA-based organizations rallied their
people for two hours before entering the hall and giving an hour and half of public comment to the Board.
“Obviously we want the board of supervisors to align themselves with the vast majority of LA residents in
opposing any new jail cells in our county,” said David Chavez of Critical Resistance and the Youth Justice
Coalition, two lead organizers of Tuesday’s mobilization. “While the Board voted against the voices of the
people today, it is also clear that people are not going to back down from there demands that resources go
toward reentry services, educating residents of this city, toward healthcare, toward jobs, not toward locking
them up. We will certainly be back, and I am sure we will be back even stronger.”

Emily Harris
CURB Statewide Coordinator

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=850829448#!/pages/Californians-United-for-a-Responsible-Budget-CURB/171549902894327

http://www.youth4justice.org/

http://curbprisonspending.org/

Poster of the Week

2012-01-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

E. Galeano Has Seen This Before--
The Hooded Prisoners Recognize Each Other by their Coughs
Dara Greenwald (1972-2012)
Stencil 2005
New York, New York

CSPG’s Poster of the Week is by Dara Greenwald, who died this week at age 40 after a long battle with cancer. Dara was an artist, activist, curator, and a member of the Just Seeds’ Artists Cooperative founded by her partner, Josh MacPhee. Dara and Josh were co-curators of Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now, a traveling political poster exhibition and co-editors of the accompanying book. Dara was also a PhD Candidate in the Electronic Art Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dara and Josh visited the Center for the Study of Political Graphics while they were researching Paper Politics: An International Exhibition of Socially-Engaged Printmaking that traveled from New York to Oregon from 2008 to 2010. In reviewing Paper Politics, the Pittsburgh City Paper called Dara’s stencil “one of the exhibit's best works …with just a few dozen block letters, Greenwald summons the complex horror of such injustices [as extrajudicial detention].”

Eduardo Galeano is an Uruguayan journalist, author and novelist, who experienced the brutal military regimes in Uruguay and Argentina, was imprisoned and lived in exiled for many years. The title of Dara’s poster, “The hooded prisoners recognize one another by their coughs” comes from Galeano’s second novel, Dı́as y noches de amor y de guerra /Days and Nights of Love and War (1978). She used it in this poster to evoke many incidents of torture in prisons, but specifically refers to the U.S. military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As this week marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Dara’s striking poster is even more poignant. The Cuban camp has held 779 foreign captives, and 171 remain. The prison was set up to hold and interrogate detainees suspected of links to al Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups classified by the United States as terrorist organizations.

To mark the 10th anniversary, human rights protesters dressed in orange prison-style jumpsuits and covering their heads with black bags marched past the White House on Wednesday, January 11. Protests were also planned for Miami, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, Toronto, Madrid, Berlin, London, Brussels and other cities. The same day, detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay also launched a hunger strike, inspired in part by U.S. activists who have called for a national day of action.

Protesters voiced anger with Obama’s failure to close the prison—which he promised to do during his 2008 presidential campaign—and with his approval last month of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codified the U.S. government's authority to detain prisoners, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial.

¡Dara Greenwald PRESENTE!

For more about Dara Greenwald:
http://www.daragreenwald.com/
http://badatsports.com/2012/dara-greenwald-1972-2012/
http://never-the-same.org/interviews/dara-greenwald/

Sources for Guantanamo:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/11/us-usa-guantanamo-prison-idUSTRE80A1CN20120111
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo-protests-20120112,0,400199.story
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/10/guantnamo_prisoners_launch_hunger_strike

Poster of the Week

2011-12-19T13:05:00.001-08:00

Blowing the Whistle on a War Crime is Not a Crime

Bradley Manning Support Network

Bradleymanning.org

Couragetoresist.org

2010-2011

Private Bradley Manning in 1st Court Appearance

Alleged U.S. Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning is scheduled to make his first court appearance December 16, 2011, after being held for more than a year and a half by the U.S. military. Manning was first held in Kuwait, then at Quantico, then at Leavenworth, and was brought to Fort Meade in Maryland for the pre-trial hearing that could last an entire week.

The 23-year-old Manning has been held by the US military since May 2010, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in the biggest leak of classified U.S. documents in history.

Manning has not been seen or heard by the public since his arrest. He was initially held on a charge of leaking a classified video to WikiLeaks that showed a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters employees—a journalist and his driver. Military prosecutors are aiming to show there is sufficient evidence to bring Manning to trial at a general court-martial on 22 criminal charges. If convicted, Manning could face life in prison.

For nearly a year, he was kept in solitary confinement at Quantico for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock. He was moved to Leavenworth after months of public outcry that his treatment was torture.

More than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars signed a letter protesting against Manning’s treatment in military prison, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture. The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America's foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.

The pre-trial hearing began Friday, December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade in Maryland. the The Bradley Manning Support Network organized a protest outside the gates of Fort Meade in solidarity with the accused soldier. Manning’s court appearance coincides with the completion of the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq after an eight-year occupation.

Kevin Zeese, an attorney for the Bradley Manning Support Network, said, “The people who should be prosecuted are not Bradley Manning. He’s accused of letting the truth out. He’s not accused of doing any criminal activity. He’s accused of letting the truth out, and he should be given an award for that, not prosecuted. He’s facing the death penalty, potentially. He’s facing the death penalty for exposing war crimes.”

Sources:
http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/12/16/bradley_manning_famed_whistleblower_daniel_ellsberg

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/3/bradley_manning_hit_with_new_charges

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-legal-scholars-letter

http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0411/Army_moving_Wikileaks_suspect_Bradley_Manning_to_Leavenworth.html

Poster of the Week

2011-11-24T11:14:00.001-08:00

CSPG’s Poster of the Week comes from Adbusters, the culture-jamming magazine that sparked the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Thanks to Mark Epstein who sent posters from Occupy Seattle which included this perfect graphic to mark “Buy Nothing Day.”

Escape Capitalism

2011, Adbusters
Vancouver, B.C.

Buy Nothing Day (BND) is an international day of protest against consumerism. It was founded in Vancouver by artist Ted Dave, and subsequently promoted by Adbusters Magazine, based in Vancouver, Canada. The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Mexico in September 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption." In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called "Black Friday,” which is one of the 10 busiest shopping days in the U.S. Most other countries observe it on the following Saturday. Participation now includes more than 65 nations.

Here’s how Adbusters relates Buy Nothing Day to Occupy Wall Street.

“You’ve been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper sprayed and your head’s knocked in, another group of people are preparing to camp-out. Only these people aren’t here to support occupy Wall Street, they’re here to secure their spot in line for a Black Friday bargain at Super Target and Macy’s.
Occupy gave the world a new way of thinking about the fat cats and financial pirates on Wall Street. Now let’s give them a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Let’s use the coming 20th annual Buy Nothing Day to launch an all-out offensive to unseat the corporate kings on the holiday throne.

This year’s Black Friday will be the first campaign of the holiday season where we set the tone for a new type of holiday culminating with #OCCUPYXMAS. As the global protests of the 99% against corporate greed and casino capitalism continues, lets take the opportunity to hit the empire where it really hurts…the wallet.

On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! We don’t camp on the sidewalk for a reduced price tag on a flat screen TV or psycho-killer video game. Instead, we occupy the very paradigm that is fueling our eco, social and political decline.

Historically, Buy Nothing Day has been about fasting from hyper consumerism – a break from the cash register and reflecting on how dependent we really are on conspicuous consumption. On this 20th anniversary of Buy Nothing Day, we take it to the next level, marrying it with the message of #occupy…

We #OCCUPYXMAS.

Shenanigans begin November 25!”

Sources:
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day

Poster of the Week

2011-11-02T09:38:00.001-07:00

Stop!! Wells Fargo Bank Loans to Chile
Malaquías Montoya
Silkscreen, 1979
Oakland, California
8139

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has called November 5, 2011 BANK TRANSFER DAY. It calls for everyone to take their money out of the big banks and put it into credit unions. CSPG’s Poster-of-the Week shows a similar action that took place more than 30 years ago.

On September 11, 1973, the U.S. government initiated a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government of Chile. Henry Kissinger was a key architect of this coup. The brutal military dictatorship led by General Pinochet lasted for decades, and tens of thousands were killed or disappeared. International boycotts were invoked against products from Chile and U.S. business institutions that continued to negotiate and trade with Chile. In Stop Wells Fargo Bank Loans to Chile (1979), Malaquías Montoya used the bank’s trademark stagecoach, symbol of a romanticized and heroicized U.S. past, to call attention to their unheroic financial support of the Chilean military junta. In addition to listing the atrocities committed in Chile, this poster promoted direct sanctions against the bank by announcing a “withdrawal day” when people would transfer their accounts.

In the mid 1980s, the movement against apartheid in South African used a similar “withdrawal day” tactic, but then it was to withdraw funds from banks that did business with South Africa. It is important to note that Wells Fargo was one of the few U.S. banks to refuse to do business with South Africa in the 1980s. One can but speculate that the unfavorable public attention directed towards Wells Fargo in the 1970s alerted them to the dangers of continuing to support governments whose abuses attracted wide international attention.

Poster Text:
Stop!! Wells Fargo Bank Loans to Chile
"They Have A Legend To Live Up To"
$155 million to the Chilean Military Junta to finance repression in Chile: 40,000 killed 2500 Disappeared 1 Million Exiled 1 out of 10 Chileans Forced Into Exile
Outlawed All Human & Democratic Rights
Join Us - Withdrawal Day April 17, 1979 Leaflet Wells Fargo Banks
Tranfer Your Accounts
Info: Free Chile Center, bay area 415/ 433-6698-6055. san jose 408/ 295 7349. san diego 714/ 453-9164. los angeles
1979 Malaquías Montoya

Sources: http://occupywallst.org/forum/november-5th-bank-transfer-day-pass-on/
http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/credit-union.htm

Poster of the Week

2011-10-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

CSPG's Poster of the Week pays tribute to the ongoing Occupy Wall Street Movement. This silkscreen was made in Anchorage, Alaska! Thanks to Craig Updegrove for sending it. The Center for the Study of Political Graphics would very much like to have more posters made in response to this exciting and spreading grass roots expression of protest and celebration.

Poster of the Week

2011-09-27T19:52:00.001-07:00

Hold On To Your Wallets! Cross Your Legs!
Guerrilla Girls
Offset, 1994
New York, NY
9599

CSPG’s Poster of the Week is almost 20 years old, but it shows that artists and activists have long criticized Wall Street. It’s also a perfect poster to focus on the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” campaign which began September 17, 2011. The footnotes for the poster are below.

Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds of people are currently camping out in a square near Wall Street. The encampment began after a protest that attracted thousands of people and spawned several marches, including one near Union Square that resulted in 80 arrests. Video posted online from the protest shows a police officer pepper-spraying a group of young women while they were surrounded by police netting. Videos and eyewitness accounts show violent clashing between protesters and the police.

On Monday night, September 26—the tenth day of the protest—filmmaker Michael Moore visited the protest encampment. Police have barred the protesters from using any form of public address system at the encampment so the crowd repeated Michael Moore’s comments.

Michael Moore, filmmaker: "Whatever you do, don’t despair, because this is the hard part. You’re in the hard part right now. But everyone will remember three months from now, six months from now, a hundred years from now, that you came down to this plaza and you started this movement."

Poster Footnotes:

1. President; plundered U.S. economy to fund the Gulf War.

2. Board member of failed Silverado Savings & Loan, whose debts are being paid by Taxpayers.

3. Jailed director of failed Lincoln Savings & Loan; masterminded debacle that cost taxpayers $5 billion.

4. Vice-president, whose current missions are: opening wetlands to developers; destroying the northwest timberlands, along with endangered species; and deregulating the 1990 Clean Air Act.

5. Representative from Pennsylvania; indicted on charges of conspiracy, racketeering, and accepting bribes.

6. Former Bush White House Chief of Staff; financed his personal travels with taxpayers' money.

7. Televangelist; defrauded pensioners to finance his network.

8. Former head of Department of Housing and Urban Development; investigated for misappropriation of funds.

9. High Priest of Wall Street during the 1980s; currently incarcerated.

10. Head of the American Family Association; dedicated to dismembering the N.E.A. and N.E.H. [National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities]

11. Known sexual harasser and Supreme Court Justice; currently ruling on legality of Pennsylvania's restrictive abortion rights law.

12. Police chief who fiddled while L.A. burned.

13. Leader of Operation Rescue, whose efforts to rob women of abortion rights have cost Buffalo and Wichita millions.

14. Former President; slashed urban spending by more than 60%, increased U.S. military budget to fight The Evil Empire, and accrued the largest national debt in history.

A Public Service Message From Guerrilla Girls 532 La Guardia Pl. #237, NY 10012

Sources:
http://www.democracynow.org/tags/occupy_wall_street
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/27/headlines#6
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/occupy-wall-street-protes_n_979367.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/wall-street-protesters-broadcast-arrests-on-social-media/

Poster of the Week, Pt. 2

2011-09-20T20:25:00.001-07:00

Killing Him Would Not be Right
Amnesty International; Fellowship of Reconciliation; Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice; National Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons
Offset, circa 1984
United States
13756

CSPG’s Poster of the Week* calls our attention to the pending execution of Troy Davis on Wednesday, September 21 in Georgia. Davis has been on Georgia’s death row for close to 20 years after being convicted of killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining the testimony. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder.

Last March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Davis should receive an evidentiary hearing, to make his case for innocence. Several witnesses have identified one of the remaining witnesses who has not recanted, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, as the shooter. People throughout the world are asking for clemency or a new trial for Davis, including former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congressmen Hank Johnson and John Lewis, former FBI Director and Judge William Sessions.

One of the jurors, Brenda Forrest, told CNN in 2009, “All of the witnesses — they were able to ID him as the person who actually did it.” Since the seven witnesses recanted, she says: “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be not guilty.”

Troy Davis has three major strikes against him. First, he is an African-American man. Second, he was charged with killing a white police officer. And third, he is in Georgia.

On Tuesday, September 20, Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles announced it rejected clemency for Troy Anthony Davis. Time is running out. There are only 24 hours left to stop the execution and we must act now. Please urge them to reconsider.

Please e-mail the Georgia parole board and Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm and ask them to reconsider their decision. Go to: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8257

*This poster was originally produced to stop the execution of James Dupree Henry, for the 1974 murder of 81-year-old Orlando civil rights leader Zellie L. Riley. The poster uses a quote from Riley's son arguing for clemency. Henry, whose final words were "I am innocent," was evaluated as mentally retarded before his execution on September 20, 1984. In 2002, the Supreme Court decision in Atkins v. Virginia declared that "executions of mentally retarded criminals are 'cruel and unusual punishments'."

Sources:
www.deathpenalty.org
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/9/14/troy_davis_and_the_politics_of_death
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/20/troy_davis_set_to_be_executed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzv-TpwgxU
www.amnestyinternational.org

Poster of the Week

2011-09-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

Flowers of Life for Central America
John Baldessari; Norm Gollin
Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America
Offset, 1984
Los Angeles, California
2978

Poster Text (partial):
Flowers Of Life For Central America/Flores De Vida Para Centro America
Artists Call is a national coalition of visual, literary, and performing artists who have concern for the life, culture, and traditions of Central American and Caribbean peoples. Artists Call is opposed to the ways in which these are threatened by foreign intervention. As North Americans we recognize our responsibility to speak out against injustice and the threat of regional war, promoted by our administration, and its domestic consequences. All events planned for October 1984 are an expression of these concerns.

Shifra M. Goldman

1926-2011

CSPG’s Poster of the Week is dedicated to Professor Shifra Goldman, a visionary pioneer in the study of Latin American and Chicana/o Art, and a social art historian. She died in Los Angeles on September 11, 2011, from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 85. This poster was produced by the Los Angeles Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, an organization co-founded by Shifra Goldman in 1983.

"I was never in the mainstream, never in all my life. I was born on the margins, lived on the margins, and have always sympathized with the margins. They make a lot more sense to me than the mainstream."

Shifra M. Goldman, September 1992

Shifra Goldman taught art history in the Los Angeles area for over 20 years. She was a prolific writer and an activist for Chicano and Latino Art. In Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States, one of her award winning publications, she stated that part of her life’s work was to “deflect and correct the stereotypes, distortions, and Eurocentric misunderstandings that have plagued all serious approaches to Latino Art history since the 50s.”
Born and raised in New York by Russian/Polish immigrant parents, art and politics were central to her entire life. Shifra’s mother was a trade unionist and her father, a political activist. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York, and entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a studio art major when her family moved to Los Angeles in the 1940's. As an undergraduate, she was active in the student boycott against the barbers in Westwood who refused to cut the hair of the Black Veterans entering UCLA on the GI bill following the Second World War.

After leaving UCLA, she went to work with Bert Corona and the Civil Rights Congress, a national organization working to stop police brutality against African and Mexican Americans, and the deportations of Mexicans and foreign born political activists. Living in East Los Angeles, Shifra learned Spanish and became immersed in Mexican and Chicano culture. In the 1950’s, during the repression of the Cold War, she was subpoenaed before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Two decades later, she lost her first college teaching job because a background check revealed that she had been called before HUAC

In the 1960's, after supporting herself and her son, Eric, as a bookkeeper for fifteen years, Shifra returned to UCLA to complete her B.A. in art. After receiving her M.A. in art history from California State University, Los Angeles (CSLA), she entered the Ph.D program at UCLA where she ran headlong into Eurocentrism when she was unable to find a chair for her doctoral committee because her topic of choice was modern Mexican art. Shifra refused to choose a more mainstream topic, and waited several years until a new faculty member finally agreed to work with her. Her dissertation was published as Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change by University of Texas Press in 1981, and republished in Mexico in 1989. She also initiated and co-authored the bibliography and theoretical essay, Arte Chicano: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Chicano Art, 1965-1981 (1985) with Dr.Tomás Ybarra-Frausto.

Shifra taught her first class in Mexican Art in 1966, possibly the only one given at that time in all of California. She later went on to a full time teaching position in art history at Santa Ana College where she taught courses in Mexican Pre-Colombian, Modern and Chicano Art for 21 years. She was one of the organizers for the Vietnam Peace Tower in 1966. Shifra also co founded the Los Angeles chapter of Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, in 1983, and was instrumental in bringing solidarity with the Central American struggle to the Los Angeles community.

In 1968, she began the campaign to preserve the 1932 Siqueiros mural America Tropical in Olvera Street, and in 1971 approached Siqueiros for a new mural derived from the original. According to the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA), he agreed but the plan was thwarted by the artist’s death in 1974. His last mural in Los Angeles, Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932, was restored and moved to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California with Shifra’s advice and assistance.

Shifra published and lectured in Europe, Latin America and the United States and led several delegations to Cuba to attend their Art Biennials. In 1994 she became a Research Associate with the Latin American Center at UCLA and taught art history there. Goldman is also Professor Emeritus from Santa Ana College, Santa Ana, CA.

In February 1992, she received the College Art Association's (CAA) Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism and, in February 1993, an award from the Women's Caucus for Art for outstanding achievement in the visual arts. She was elected to the board of the CAA, 1995-1999. In 1996 she received the “Historian of the Lions” award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. The title comes from an African proverb, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.” Shifra told the stories of the lions.

The Shifra Goldman Papers, including her slides, books, and videos are part of the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her extensive Chicano poster and print collection is at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. She will be remembered for her important contributions to Latin American Art scholarship and for her seminal work in Chicano/a Art History and support of the Chicano/a art community.

Professor Goldman is survived by her son Eric Garcia, daughter-in-law Trisha Dexter, and grandson Ian of Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Avenue 50 Studio, Center for the Study of Political Graphics and/or Tropico de Nopal.

A memorial for Shifra Goldman will take place on Saturday, October 15, 2-5 pm at the Professional Musicians Local 47, 817 Vine Street,Hollywood, CA 90038.

¡Shifra Goldman PRESENTE!

Poster(s) of the Week

2011-09-07T19:58:00.001-07:00

We Will Never Forget
Zero Crossing
Offset, 2001
Los Angeles, California
17093

Gap
Joshua Bienko
Digital Print, 2007
Athens, Georgia
26489

CSPG’s Posters of the Week commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The initial shock and outpouring of grief were soon channeled into jingoistic calls for revenge by the members of the Bush administration. Literally overnight, U.S. flags appeared everywhere as a sign of collective mourning and solidarity; but they soon took on an aggressive, militaristic stance. “These colors don’t run” became a common slogan on many posters and placards displaying the U.S. flag.

By draping the destroyed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the flag, the first poster strongly evokes two coffins. Of the many posters produced immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., this is one of the most poignant and least jingoistic.

The second poster, made six years into the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, focuses on how the Bush administration manipulated one criminal tragedy into another, ongoing criminal tragedy. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. With the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center on the left, and the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein on the right, the artist used the Gap logo to refer to the factual gap. There is no direct connection with the Gap company. This poster is part of CSPG’s traveling exhibition, Subvertisements—Using Ads & Logos for Protest available online at www.politicalgraphics.org

If you are in Los Angeles between September 9-11, please visit LA vs War. This 3-day anti-war event–from noon to midnight–commemorates the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. There will be artists, displays, music, performances, workshops, educational presentations, and an exhibition of CSPG posters. For more information, visit: http://vswar.org/

On Sunday, September 11, 2011:
• 12:30 pm: Mary Sutton, CSPG’s program director will speak at 12:30 p.m. at a workshop titled, No Prisons, No Jails, on the history of California prison expansion.
• 1:30 pm: Carol A. Wells, CSPG’s founder and executive director, will present Can Art Stop a War? The Power of Graphics to Educate, Agitate & Inspire Action

All this and more will take place at the
Vortex
2341 E. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, 90021
9/9/2011 - 9/11/2011
12:00 PM - 12:00 AM

Poster of the Week

2011-09-01T20:23:00.001-07:00

They Plan for Profits…Let Us Plan For People
International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
Offset, no date [pre-1994]
United States

CSPG’s Poster of the Week honors Labor Day. In the U.S., Labor Day was started in September of 1882, and quickly became an official holiday at the same time May Day spread throughout the world.

The first May Day, in 1886, was a call for eight-hour workdays by the workers in many American cities; it is now mostly associated with the Haymarket Martyrs.

Labor Day is a time to celebrate the contributions American workers had given their country, unlike May Day events, which focused on the international class struggle.

Source: http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles4/Cobban_MayDay.htm

Poster of the Week

2011-08-20T22:32:00.001-07:00

Spoils of War, 2011
Mr. Fish
Silkscreen
Edition of 50
22 x 17 inches

EXHIBITION:
August 6, 2011 - August 27, 2011

ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY
At Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite D5/C2
Santa Monica, CA 90404

“Behold the cartoons in Go Fish: there is no more savage yet brilliant wit than that possessed by Mr. Fish, who will never compromise on his deep artistic insight or the outrageous honesty of his social commentary. In a sellout culture he is that rare witness for unfettered truth.”

- Robert Scheer, Editor in Chief, truthdig and author of The Great American Stickup.

ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY is pleased to present the original drawings and unique multiples of Dwayne Booth aka Mr. Fish - political cartoonist and author of GO FISH (how to win contempt and influence people.)

In the appendix of his book, Mr. Fish dissects the journalistic responsibility he faces as a cartoonist to make it make sense. It being his raw emotional output in response to a given stimuli (government, society, et al) manifesting itself via pen on paper without regard to the cleverly pointed punchline that will accompany and ultimately define it. In his inaugural gallery show, he eschews that responsibility; the political cartoons hanging vulnerably on the walls in their original illustrated state, stripped of any captioning and absolute clarity. If the objective of a political cartoonist is to speak clearly than the goal of this exhibition is to express freely. The drawings are a celebration of the technical mastery and unbridled emotional truth of Dwayne Booth – the Clark Kent to Superman’s Mr. Fish.

Poster of the Week

2011-07-30T20:24:00.001-07:00

Community Based Solutions Not Jail Expansion
Mary Sutton
CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Los Angeles, CA 2011

CURB* poster, made prominent at the July 27, 2011 Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, meeting is featured in a photo, by Nick Ut on the Washington Post.

Community Organizations and L.A. Activists Protest Jail Overcrowding, Call for Probation Reform, Sentencing Reform, and Money for Programs and Services

Californians United for a Responsible Budget, CURB, is a broad-based, state-wide alliance of over 40 organizations seeking to CURB prison spending by reducing the number of people in prison and the number of prisons in the state. www.curbprisonspending.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/conversations/colombia-fashion-pony-swim-tea-party-rally-a-solar-farm-and-more-in-the-day-in-photos/2011/07/28/gIQAQ8V9eI_gallery.html?hpid=z6#photo=15

(beware you will have to view a short second commercial before you can access the list of photos. Link on #15)

Members of several CURB organizations, All of Us or None, A New Way of Life, Youth Justice Coalition, and Critical Resistance and supporters held up placards demanding that the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors put more money allocated through AB109 into community based solutions rather than continued oversight by the sheriff’s department or the dysfunctional probation department.

The recent landmark US Supreme Court ruling condemned California prison overcrowding and called for the immediate reduction of the prison population by at least 33,000 prisoners. The Los Angeles County Jail currently holds around 20,000 prisoners on any given day, with a total capacity for 22,000. Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Department of Corrections’ response to the Supreme Court’s ruling would shift at least 11,000 prisoners to the LA County Jail over two years.

Mary Sutton, of Critical Resistance and an active member of CURB, says “We can bring people home safely, more humanely and more efficiently by making sentencing, probation and parole reforms. 35 years ago people were not locked up for the kind of infractions we are talking about in regards to the individuals that will be sent home to LA County. The prison population grew from 20,000 to as high as 180,000 because of harsh sentencing laws and tough on crime measures implemented in the 70s, 80s and 90s. If we free up the resources that are wasted on ineffective policies that are proven not to increase public safety, we could fund programs in L.A. that would reintegrate people into their communities, and keep them there."

Sutton submitted, to the Board of Supervisors, copies of CURB’s Budget for Humanity and their long standing document “50 Ways to Reduce the Prison Population” , for the record.

The Youth Justice Coalition, a youth empowerment program based in Inglewood, presented its Welcome Home LA plan, which outlines ways Los Angeles County can concretely support re-entry for people on parole and probation. The plan calls for resources for community organizations that could help people get off of parole and probation and stay out of jail and prison. Welcome Home LA also calls for banning the box on employment applications that force people to disclose their conviction histories. Henry Sandoval of the Youth Justice Coalition says, “LA needs to prioritize a way for people returning home to be able to get good jobs, education, healthcare, making sure they know about services and are followed up with. There are organizations that can do this. Beefing up the jails, parole, probation, these are just black holes. The real issue is keeping people out of the system altogether. “

http://www.google.com/search?q=Associated+press+nick+ut+jail+overcrowding+board+of+supervisor's+meeting&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7ADRA_en&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=THM0TqH2J6rmiALtraiwCA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAQ&biw=975&bih=524

Poster of the Week

2011-07-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Bobby Sands 1954 - 1981
Republican Movement
Offset, circa 1981
Ireland

Solidarity With All Prisoners
www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com
Digital, 2011
Oakland, California

Prison Strike
Diego
2011
Los Angeles, California

Support the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
Red Onion State Prison
2011, Homewood, Illinois

CSPG’s Poster of the Week focuses on Hunger Strikes to protest prison conditions.

In 1981, ten men starved themselves to death inside the walls of Long Kesh prison in Belfast, North Ireland, while attempting to make Margaret Thatcher's government recognize them as political prisoners rather than common criminals. Bobby Sands, member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), was the leader of the hunger strike. He was 27 when he died.

On July 1, 2011, another prisoner hunger strike began in California. Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (California) initiated a hunger strike to protest the cruel and inhumane conditions of their imprisonment—including one of the most tortuous isolation regimes in the world. Pelican Bay is a super max facility dedicated to holding prisoners in long-term solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation.

Despite the fact that federal courts, mental health professionals, and international human rights monitors repeatedly have pointed out the devastating impact of isolation on human beings, the State of California continues to consign hundreds of prisoners, sometimes for decades, to torturous conditions that federal judge Thelton E. Henderson concluded “may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable.” Tragically, because they feel their efforts to challenge these conditions through administrative and legal channels have failed, hundreds of prisoners have put their bodies and their lives on the line.

At one point there were 6,600 prisoners in 13 prisons participating in the strike. “This massive and inspiring act of solidarity and people power across prison-manufactured & exacerbated racial and geographic lines has dumb-founded the CDCR. While the daily numbers of hunger strikers fluctuates, the CDCR is certainly under-estimating how many people inside prison are participating in and supporting this strike.”
June 20, 2011 - www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

In order to keep prisoners even further divided, guards pursue an infamous policy of race-baiting to encourage self-segregation in gangs. Despite these challenges, the inmates there have overcome their differences to struggle for dignity and improved conditions. Inmates participating in this movement to resist abhorrent conditions have demonstrated unity across prison-manufactured racial and geographical lines.

The hunger strikers have five core demands:

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse – This is in response to PBSP’s application of “group punishment” as a means to address individual inmates rule violations. This includes the administration’s abusive, pretextual use of “safety and concern” to justify what are unnecessary punitive acts. This policy has been applied in the context of justifying indefinite SHU status, and progressively restricting our programming and privileges.

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria -
Perceived gang membership is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement.

The practice of “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release from the SHU. Debriefing puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”

The validation procedure used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) employs such criteria as tattoos, readings materials, and associations with other prisoners (which can amount to as little as greeting) to identify gang members.

Many prisoners report that they are validated as gang members with evidence that is clearly false or using procedures that do not follow the Castillo v. Alameida settlement which restricted the use of photographs to prove association.

3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement – CDCR shall implement the findings and recommendations of the US commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons final 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as follows:

End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14) Ensure that prisoners in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause lasting harm. (pp. 52-57)

Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14). Create a more productive form of confinement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the community.

End Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Release inmates to general prison population who have been warehoused indefinitely in SHU for the last 10 to 40 years (and counting).
Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful Access to: i) adequate natural sunlight ii) quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring all PBSP- SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom Medical SHU facility.

4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food – cease the practice of denying adequate food, and provide a wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals, and allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements.

PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU inmates.

Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on it.

Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for SHU meals.

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.

Sources:
http://www.sinnfeinbookshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=72&products_id=183&osCsid=65e0f87caf91b0f17d2341afc1805fd3

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/07/10/18684296.php

www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

www.curbprisonspending.org

Poster of the Week

2011-07-19T08:43:00.001-07:00

100 Many Mandelas
Juan Fuentes
Silkscreen, 1986
San Francisco, California
29951

CSPG’s Poster of the Week honors Nelson Mandela Day, July 18, established in 2009 by the United Nations General Assembly, to mark his contribution to world freedom. Celebrated around the world, this July 18 also marks Mandela’s 93nd birthday.

The featured poster by Juan Fuentes was made while Mandela was still in prison. Under multiple images of Mandela, a large red ribbon noting AIDS awareness dominates the poster. The following quote come from a 2002 speech by Mandela.

The enormity of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS cannot be overstated.
HIV/AIDS is a danger to all of our people - young and old, rich and poor, men and women, those in the cities and those in the countryside.
HIV/AIDS is the greatest danger we have faced for many, many centuries.
HIV/AIDS is worse than a war. It is like a world war. Millions of people are dying from it. As we speak now, there are thousands of people dying from it this moment.
But this war can be won. This is one war where each and every one of us can make a difference. It is through the combined efforts of all of us that we stand the best chance of victory in this war against HIV/AIDS.

In January 2005, Mandela’s 54 year old son Makgatho, a lawyer and father of four, died of AIDS. Mandela asked all South Africans to treat AIDS as an "ordinary" disease rather than a curse for which "people will go to hell and not to heaven." His only other son died in a car accident in 1969.

More than 5 million South Africans are infected with the AIDS virus, HIV -- the largest number of cases in a single country -- and at least 1,000 a day die from complications of AIDS, according to the United Nations. Like Mandela, other African leaders have also become increasingly forthright about the need to combat AIDS despite cultural resistance to public discussions of the disease.

Mandela (born 1918) was an anti-apartheid activist and the leader of the African National Congress’ (ANC) armed wing. In 1962, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years, many on Robben Island with other political prisoners, opponents of the apartheid regime of South Africa. Apartheid was legalized racial segregation that was enforced by the National Party government between 1948 and 1994. Following Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990, he supported reconciliation and negotiation, and helped lead the transition towards multi-racial democracy in South Africa. Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994-1999, the first South-African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. In 1993 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Not until 1990, the same year he was released from prison, did a retired Central Intelligence Agency official admit that the CIA was responsible for Mandela’s capture.

South Africa's apartheid government had designated the ANC a terrorist organization during the group's decades-long struggle against whites-only rule, and ANC members were barred from receiving U.S. visas without special permission. Despite being one of the most respected and revered people in the world, Mandela remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list until July 2008, when it took an act of Congress to remove him from this list.

Sources:

http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/1892-nelson-mandela-address-at-launch-of-the-hiv-aids-awareness-strategy-for-the-construction-industry#ixzz1SUN6s4ZF

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52781-2005Jan6.html

Poster of the Week

2011-07-10T20:28:00.001-07:00

I Am No Longer Afraid of Mirrors
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville; Peace Press
Photograph by Hella Hammid
Los Angeles, California
1981

To commemorate the death of Betty Ford (1918-2011), an outspoken and gutsy Republican first lady who dared to break many national taboos—including talking about her breast cancer and her addiction to alcohol and pills. She also strongly supported a woman’s right to an abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment—both anathema’s to many Republicans.

In today’s cultural climate, where discussing addictions on talk shows is commonplace, and many wear pink ribbons to promote breast cancer awareness, it is hard to imagine that this openness has only developed over the last three decades. When Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978, it was an unmentionable topic. It was not only kept secret from employers, but also from close friends and many family members. Breast cancer was considered a stigma, and following a mastectomy, many women felt ashamed and “no longer a complete woman.”

CSPG’s Poster of the Week shows feminist writer, poet, and teacher Deena Metzger triumphant and free, with the strength to reveal her mastectomy scar that has been camouflaged by a tattoo in the image of a tree branch in bloom. Describing the actual moment when the photo was taken, Metzger stated, “I just stood out there and opened my arms and said, yes to life.” This poster inspired many women—and their families—that life after cancer could be and should be celebrated and embraced without shame and without limits. Deena’s poem, inscribed on the poster, reads:

I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered,
but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears.
What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
I have relinquished some of the scars.
I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.
I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.
I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.

This poster and more than 100 others will be featured in “PEACE PRESS GRAPHICS 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change” at the University Art Museum (UAM), California State University, Long Beach, September 10 – December 11, 2011. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the UAM, and is part of the Getty’s regional initiative: Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, the largest collaborative art project ever undertaken in Southern California.

Poster of the Week

2011-07-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

I Want You For U.S. Army

James Montgomery Flagg

U.S. Government Printing Office

Offset, First Printed 1917

36132

Uncle George Wants You

Stephen Kroninger

Offset, 1991

Madison, Wisconsin

5563

Originally published by the artist and offered free to peace groups, the poster was then reprinted and distributed by the Progressive Magazine.

I Want Out
Larry Dunst and Steve Horn
Committee to Help Unsell the War
Offset, 1971
New York, New York
5858

I Want You To Drive An SUV

Donald Farnsworth

Digital Print, 2002

San Francisco, California

18813

To commemorate July 4th and the U.S. war of independence, CSPG’s Poster of the Week focuses on the image of Uncle Sam, one of this country’s most recognized symbols. During the Revolutionary War, before there was an Uncle Sam, there was an earlier fictional character named Brother Jonathan, who was created to personify the entire United States. From 1776 to 1783, "Brother Jonathan" was a mildly derisive term used by Loyalists (who remained loyal to British King George III) to describe the Patriots (who supported independence from Britain).

In editorial cartoons and patriotic posters, Brother Jonathan was generally clean shaven, and either depicted as an American revolutionary with a tri-cornered hat and long military jacket, or with a top hat, tailed coat and stripped pants. The latter dress style later became identified with Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam has been personifying the U.S. government since the War of 1812, but both Brother John and Uncle Sam remained in use until after the Civil War. Brother Jonathan was a representative of the revolutionary age, when all the states were considered brothers. The United States was a plural term in those ancient days - "the United States, they..." But after the Civil War, the federal government became more dominant than the states, and the United States became a singular term -"the United States, it..."

Federalist Brother Jonathan would no longer do, and Washingtonian Uncle Sam became the preferred image. Cartoonist Thomas Nast helped establish the image of Uncle Sam in the latter 1800s. Nast also provided us with our popular image of Santa Claus, and first represented the Republican Party as an elephant and the Democrats as a donkey.

The depiction of Uncle Sam as a stern elderly man with white hair and a goatee, dressed in clothing that uses the design elements of the American flag, became common during the Civil War. The best-known and now iconic recruitment poster of Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg, first appeared on the cover of a magazine in 1916. Flagg was an illustrator and portrait artist best known for commercial art. Although Flagg used a modified version of his own face for his Uncle Sam, he based the pose with its dramatic pointing finger, on a 1914 British recruitment poster featuring Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War. More than four million copies of Flagg’s I Want You poster were printed between 1917 and 1918. This poster was also used extensively during World War II, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and is still used to recruit today.

CSPG’s Poster of the Week shows how the same image can be used to support war, oppose war or parody popular assumptions about war. In addition to the 1917 poster, the 3 variations are shown were produced during the Viet Nam War [I Want Out], during the first Gulf War [Uncle George Wants You], and soon after the war against Afghanistan began [I Want You To Drive An SUV]

All of these posters were part of American Icons—Graphics of Patriotism & Dissent,

which premiered at the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, in April 2011. The exhibition is now available to travel and will soon be on our website: www.politicalgraphics.org

Additional Reading:

fictional dialogue between Brother Jonathan and Uncle Sam by Daniel De Leon

Originally published in _The People_, April 18, 1897
As reprinted in _The People_, April 6, 1991

http://www.elynews.com/articles/2010/03/04/opinion/oped01.txt

Poster of the Week

2011-06-27T17:40:00.001-07:00

Halt Execution and Torture in Iran!
Neusha
International Solidarity Front for the Defence of the Iranian People's Democratic Rights
Offset, 1982
Berkeley, California

In 1953, the CIA organized a coup against Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, who had nationalized the Iranian oil resources. The CIA reestablished the monarchy, and sponsored the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlevi. Protests against the Shah occurred during his visits to the United States and many European countries. The Shah’s brutal regime was overthrown in 1979 and was succeeded by the Islamic Republic under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini. This poster protests the continued use of torture, repression and execution under Khomeini’s regime.

June: Torture Awareness Month

Several years ago, U.S. religious and human rights organizations declared June to be Torture Awareness Month to provide greater visibility to this issue and provide an opportunity for coordinated actions across the country. June 26, the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, reminds us that torture is a crime and provides an opportunity to stand united against this cruel violation of human rights.

This Poster-of-the-Week is done in partnership with the Program for Torture Victims, a non-profit in Los Angeles that rebuilds the lives of torture survivors from over 65 different countries, many of whom have stood up for freedom, democracy, and human dignity. The first organization of its kind in the country, PTV has helped heal the wounds of thousands of survivors through comprehensive services, empowering them to reenter society, reclaim their identities, and work toward a world without torture. For more information, visit www.ptvla.org

Poster of the Week

2011-06-11T09:51:00.001-07:00

Free Geronimo Now!
Ramsess
United Friends of Geronimo (Pratt) Ji Jaga
Silkscreen, 1993
Los Angeles, California

Free Geronimo poster used in a demonstration from the 1990s. Photo by Carol Cheetham for LA Times. Shona Pratt, Geronimo Pratt’s daughter is on the right.

Donated to the Center for the Study of Political Graphics by Ellie and Jerry Schnitzer, long time activists and friends. Ellie carried this poster in many demonstrations. It was featured in “Los Angeles: At the Center & On the Edge—4 Decades of Poster from and About L.A.” that opened at Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station. When Geromino Pratt was released the week the exhibition opened, the poster changed from an activist organizing tool to a primary historical document telling a story of injustice that might otherwise be marginalized or forgotten.

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week commemorates “Geronimo” ji Jaga Pratt (1947-2011), highly decorated Viet Nam War veteran, Black Panther Party Minister of Defense, and U.S. political political prisoner for nearly 30 years. He died last week at age 63.

Pratt wasn’t drafted into the Viet Nam War, but voluntarily enlisted into the army as a teenager, was assigned to the 82nd Airborne. He made 55 combat jumps, earning one Silver Star, two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. After hearing about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Pratt became disillusioned about the country he had been fighting for, and left the service during his second tour of duty. He soon enrolled in UCLA where he was recruited into the Black Panthers by Bunchy Carter, and became Deputy Minister of Defense.

Pratt became head of the Los Angeles Black Panther Party chapter following the January 17, 1969 assassination on the UCLA campus of Carter and John Huggins, by members of US, a black nationalist group. Thanks to his extensive military background, Pratt trained the Panthers to prepare for an eventual attack by the LAPD, by fortifying their headquarters at 41st and Central and compiling an arsenal. The attack came on December 8, 1969. It was the debut operation of SWAT—a previously untested paramilitary unit of the LAPD Metro Squad, championed by then inspector and future LAPD chief Daryl Gates.

After three hours of shooting, more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition had been exchanged. Despite this massive scale, only four Panthers were shot, four SWAT officers seriously injured, and no one died. [see Matthew Fleicher article below for recent detailed description of the shoot-out.] Following Pratt’s successful defense against the attack, the FBI targeted him for neutralization through COINTELPRO.

Domestic Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPROs) were covert operations designed to infiltrate, destabilize, and destroy organizations that law enforcement and government officials deemed as threats to national security. In the 1940s and 1950s, COINTELPROs were directed almost exclusively at the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party, USA. During the late 1960s the vast majority of COINTELPRO operations were directed against African American organizations, for the purpose of causing internal dissent and conflicts with other black organizations. The special COINTELPRO division labeled “Black Propaganda” included fabricated publications designed to give organizations a bad public image, fabricated cartoons and letters to foster tensions between groups, infiltration by informers, false rumors, fabricated evidence, and police assaults. [see sample FBI image] In August 1967, the FBI launched a COINTELPRO operation against the Panthers which contributed to the Panther's siege mentality.

COINTELPROs were responsible for the death of Fred Hampton, head of the Chicago Panthers (December 4, 1969), and they exacerbated the conflict between the Panthers and the black nationalist US organization. US was a Los Angeles-based cultural nationalist organization founded and led by Ron Karenga.. The organization had frequent confrontations with the Black Panther Party due to differing ideologies: members of US were cultural nationalists, focusing on racial oppression, while the Panthers described themselves as revolutionary internationalists, focusing on class oppression and struggle. Tensions between the two groups escalated in late 1968, as they struggled for control of two important positions on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The tension culminated in a shootout on the UCLA campus January 17, 1969, in which US members murdered Panthers John Huggins and Bunchy Carter. Three US members were convicted in 1971 for the killings, however, the actual gunmen still remain at large.

In 1970, Pratt became one of many Panthers expelled from the party by Huey Newton, in the Newton-Cleaver split. In December 1970, Pratt was arrested and charged with the 1968 robbery and murder of a Santa Monica woman. Convincing evidence existed that Pratt was 341 miles away, attending meetings of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and was nowhere near the scene of the crime. But Newton-faction Panthers who could have testified that Pratt was in Oakland at the time of the murder never came forward. The FBI withheld 7,000 pages of documents pertaining to his case, and the key witness placing him at the scene of the crime was a paid FBI informant. Since the trial, a number of witnesses, including former F.B.I agent M. Wesley Swearingen, have stated that Pratt was in Oakland the day of the shooting. In 1981, Amnesty International acknowledged that Geronimo was a victim of official government repression. In 1988, Amnesty International asked the Governor of California, George Deukmejian, to order an inquiry into his case. The Governor declined. Pratt was denied parole for the 13th time in August 1994. In May 1997, Judge Everett W. Dickey of Orange County Superior Court, appointed by Ronald Reagan, threw out the conviction on the grounds that the key government witness was a police informant. In 1999, Los Angeles County district attorney's office said they would not seek a retrial. Pratt had spent 27 years in prison, including eight years in solitary confinement.

Pratt settled a false imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and the FBI for $4.5 million. He split his time between Morgan City, La., his home town, and east Africa. He used part of his settlement to support projects for young people in Morgan City and a community founded by former Panthers in Tanzania. Pratt continued to work on behalf of men and women who are believed to be wrongfully incarcerated, including supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal whom he had met when both were active as Black Panthers.

This is one of the cartoons produced by the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation in 1969. Black Panther Party co-founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, and their supporters within the party, rejected cultural nationalists as narrow and bourgeois "pork-chop nationalism". The FBI memo plays on this.

An FBI memo dated 2-27-1969 gives the following instructions:

“AC, San Diego From: Director, FBI Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist - Hate Groups Racial Intelligence (Black Panther Party) Reurairtel 2/20/69 You are authorized to reproduce enclosed cartoons for anonymous distribution to Black Panther Party (BPP) members in Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. The cartoons should be mailed anonymously one at a time commencing with cartoon number one which portrays the caricature of Ron Karenga. The mailings should be spaced at least one week apart and all mailings should be postmarked at San Diego. You should reproduce cartoons in sufficient numbers to send several cartoons each to known BPP offices in the field divisions listed about as well as to Panther officials whose resident addresses can be obtained from the BPP newspaper. Insure the mailings are made under secure conditions in commercially purchased envelopes which cannot be traced to the source. If you deem it practical, the Bureau has no objection if you use envelopes produced by New Left or college organizations which would logically have and interest in the organizations ridiculed in your cartoons. In no event should you use Bureau informants to assist in the distribution of the cartoons.”

CSPG thanks Roz Payne of Newsreel Films for sending us copies of the COINTELPRO papers regarding the Panthers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

References:
http://www.jackolsen.com/pratt.htm (synopsis of Pratt’s biography, LAST MAN STANDING: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo written by former Time Magazine Bureau chief, Jack Olsen.

For an account of the LAPD/SWAT attack on the Los Angeles Panther Headquarters: Matthew Fleicher, “Policing Revolution”, LA Times Magazine, April 2011 http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2011/04/policing-revolution.html

1997 Interview by Bakari Kitwana of Geronimo Pratt, 3 months after his release from prison.
http://newsone.com/nation/rap-sessions/bakari-kitwana/remembering-geronimo-pratt/

Poster of the Week

2011-05-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

Tolerance is Holy
Daniel Young and Mirko Ilic
offset, 2006
New York, NY

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week is featured in two exhibitions produced by UCLA students this month. Although each exhibition has a different theme—one promotes peace in the Middle East, the other explores issues around queer identity—both exhibitions promote dialogue, diversity, and acceptance. It is especially ironic that the poster used in both exhibitions to celebrate diversity, commemorates an event sparked by intolerance. In 2006, major leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam made a rare show of unity to try to stop a 10-day Gay Pride festival and parade in Jerusalem. The religious leaders said that the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

In researching this event, other contradictions emerged. The most glaring was about a stabbing that occurred during the 2005 Pride Parade in Jerusalem. All references but one, said the stabbing was done by an Orthodox Israeli Jew, including Haaretz[1] and the Israel News.[2] In referring to the same event, Wikipedia, claims the stabbing was done by a “young Muslim man.”[3] More detailed background of these events is below.

ART PEACE

Kerckhoff Gallery, UCLA
308 Westwood Plaza – Kerckhoff Hall – 2^nd floor
Los Angeles, CA 90024

May 13-20, 2011

ART PEACE is a student group art exhibition featuring Palestinian, Israeli and American artists dealing with the Middle East conflict from a non-violent, coexistence perspective; dealing with People, not Politics. The exhibition aims to bridge the divided political atmosphere on campus and in current media discourse by presenting works together, and creating a collaborative environment to lead by example. ART PEACE is presented by the UCLA Middle East Peace Coalition.

Because We Give a Queer

Broad Arts Café, UCLA
240 Charles E. Young Drive North
Broad Arts Center – North Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90024

May 17-19, 2011 [opens May 17, 6-9 pm]

Because We Give a Queer is a student-run LGBT art exhibition dealing with the past, present and future of the struggle of queer men and women in society. It explores various topics such as identity, forbidden love, and intolerance. The exhibition features works from student artists at UCLA.

Poster Background:

Since the 1990s, an annual gay pride parade has taken place in Tel Aviv, the first city in Israel to have a gay pride parade and venue for the only yearly gay pride parade in the Middle East. In 2005, 100,000 people participated in the Tel Aviv gay pride parade after it had originally been prohibited by a municipal ban, later rescinded by the district court. During the parade, a young Ultra-Orthodox man wounded three parade participants with a kitchen knife.

WorldPride is an event that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues on an international level through parades, festivals and other cultural activities. When it was announced that the 2006 event would be held in Jerusalem with a parade scheduled for the 6th of August, harsh objection from Israeli religious circles immediately began. The parade was eventually cancelled due to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, but a week of events did take place as scheduled and included five conferences, a film festival, exhibitions, and literary and political events. When the Jerusalem Open House announced that it would hold a parade on November 10, virulent opposition came from throughout the Orthodox Jewish community, the Sephardic community, as well as from the Israeli Arab sector. Rabbis from across the Orthodox spectrum called for the parade to be forbidden. Palestinian militant organization Hamas announced that for the occasion, it would be willing to cooperate with Jews to defeat the parade, since a gay pride parade would be considered worse than Zionism.

On the night of 2 November 2, 2006, the planned gay parade in Jerusalem set off days of violence in the city's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Thousands of protesters blocked roads with burning garbage cans and hurled stones at police, demanding the parade be canceled or moved to secular Tel Aviv. Police responded in force, sending hundreds of Israeli riot police and Border Police armed with batons, water cannons and horses. Seven policemen and an unknown number of protestors were wounded.

A demonstration in an Orthodox community in Jerusalem led to rioting. Thousands of protesters blocked roads with burning garbage cans, and police responded in force, sending hundreds of Israeli riot police and Border Police armed with batons, water cannons and horses. Seven policemen and an unknown number of protestors were wounded. Ultra Orthodox spokesmen strongly spoke out against the police for using an "excessive level of violence".

In the end, Jerusalem's gay community moved the event to a stadium on a university campus in Jerusalem, quelling the threats of violence and allowing 4,000 people to celebrate peacefully.

Additional Sources:

Laurie Goodstein and Greg Myre, “Clerics Fighting a Gay Festival for Jerusalem”, New York Times, March 31, 2005; [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00E2D8133FF932A05750C0A9639C8B63]

http://wn.com/2006_Jerusalem_gay_pride_parade

Efrat Weiss, “Court rejects rightists' petition against Jerusalem gay parade”, Israel News, 6-23-2008 [http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3559360,00.html]

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Israeli_man_faces_attempted_murder_charges_for_stabbing_three_gay_pride_marchers [refers to Orthodox Israeli]

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jews-don-t-stab-jews-1.163076 [6-7-2005]

[2] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3559360,00.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Jerusalem_gay_pride_parade.

Poster of the Week

2011-05-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

Dan Berrigan, Catonsville 9
Photo by Bob Fitch
Offset, 1968
Oakland, California

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week honors Father Daniel Berrigan who celebrated his 90^th birthday May 9^th. A poet, peace activist and Jesuit priest, Fr. Berrigan, along with his brother Fr. Philip Berrigan, were repeatedly arrested for protesting the Viet Nam War, and other causes. Philip, a Josephite priest, was the first priest in the U.S. to be arrested for an act of civil disobedience. In his lifetime, Philip he had spent about 11 years in jails and prisons for civil disobedience. Both brothers were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for committing acts of vandalism, including destroying government property, and in 1970 Daniel spent four months living underground as a fugitive from the FBI.

In 1968, Daniel Berrigan traveled to North Viet Nam with Howard Zinn to bring home three U.S. prisoners of war. On May 17, 1968, Daniel again made national headlines when he manufactured home-made napalm and, with his brother and seven other Catholic protesters, used it to destroy 378 draft files in the presence of reporters and onlookers in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland draft board. This group came to be known as the Catonsville Nine, and is commemorated in the Poster-of-the-Week.

After their arrest, convictions and sentencing to prison, Daniel wrote in a "meditation":

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning Of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the frontparlour of the charnel house...The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.

On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan, his brother Philip, and six others began the Plowshares Movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they hammered on nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. Known as the "Plowshares Eight," they were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts.

Daniel Berrigan has maintained a high level of social activism around a number of causes, including protests against American intervention in Central America, the 1991 Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He speaks out against capital punishment, supports LGBT rights, and is a contributing editor of Sojourners Magazine. On April 2, 2010, Good Friday, Daniel Berrigan and 11 others were arrested attempting to dissuade tourists from going on board the Intrepid, an aircraft carried moored in the Hudson River. The Intrepid is now a floating museum, but for peace activists, it exists as a symbol of war’s destructiveness.

Sources:

http://www.newhumanistforum.org/speakers.php

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

http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2010/06/dan-berrigan-arrested-again.html

Poster of the Week

2011-05-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Build A Wall Of Resistance
Fireworks Graphics Collective
Silkscreen

Last September, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics featured a 30 year old poster, Build a Wall of Resistance: Don’t Talk to the FBI , as our Poster-of-the-Week. We are re-posting it now as it is being used by the right wing in an orchestrated smear campaign against Muslims, political activists, and free speech. The poster started making the rounds last year on the right wing web sites and even Bill O’Reilly was ragging on it. The San Francisco Register wrote about the controversy, and mentions CSPG. Check out this web site:

http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-francisco/build-a-wall-of-resistance-don-t-talk-to-the-fbi

History of Build a Wall of Resistance: Don’t Talk to the FBI.

CSPG originally featured this work as a Poster-of-the-Week last year because on September 24, 2010 the FBI raided seven Chicago and Minneapolis homes of well-known anti-war and international solidarity activists, serving 14 subpoenas. These anti-war leaders helped organize the huge protests against the Republican National Convention in 2008. This past December, the FBI served additional subpoenas to nine more Palestine solidarity and Arab-American activists in Chicago. All 23 have taken a principled stand to not answer questions at U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury in Chicago, a secret court where there is no judge and you cannot have a lawyer. The 23 could face months of imprisonment for their principled refusal to testify and may be charged with “material support for terrorism” for solidarity with Palestine and other liberation struggles. www.stopfbi.net.

In response to this Grand Jury, activists around the country organized solidarity rallies and workshops about Grand Juries. Several Know Your Rights workshops were held in the SF Bay Area, organized by the National Lawyers Guild, and co-sponsored by several civil rights groups, including the local Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which was already concerned about civil rights issues in Islamic communities. Some of the materials for one of the workshops included the Build a Wall of Resistance graphic. The poster was used by Fox News and various right-wing groups to attack CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights group in the US. A xenophobic and McCarthyite Federal Congressional hearing was organized by Congressman Peter King (R-NY), who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. While pointing to the Build a Wall of Resistance poster, King has claimed that “80% of mosques are controlled by ‘radical Imams’, that Muslims are not cooperating with the FBI,” and that “There is a real threat to the country from the Muslim community and the only way to get to the bottom of it is to investigate what is happening.”

Build a Wall of Resistance was designed by Fireworks Graphics Collective, part of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee in San Francisco, in the spring of 1984. Its purpose was to inform people that they legally do not have to talk to the FBI, and that refusing to talk to the FBI or testify to Grand Juries are important ways of supporting movements for social justice. It was one in a series of posters supporting members of the Puerto Rican independence movement in Chicago, New York, and Puerto Rico, who were being attacked by the FBI and being subpoenaed to testify at Grand Juries. Several people went to jail for refusing to appear at Grand Juries, but no one testified, and the Grand Jury was unable to break the solidarity of the movement.

It was used several more times, including later in the 1980’s to support members of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (JBAKC) in SF, who had been subpoenaed to a Grand Jury in Chicago under the ruse that a threatening letter to a Federal Attorney had been sent with the JBAKC mailbox in San Francisco as the return address. After a few months of refusal to testify, the Federal Attorney dropped what was one of their more blatant fishing expeditions.

In 2004 new Grand Juries occasioned more reprints of the Build a Wall of Resistance poster.

There were several environmental and animal rights Grand Juries in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Wyoming, Colorado and California in what was called by activists, the “Green Scare”. Some activists were able to withstand draconian pressure by the government, and refused to testify. Others did not refuse, and several activists were sent to prison for many years by extremely dubious “evidence” in what the FBI called “Operation Backfire”. www.greenisthenewred.com.

In 2005, Josh Wolfe, a San Francisco activist and videographer, was subpoenaed to a Federal Grand Jury for video he took at a demonstration at which a policeman was injured. After the San Francisco prosecutor refused to bring charges based on vague evidence, the police lied and said that the policeman’s car had been burned, and got a Federal Grand Jury to subpoena Wolf based on the spurious “fact” that since the Federal Government gave money to the SF police, the Feds had a part interest in the car, and a right to call a Grand Jury. (Not a joke. That was the story). Wolfe was held for several months in the Federal prison in Dublin, CA for refusing to hand over video. Eventually a Federal judge viewed the video in question, told the prosecutor there was no footage of the injuring of the policeman, or of the burning car, (which never happened) and Wolfe was released.

In a resurrected conspiracy case in 2005, a San Francisco State Grand Jury subpoenaed five former members or supporters of the Black Panther Party. All of the men refused to testify, and were jailed for several weeks until the Grand Jury ended. In January 2006, the five men plus four others, were charged by the California Attorney General with the killing of a San Francisco policeman in 1971. (Another case where local authorities were not willing to bring charges; in this case Jerry Brown, who was then the state Attorney General, brought charges). After being charged, they became known as the San Francisco 8. Evidence against the 8 was based on statements made by two of the men, and one other man who were severely tortured by New Orleans police in 1973. Because of the torture, the case had been thrown out of court in 1975. Courtrooms were packed with supporters for the next five years. By 2010 one defendant had died, two had pled to substantially lowered charges in exchange for probation, and the prosecution was forced to drop all charges against four of the others. The last member of the SF8, Francisco Torres, still had one charge that the prosecution has not dropped. www.freethesf8.org.

Build a Wall of Resistance is now in its third decade of use.

A short political explanation of the dangers of speaking to the FBI is available at http://grandjuryresistance.org/grandjuries.html.

If you or a friend is visited by the FBI or subpoenaed to a Grand Jury, remember that whatever they tell you, whether you are a US citizen or not, you are not legally required to talk to the FBI or any other police. It is illegal to lie to the FBI, Grand Juries, or other police, and everything you say will be bent to enable the prosecution of someone. Just say: ”I do not want to talk to you”, ask for a business card, say “I will talk to my lawyer and she will get back to you”. Do not say anything more, and call your nearest Grand Jury support organization and the National Lawyers Guild immediately. In most cases, the FBI will not return after they realize you will not talk to them.

National Lawyers Guild: http://www.nlgsf.org/. In October of 2010 the Guild set up a hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265).

Poster of the Week

2011-04-30T09:19:00.001-07:00

In light of the escalating attacks against immigrants and workers, from Arizona to Wisconsin, CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week shows how these issues were combined over 35 years ago. After years of keeping their demands and demonstrations separate, May 1, 2011 will see the joining of immigrant rights and labor rights groups in demonstrations from Los Angeles to New York.

International Workers Day
Peace Press
Offset, 1975
Los Angeles, California

By demanding Jobs For All, End Deportations, U.S. Out Of Indochina & Puerto Rico this 36 year old poster links the same issues facing us today: lack of jobs, scapegoating immigrants and foreign wars. And Puerto Rico continues to be the last remaining U.S. colony.

The poster was printed at Peace Press, an anti-war Los Angeles print collective which will be the subject of an exhibition premiering September 2011 at the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach. Peace Press Graphics 1967 – 1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change is part of the Getty Foundation’s initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. The exhibition and catalogue are a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the University Art Museum at CSULB.

History of May Day as Worker’s Labor Day
May Day as a worker’s labor day, began in 1886, in Chicago, as a movement for the universal adoption of the eight-hour working day. (Workers had secured a limit of ten hours to the working day only a few decades earlier.) In Chicago, the center of the movement, workers had been agitating for an eight-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, 50,000 were already on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. In a notorious riot that followed (the Haymarket massacre) the 8-hour movement failed, but the Chicago events figured prominently in the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. May Day has been marked ever since by parades, red flags, and an affirmation of union power and pride. Ironically, this Chicago-born holiday is celebrated more internationally than in the United States.

Posters of the Week

2011-03-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

The Good, the Bad & the Unthinkable

The Good : The Return of Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti

Haiti Will Rise Again
Eastside Arts Alliance
Jesus Barraza
Dignidad Rebelde
Silkscreen, 2010
Oakland, California

In 2004, Haitian President Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. soldiers, and forced to Leave Haiti for Africa. It was the second time that U.S. had forced the democratically elected president into exile. When Aristide announced earlier this month his plans to come back to his impoverished country, still reeling from the disastrous January 2010 earthquake and an ongoing cholera epidemic, the U.S. worked overtime to prevent his return. The New York Times reported that Obama even telephoned South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, to prevent Aristide from getting a passport, but Zuma refused to comply. To add insult to injury, State Department spokespeople kept repeating the lie that Aristide had “chosen” to leave 7 years ago.

The Bad: The U.S. Bombs Libya

This Is the Result of Reagan Terrorism
Artist Unknown
Offset, 1986
Libya

CSPG’s Poster of the Week reminds us that this is the second time in recent history that the U.S. has bombed Libya…and again, the primary casualties are civilian.

The Unthinkable: Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Japan
The tragedy continues to escalate. First a devastating 9.0 earthquake, followed by an even more devastating tsunami, followed by the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl–and it is still out of control. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal (March 15, 2011) reported that President Obama continues to promote the safety of nuclear power and wants to speed construction of nuclear-power facilities.

Nuclear Power Gives Us Everything
Richard Adams
Ecoropa; Reprodux Ltd.
Offset, Date unknown
United Kingdom

Text: Nuclear Power Gives Us Everything: Cancer, Accidents, Unemployment, Armed Police, Radioactive Waste. All this and Higher Electricity Bills too.

Take It To Wall Street
Stop Nuclear Investments
Annie Katz
SHAD Alliance
Offset, 1979
New York, New York

Poster of the Week

2011-03-09T11:52:00.001-08:00

Las mujeres de Juárez exigen justicia
The Murdered Women of Juarez Demand Justice
Dunahi Aquino, Paul Alarcon, Lourdes Almeida
2003, Digital Print
Mexico

March 8, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Although it grew out of protests organized by New York garment and textile workers, and has long been celebrated in many countries, International Women’s Day has only been commemorated widely in the United States since 1970 with the development of the Women's Liberation Movement.

As we celebrate our many victories, much more needs to be done. CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week commemorates International Women’s Day, by honoring Mexican poet and activist Susana Chávez (1974-2011) who was killed in Ciudad Juárez on January 6, 2011. Chávez, who was born and lived most of her life in Cuidud Juárez, was strangled and one hand was cut off. A long-time activist for women’s rights, Chávez, coined the expression Ni Una Más! (Not One More!) about the murdered women of Juárez.

Femicide and Impunity
by Laura Pomerantz

“Our Blood”

by Susana Chávez (1)

(Enrolle abajo para el español)

My blood,

from dawn,

from a split moon,

from the silence,

from dead rock,

from woman in bed

jumping into the void.

Open to insanity.

Clear, defined blood,

fertile and seed.

Incomprehensible blood swirls,

blood liberation of itself,

blood river of my chants,

Sea of my abysses.

Blood instant when I’m born in pain.

Nourished by my final presence.

How can we deal with or even comprehend violence that targets a portion of the population solely because of their gender? Since 1993, hundreds of women from Ciudad Juárez (the state of Chihuahua, Mexico), most between the ages of 13 and 30, have been kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed, cut up into pieces or have just disappeared on their way home. Their route is now called the death path. While the reasons are not known, unidentified men have been committing these atrocities against poor women of their own ethnic group with impunity. This massive and deliberate killing is known by the name femicide o gendercide. (2)

The Poster-of-the-Week is one of 60 large-format images by designers from throughout Mexico. In 2003, the posters were displayed in several subway stations in Mexico City, and the exhibition then traveled throughout the country. The purpose was to make the general population aware of the killings, as well as to pressure the authorities to get involved and demand justice.

We dedicate this poster to Susana Chávez. It features a typical family photo showing the classic three generations. Everyone is looking at the camera except in the spaces where bodies are missing; the empty white spaces stained with red. In the back row are a middle-aged man and woman standing beside a young man. In front of them are nine people: four girls, four female silhouettes and a man. The empty spaces become suggestive and uncomfortable. Not only does it indicate the approximate age of the women who have disappeared but it also reflects their fragility and that of the little ones, the latest ones added onto the list of victims. The emptiness, painted with blood, turns obscene, expressing excessive sexuality; an emptiness absorbed by the bodies of girls who still occupy a space in the family scene.

A verse from a popular children’s game in the Hispanic world, We’ll Play in the Woods, (3) appears on the left (from the spectator’s viewpoint) in yellow and red letters, but some words have been modified: “We’ll play in the desert while the wolves aren’t around, because if they appear, all us girls will be killed.” The transformation from woods to desert is a gruesome twist, underscoring what Susana Chávez eloquently and courageously condemned through her poetry and her activism.

(1) Susana Chávez’s blog, with her biography and her poetry, was http://primeratormenta.blogspot.com. Other written material at http://suchaca.blogspot.com

(2) “The term was first used by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Warren drew "an analogy between the concept of "genocide" and what she called "gendercide." Citing the Oxford English Dictionary definition of genocide as "the deliberate extermination of a race of people," Warren wrote: By analogy, gendercide would be the deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex (or gender). Other terms, such as "gynocide" and "femicide," have been used to refer to the wrongful killing of girls and women. But "gendercide" is a sex-neutral term, in that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a sex-neutral term, since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong when the victims happen to be male. The term also calls attention to the fact that gender roles have often had lethal consequences, and that these are in important respects analogous to the lethal consequences of racial, religious, and class prejudice.” http://www.gendercide.org/what_is_gendercide.html

(3) In Spanish, the game is called “Jugaremos en el bosque”. The children sing: We’ll play in the woods, while the wolf isn’t around, because if the wolf appears, he’ll eat us all up. Wolf, are you there? The wolf answers, I’m putting on my pants. Let’s play in the woods while the wolf isn’t around, because if the wolf appears, he’ll eat us all up. Wolf, are you there? The wolf answers, I’m putting on my shirt, and so on and so forth. The wolf keeps answering with different garments until he’s all dressed, at which point he answers, Yes, and I’m coming out to eat you up!

Feminicidio e impunidad
By Laura Pomerantz

“Sangre nuestra”

by Susana Chávez (4)

Sangre mía,

de alba,

de luna partida,

del silencio,

de roca muerta,

de mujer en cama

saltando al vacío.

Abierta a la locura.

Sangre clara y definida,

fértil y semilla.

Sangre incomprensible gira,

sangre liberación de sí misma,

sangre río de mis cantos,

Mar de mis abismos.

Sangre instante donde nazco adolorida.

Nutrida de mi última presencia.

¿Cómo abordamos una situación de violencia que se dirige a una porción de la población que por su género se discrimina violando sus derechos? Nos referimos a las muertas de Juárez (Estado de Chihuahua, México): mujeres entre los 13 y 30 años aproximadamente, desparecidas, raptadas, torturadas, violadas y asesinadas hasta ser descuartizadas, en el camino de regreso a sus casas, denominado camino de la muerte. Sin saber a ciencia cierta las razones, desde 1993 los hombres realizan dichas atrocidades con mujeres humildes de su misma etnia. Asesinato masivo y deliberado que se conoce con el nombre de femicide o gendercide. (5)

Susana Chávez (1974-2011) poetiza y activista mexicana, fue asesinada en Ciudad Juárez el 6 de enero del corriente año. Como parte de nuestra postura ideológica en el CSPG, condenamos la violencia y la crueldad, a la vez que le rendimos un homenaje a esta defensora de los derechos de la mujer en el Día Internacional de la Mujer, el 8 de marzo.

En el año 2003 se presentaron posters en diferentes estaciones del metro de la Ciudad de México, mismos que posteriormente viajaron por la República. La finalidad era concientizar a la población sobre los asesinatos así como presionar a las autoridades a que se involucraran e hicieran justicia. He aquí uno de ellos, dedicado a Susana Chávez.

Una aparente típica fotografía familiar presenta las tres generaciones clásicas. Todos miran a la cámara salvo unos contornos corporales vacíos en blanco, manchados de rojo. El registro del fondo describe un hombre y una mujer maduros parados al lado de un joven. El frontal cuenta con nueve personas: cuatro niñas, cuatro siluetas y un hombre. El vacío se torna sugerente e incómodo. No solo indica la edad aproximada de las desaparecidas sino que también señala su fragilidad y la de las pequeñas, últimas que prosiguen en la lista de víctimas. Vacío que deviene obsceno y de una sexualidad excesiva al pintarse de sangre, vacío absorbido por los cuerpos de las menores que aún ocupan un espacio en la escena familiar.

Un verso de un juego de niños popular en el mundo hispano, Jugaremos en el bosque, (6) se lee al costado izquierdo en letras amarillas y rojas (visto desde el espectador), aunque con algunas palabras modificadas: “jugaremos en el desierto mientras los lobos no están, porque si ellos aparecen a todas nos matarán”.

El bosque transformado en desierto se vuelve macabro, acentuando la denuncia que también pretendía hacer Susana Chávez.

(4) Blog de Susana Chávez, con su biografía y su producción poética, http://primeratormenta.blogspot.com. Otros escritos en http://suchaca.blogspot.com

(5) El término fue usado por primera vez por Mary Anne Warren en su libro Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection (Generocidio: Las implicaciones de la selección por sexo), de 1985. Warren dibujó "una analogía entre el concepto de genocidio" y lo que ella llamó "generocidio." Citando el Diccionario de la lengua Inglesa de Oxford, la definición de genocidio es "la deliberada exterminación de una raza de personas," Warren escribió: “Por analogía, generocidio puede ser la exterminación deliberada de personas de un sexo (o género) en particular. Otros términos como "ginecidio" y "feminicidio," han sido usados para referirse a los asesinatos injustos de niñas y mujeres. Pero "generocidio" es un término sexual-neutral, en el cual las víctimas pueden ser tanto mujeres como varones. Hay una necesidad de un término sexual-neutral en tanto el asesinato sexualmente discriminatorio está mal como cuando las víctimas son varones. El término también llama la atención por el hecho de que los roles de género frecuentemente han tenido consecuencias letales y que éstas son en importantes respectos análogos a las consecuencias letales de los prejuicios raciales, religiosos y de clase.” http://www.gendercide.org/what_is_gendercide.html

(6) Jugaremos en el bosque, mientras el lobo no está, porque si el lobo aparece a todos nos comerá. ¿Lobo estás ahí? Me estoy poniendo los pantalones. Juguemos en el bosque, mientras el lobo no está, porque si el lobo aparece a todos nos comerá ¿Lobo estás ahí? El lobo sigue respondiendo hasta que luego de haberse vestido, dice: Sí, y salgo para comérmelos!

Posters of the Week

2011-02-23T21:16:00.000-08:00

For All These Rights We've Just Begun to Fight
Ben Shahn
CIO Political Action Committee
Lithograph. 1946
New York, NY

Ben Shahn (1898 –1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist, whose paintings, graphics and posters cry out for social justice. His work covered some of the most controversial issues of the day. In 1932 he completed a series on the still controversial trials of Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrant labor organizers and anarchists who were executed in 1927. During World War II he worked for the U.S. Government Office of War Information (OWI) designing propaganda posters. Because his work lacked the preferred patriotism of the day only two of his posters were published. But both were memorable, especially a 1942 poster about Nazi extermination of the entire Czech village of Lidice. After the war, his work ranged from opposing nuclear weapons to supporting civil rights.

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week was done shortly after WWII. The enemy was no longer the Nazis, but attacks on working people and unions by the reactionary right in the U.S. Just like now. We dedicate the Poster-of-the-Week to the public employees and their supporters in Wisconsin who are fighting back, in some of the most creative and spirited ways we’ve seen in years. One protester even credited the Egyptians for inspiring the actions in the U.S. And the Wisconsin actions have in turn inspired actions in Ohio, Indiana, and support demonstrations around the country.

If you have posters about this or other issues, please send them to us.

Posted by Bruce Benidt on February 22, 2011 on http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordpress.com/

Poster of the Week

2011-02-04T21:47:00.001-08:00

Walk Like an Egyptian
Mr. Fish
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/?tn
Reprinted by permission of Truthdig
2011

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week celebrates the courage, determination and optimism of the Egyptian people as they continue to fight against the 30 year long dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura, Sharqiya and elsewhere, in an unprecedented display of popular protest. After days of primarily peaceful…and hopeful…protest, the Mubarek regime’s secret police began attacking the demonstrators this week.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, can’t decide whether to continue supporting a long-time ally, although brutal and corrupt, or support the secular democracy movement. Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world—only Israel receives more—and the bullets, tear gas and other weapons being used against the Egyptian people were made in the U.S.A.

Walk Like an Egyptian by Mr. Fish, gives the revolutionary Che Guevara an Egyptian focus by giving Alberto Korda’s icon photo of Che the face of Pharoah Tutankhamun— popularly known as “King Tut.” Mr. Fish is the pen name for Dwayne Booth, whose brilliant editorial cartoons appear in Truthdig.org., LA Weekly, MSNBC, and Harper’s Magazine.

For those of you who haven’t been glued to Aljazeera English, the events in Egypt were inspired by the overthrow last month of Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali following 23 years of iron-fisted rule. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region. His ouster continues to inspire the pro-democracy demonstrations that are spreading across the Middle East. In addition to Egypt, popular revolts and demonstrations are also taking place in Algeria, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen.

A photo from Aljazeera showing “Walk Like an Egyptian” -- on the streets of Cairo!

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/06/live-blog-feb-7-egypt-protests

Sources:
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/egypts_effects_go_beyond_its_borders_20110202/?ln
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/28/uprising_in_egypt_this_is_the
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/tunisia-uprising-drives-i_n_809459.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/PoliticalNews.aspx?Id=1537321&SM=1

Poster of the Week

2011-01-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

Stop Anti-Gay/Lesbian Violence
National Gay Task Force
Offset, 1980s
New York, NY

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week honors the life of David Kato Kisule, Ugandan LGBTQ activist who was brutally murdered with an axe in his home on January 26, 2011. He was 42 years old. Kato was murdered shortly after winning a lawsuit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.

Kato was among the 100 people whose names and photographs were published in October 2009 by the Ugandan tabloid newspaper Rolling Stone (no connection to U.S. magazine with the same name) in an article which called for their execution as homosexuals.

Considered a father of Uganda's gay rights movement, Kato served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato and two other SMUG members who were also listed in the article, sued the newspaper to force it to stop publishing the names and pictures of people it believed were gay or lesbian. The petition was granted on November 2, 2010, effectively ruling for the end of Rolling Stone. On January 3, 2011, the court ordered the newspaper to pay Kato and the other two plaintiffs 1.5 million Ugandan shillings each. Three weeks later he was murdered.

Family, friends and co-activists attended Kato's open-air funeral, many of whom wore t-shirts bearing his photo in front, the Latin la(sic) luta continua [the struggle continues] in the back, and the rainbow flag colors inscribed onto the sleeves. When the Christian minister at the funeral preached against the gays and lesbians present, exclaiming comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah, the activists ran to the pulpit and grabbed the microphone from him. An unidentified female activist angrily exclaimed "Who are you to judge others?" When villagers sided with the preacher and refused to bury Kato he was buried by his friends and co-workers, most of whom were gay.

His murder has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, President Barack Obama, the European Union and many others. "I am deeply saddened to learn of the murder," Obama said. "David showed tremendous courage in speaking out against hate. He was a powerful advocate for fairness and freedom."

For his newspaper's alleged role in the murder, Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhame stated "When we called for hanging of gay people, we meant ... after they have gone through the legal process ... I did not call for them to be killed in cold blood like he was." However, he stated that "I have no regrets about the story. We were just exposing people who were doing wrong."

The same hypocritical denial of responsibility has been heard from Sarah Palin, Fox News and the Tea Party after the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others. Inflammatory visuals and rhetoric—whether it is placing cross-hairs over Democratic districts and calling for “Don’t Retreat, Instead Reload!” or running a headline that states, “Hang them” next to photos of 100 men and women identified as gays and lesbians—have consequences we must work to prevent.

Jimmy Somerville, David Kato memorial demonstration, Trafalgar Square, London, January 28, 2011.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kato
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12299786
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/uganda-death-sentence-gay-sex

Poster of the Week

2011-01-22T14:41:00.001-08:00

Day of Solidarity With the Congo
Alfredo Rostgaard
Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Africa, Asia y América Latina (OSPAAAL)
Offset, 1972
Havana, Cuba

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961) was the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Lumumba’s pan-Africanism, and his political and economical vision for the Republic of the Congo, gained him many enemies in Belgium and the United States. The CIA, with the approval of President Eisenhower, ordered his assassination.

On 14 September, 1960, only ten weeks after he was elected Prime Minister, Lumumba's government was deposed in a CIA-sponsored coup led by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. On January 17, 1961—50 years ago this month—Lumumba was assassinated by a firing squad. Tens of thousands died in the subsequent civil war.

In 1965, with the help of the CIA, Mobutu seized power and ruled for over 30 years. In spite of his corruption and economic mismanagement, Mobutu had the political and military support of Western countries, which saw him as an ally against communism in Africa and amenable to corporate exploitation of Congolese resources. Mobuto was overthrown in a civil war (1997-1999) in which four million people died.

Poster of the Week Artist

Alfredo Rostgaard (1943 – 2004) was a Cuban graphic designer and artist, and one of the most prolific of the revolutionary designers that contributed to Cuba's massive output of posters during the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. Referencing Pop Art and psychedelic poster art, Rostgaard's work also includes figurative painting and Warhol-esq commercial graphics. He designed numerous posters for ICAIC (the Cuban film institute) and became art director of the Organization in Solidarity with Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) from 1960 to 1975. He had numerous international exhibits and won several distinguished awards. He was a talented, witty, and prolific artist with a deep sense of social responsibility. Produced 12 years after Lumumba’s assassination, Rostgaard represented his pan-Africanism by rendering Lumumba’s face in the shape of Africa.

References:
Patrice Lumumba: 50 Years Later, Remembering the U.S.-Backed Assassination of Congo’s First Democratically Elected Leader, Democracy Now! (Jan. 21, 2011)
http://www.inshuti.org/madsen2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba
http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/Cuba/RostgaardObit.html

Poster of the Week

2011-01-18T17:27:00.000-08:00

Museum Censorship
Artist Unknown
Source: Hyperallergic.com
2010

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week protests the recent art censorship in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), in Los Angeles.

CENSORSHIP IN LOS ANGELES—Deeming it potentially offensive, Jeffrey Deitch, MoCA’s new director, last month whitewashed a mural he commissioned by Blu, an internationally renowned Italian street artist. The mural was to be an important part of MoCA’s upcoming street art exhibition, Art in the Street. Blu’s powerful anti-war mural featured coffins draped in dollar bills. Admitting he had received no complaints, Deitch said he destroyed the mural as he thought it would offend veterans. What really offends the veterans we’ve spoken with is the war and the war-profiteering targeted in the mural.

CENSORSHIP IN WASHINGTON D.C.—The National Portrait Gallery’s critically acclaimed Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is the first major museum exhibition to focus on gay-themed portraiture in American art—from the 19th century to the present—and to show how art reflects society's evolving and changing attitudes towards sexual difference. New York artist David Wojnarowicz made A Fire in My Belly in 1986-87, after being diagnosed with HIV. In the work, he addresses the suffering of an AIDS victim, mortality and his own Catholic upbringing. Wojnarowicz died of complications from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 37.

Over-reacting to complaints by Republican congressional leaders, Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Museum, removed a four minute excerpt of Wojnarowicz’s video which included an 11-second section showing ants crawling over a crucifix. The Catholic League and some conservative U.S. politicians led by House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (OH) and House Majority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), called the work hate speech against Christians and threatened to cut the Smithsonian’s funding if they did not remove the video.

We applaud The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, one of the principal sponsors of Hide/Seek for saying they would not fund future Smithsonian projects unless the video is restored to the exhibition. We also applaud all the museums and websites now showing A Fire in My Belly.

Wayne Clough will speak at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on January 20th at noon as part of Town Hall Los Angeles public issues series.

PLEASE JOIN US for a Funeral Procession for Freedom of Expression!

11 AM THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2011
BILTMORE HOTEL
506 South Grand Avenue (Across from Pershing Square)
Los Angeles, CA 90071

PROTEST CENSORSHIP OF THE ARTS!

If you can’t be there, please write to your elected representatives to say that censorship of the arts is unacceptable, unpatriotic and un-American.

Art is supposed to be provocative. Art is supposed to educate, agitate and inspire public debate. The debate that results from censoring art focuses more on the act of censorship, than on the art itself. Why was it removed? What was it saying? Whose buttons did it push?

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week was based on the Parental Advisory Label invented in 1990 by the Recording Industry Association of America—the label consists of four words: "Parental Advisory/Explicit Content." The label was the result of pressure from The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) a committee formed in 1985 with the goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent or sexually suggestive. The committee was founded by four women, including Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore and Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker. To some, it has become known as the "Tipper sticker" because of Tipper Gore’s visible role in the PMRC.

Some retailers (such as Wal-Mart) refuse to sell albums containing the label, and many others limit the sale of such albums to adults only, although most stores have settled on an age limit of 17 in order to buy an album containing the label.

For more information:
http://laraw-art.blogspot.com/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/smithsonian-secretary-clough-embroiled-in-video-censorship-controversy-to-speak-in-la-jan-20.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121305853.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_Advisory

Smithsonian chief, embroiled in video censorship controversy, to speak in L.A. Jan. 20

2011-01-08T21:00:00.001-08:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/smithsonian-secretary-clough-embroiled-in-video-censorship-controversy-to-speak-in-la-jan-20.html

LA Artists Protest MoCA Censorship

2011-01-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

On Monday, January 3, 2011, there was a creative street artist action protesting the recent destruction of a mural at MoCA by director Jeffrey Deitch. Here are links to articles and videos.

http://www.vimeo.com/18419889

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/street-artists-protest-moca-geffen-contemporary-blu.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/protest-at-moca-over-blus_n_804265.html#s219002

http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2011/01/street_art_blus_1.html

Poster of the Week

2011-01-08T20:32:00.001-08:00

The iconic 1942 We Can Do It poster encouraging women to enter the work force during World War II, was inspired by a United Press International (UPI) photo of Geraldine Doyle, a 17 year-old factory worker from Michigan who died last month. She did not know that she was the model for this widely reproduced and frequently appropriated poster until reading about it in a magazine in 1984.

Rosie the Riveter is a fictional figure representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II. She was featured in a widely recorded song written in 1942, and a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell. But the most famous and enduring image of this cultural icon became identified with the 1942 We Can Do It poster by J. Howard Miller (1918 – 2004), who painted many posters during World War II in support of the war effort. We Can Do It was one of a series of posters he painted for the Westinghouse Company (later, the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee), and he was hired to create a series of posters. The posters were sponsored by the company's War Production Co-Ordinating Committee, one of the hundreds of labor-management committees organized under the supervision of the national War Production Board.

The We Can Do It poster was scheduled to be displayed in Westinghouse facilities for only two weeks in February 1942, followed by the next poster in the series. As time passed, however, it took on a whole new life.

Posters such as We Can Do It encouraged women to enter the workforce, to replace male workers who were in the military. Conditions were sometimes harsh and pay was not always equal—the average man working in a wartime plant was paid $54.65 per week, while women were paid about $31.50. Nonetheless, women quickly responded to Rosie the Riveter, who convinced them that they had a patriotic duty to enter the workforce.

Women’s magazines aided this effort by promoting meals that could be made quickly, after work. After the war, these same magazines printed recipes for more elaborate, multi-course meals, as part of the effort to get women out of the workforce so that the returning servicemen could have the jobs.

During the 1970s women’s movement, the We Can Do It poster became a U.S. feminist icon, and continues to inspire variations and appropriations. The posters included here will all be included in American Icons—Posters of Patriotism & Dissent to premiere at the Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA; April 1- 16, 2011.

Si Se Puede!
Syracuse Cultural Workers
Offset, 2001
New York, NY

Sorry Boys...I'm Gay!
Artist Unknown
Offset, 2008

Marcha Lésbica
Alma Lopez
Global Fund for Women
Offset, 2006
Mexico: Mexico City

3rd Mexico City Lesbian March

Cristina Serna, a native Chicana from East Los Angeles and UCSB graduate student, poses as J. Howard Miller’s classic W.W. II rendition of Rosie the Riveter, traditionally titled We Can Do It. Serna flexes her right fist and proudly shows off a tattoo of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Sirena embracing each other as they float on a Viceroy butterfly surrounded by a Sacred Heart.

The background is composed of multiple photographs taken during the previous two Mexico City Lesbian marches and demonstrations in the Zocalo, Mexico’s historic center. Behind hundreds (and possibly thousands) of lesbian activists uniting from various cities in Mexico and the U.S., is the largest and oldest cathedral in the Americas and the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico. A nearby banner reads, “Lesbians, breaking barriers, crossing borders.”

Butterflies fly up into the sky. The idea is that the activists’ intention created in that space and time will scatter to diverse areas of Mexico, the U.S. and beyond ignoring borders, and creating awareness and change.

Drill, Baby, Drill
Artist Unknown
Offset, 2008
United States

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Howard_Miller

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122905336.html

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/913915--woman-whose-image-inspired-wwii-s-rosie-the-riveter-dies

Above is source of photo of Geraldine Doyle holding Rosie the Riveter poster, photo by Robert Killips/AP

Poster of the Week

2011-01-01T21:47:00.001-08:00

Out Against the War
Anticapitalist Asspirates/Asspirateurs Anticapitalistes
Digital Print, 2005
Montreal, Canada

“Don't Ask Don't Tell” Repealed

On 22 December 2010, President Barack Obama signed landmark legislation allowing openly gay people to serve in the military. Don't Ask Don't Tell, which barred gay people in the military from revealing their sexual orientation, had been in effect since President Bill Clinton introduced it as a compromise measure in 1993. Prior to DADT, lesbian and gay service members had been court-martialed, imprisoned, dishonorably discharged, and/or committed to military hospitals.

As many uncritically celebrate the repeal of DADT, CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week focuses on a much less publicized perspective which objects to anyone joining the military to fight unjust imperial wars.

In October 2010, Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow.org hosted an important debate between Lt. Dan Choi, Iraqi War veteran who was discharged after coming out in 2009 on The Rachel Maddow Show, and queer anti-war activist and writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Celebrating the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, Sycamore says, only makes progressive movements in the U.S. complicit with American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The program raised the question: Should the queer rights movement have been focused on repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell law? Did Opposing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Bolster U.S. Militarism?

To see this debate:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/22/does_opposing_dont_ask_dont_tell

Out Against the War is also featured in CSPG’s newest exhibition, Out of the Closet & Into the Street: Posters on LGBTQ Struggles and Celebrations which can be seen on our website: www.politicalgraphics.org

Additional reading:

Following the repeal of DADT, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink: Women for Peace, wrote :“To the LGBT Community: Now That You Can Join the Military, Please Don't!”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/medea-benjamin/to-the-gay-community-now-_b_799647.html

May the New Year Bring us Closer to Peace with Justice

Poster of the Week

2010-12-20T20:48:00.000-08:00

How Can You Worship A Homeless Man On Sunday And Ignore One On Monday?
Coalition for the Homeless
Offset, 1990s,
New York, New York

During this season of celebration and reflection, this poster goes right to the heart of the hypocrisy demonstrated during the recent tax debate. Bush’s tax breaks will continue, unemployment benefits to millionaires, millionaires will pay LESS taxes, while families making under $20,000 a year will actually see their taxes INCREASE. Why aren’t we taking to the streets like the outraged citizens of Greece, Ireland, Britain and France?

Speaking of hypocrisy, let’s not forget the stalled 9/11 health care bill. Jon Stewart’s December 16th program on Comedy Central had some of the First Responders to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center discuss Republican hypocrisy.

See it on: http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Also on: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jon-stewart-rants-republican-filibuster-911-responder-bill/story?id=12422872

A Musical Gift to Us All - Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine guitarist, selected his favorite protest songs for Rolling Stone, The Playlist Issue, December 9, 2010. Not only are they inspiring, but reminders that great people have been fighting the good fight for many generations, and that all the arts are central to this struggle. Go to http://rollingstoneextras.com/playlists/view/tom-morello

May the New Year bring us closer to Peace with Justice,

Carol A. Wells

Founder and Executive Director

Center for the Study of Political Graphics

Reclaiming the Power of Art to Educate, Agitate and Inspire People to Action

Poster of the Week

2010-12-06T20:02:00.001-08:00

You Can Jail a Revolutionary
But You Can’t Jail the Revolution
Emory Douglas
Offset, 1969/70
Chicago, Illinois

Fred Hampton (1948 -1969)—was a charismatic and brilliant orator, organizer and head of the Chicago Black Panther Party. He was assassinated on December 4, 1969 by the F.B.I, working with the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois State Attorney’s Office.

Born in Illinois, Hampton was a student leader in high school and an activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1968, he joined the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, and quickly became the Illinois State Chair of the organization. Hampton organized weekly rallies, taught political education classes, attended the Breakfast for Children program daily, and helped establish the Free People’s Clinic on Chicago’s West Side.

A powerful and eloquent speaker, he was set to be appointed the Party’s Central Committee as Chief of Staff in November 1970. Fearing Hampton’s ability to spread the Panther’s message, the FBI, through an informant, obtained a floorplan of his apartment. The same informant gave Hampton a drugged hot chocolate before he went to bed on December 3 to ensure he wouldn’t wake up. At 4:30 a.m. on December 3, 1969, the FBI raided the apartment, killing Hampton and Panther Mark Clark, and wounding several others.

COINTELPRO

The Murder of Fred Hampton was part of the Domestic Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPROs). COINTELPROs were covert operations designed to infiltrate, destabilize, and destroy organizations that law enforcement and government officials deemed as threats to national security. In the 1940s and 1950s, COINTELPROs were directed almost exclusively at the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party, USA. During the late 1960s the vast majority of COINTELPRO operations were directed against black organizations, for the purpose of causing internal dissent and conflicts with other black organizations. The special COINTELPRO division labeled “Black Propaganda” included fabricated publications designed to give organizations a bad public image, fabricated cartoons and letters to foster tensions between groups, infiltration by informers, false rumors, fabricated evidence, and police assaults. In August 1967, the FBI launched a COINTELPRO operation against the Panthers which contributed to the Panther's siege mentality.

References:

Hampton's death was chronicled in the powerful 1971 documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton, as well as an episode of the critically acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize.

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

Poster of the Week

2010-11-30T19:49:00.001-08:00

Connie Norman
Artist Unknown
Photocopy, 1996
Los Angeles, California
34015

I often tell people that I am an ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex-IV drug user, ex-high risk youth, and current postoperative transsexual woman who is HIV-positive.

– Connie Norman

Born in Texas, Norman fled to Hollywood at the age of 14. Having recovered from drug addiction, Norman underwent therapy and then a sex-change operation in 1976. She began her political life as an AIDS and Queer activist with the Los Angeles chapter of ACT UP. In 1991 she transformed the media landscape by becoming the first openly queer host of a commercial talk radio show. “The Connie Norman Show” aired daily on XEK-AM where she was able to share her views on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) and human rights issues. In 1993 Norman became the first transgender Director of Public Policy at AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, a California non-profit agency. Norman’s reach was broad, as she also co-hosted an LGBTQ Cable TV program and was a newspaper columnist for a San Diego publication. Because of her unyielding activism, she was honored with awards from various groups including the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, California State Senate and California Assembly. ACT UP/LA never gave an award or honor to anyone except Norman. Just before her passing they made official her self-proclaimed status as “AIDS Diva”. Her ashes were scattered on the lawn of the Clinton White House as part of the national ACT UP "Ashes Action" on October 13, 1996. Her legacy is sustained by Christopher Street West who established the Connie Norman Award to honor an individual or organization for outstanding achievement in fostering racial, ethnic, religious, and gender unity within the LGBTQ community.

World AIDS DAY

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since 1981 and an estimated 33.3 million people worldwide, including at least 2.5 million children, live with HIV, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history.

World AIDS Day 2010 is all about raising awareness to tackle HIV prejudice and help stop the spread of HIV. The First World AIDS Day was December 1, 1988. In its first two years, the theme of World AIDS Day focused on children and young people. These themes were strongly criticized at the time for ignoring the fact that people of all ages may become infected with HIV and suffer from AIDS. But the themes drew attention to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, helped alleviate some of the stigma surrounding the disease, and helped boost recognition of the problem as a family disease.

The theme for 2010 is Universal Access and Human Rights. The protection of human rights is fundamental to combating the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. Violations against human rights fuel the spread of HIV, putting marginalized groups, like injecting drug users and sex workers, at a higher risk of HIV infection. By promoting individual human rights, new infections can be prevented and people who have HIV can live free from discrimination.

For more information about HIV/AIDS and World AIDS Day, please visit:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/156752/world-aids-day

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

http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm

Poster of the Week

2010-11-17T20:33:00.001-08:00

Freedom to Lead

Shepherd Fairey

Human Rights Action Center

Offset, 2009

Los Angeles, California

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week celebrates the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate. After spending more than 15 years in detention, most of it under house arrest, continued international pressure from human rights activists finally led to her release by the military junta on November 13, 2010. Aung San Suu Kyi has come to symbolize the struggle of Burma’s people to be free.

Aung San Suu Kyi may have been released but there are still more than 2,200 political prisoners in Burma. For more information on Aung San Suu Kyi and the history of Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military dictatorship in 1989), go to:

http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/index.php/burma/about-burma/about-burma/a-biography-of-aung-san-suu-kyi

Poster of the Week

2010-11-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

East Timor An Act Of Genocide
Carolyn C. King; East Timor Human Rights Committee
Offset, January 1981
Syracuse, New York

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week commemorates a massacre that took place 19 years ago this week in East Timor by Indonesian paramilitary forces. Although our featured poster was produced ten years before this specific massacre, it represents the decades of genocide that took place in East Timor during 25 years of Indonesian occupation.

On November 12th 1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on unarmed civilians, primarily young people, who were staging a peaceful demonstration in Dili, East Timor’s capital and largest city—271 were killed, 381 were wounded and another 270 people “disappeared.” The day started as a memorial procession and independence demonstration through the Santa Cruz Cemetery, and international journalists were present. Two American journalists, Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, were beaten when they tried to intervene between the military and the civilians, but survived.

The massacre, known either as the Santa Cruz Massacre or the Dili Massacre fueled the movement to restore independence to East Timor, which finally occurred in 2002, however the troops and officials responsible for the attack have yet to come to justice.

Countless East Timorese were murdered since Indonesia invaded the island in 1975…with full U.S. approval. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian President Suharto on the day before the invasion and reportedly gave their approval for the invasion. During the Indonesian occupation, more than 200,000 East Timorese were killed out of a population of less than 700,000.

For more information:

http://www1.ci.uc.pt/timor/stc2.htm

www.democracynow.org has many features on the Dili Massacre.

Poster of the Week

2010-11-05T21:51:00.001-07:00

Liberty
Gee Vaucher
Offset, 2004
London, UK

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week is a graphic response to the state of the union, the elections, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Tea Party, the wars, the economy, climate change and anything else that is disturbing. Viewer’s comments are welcome

East London born Gee Vaucher started gaining recognition designing politically outspoken record covers and newsletters for the British anarchist punk band Crass (1977-1984). Her work became a strong influence for protest art as well as the punk and anarchist aesthetic of her time. She used her surrealist influenced collage style and stencil lettering to incite social change, exposing the ills of civil society with frank and often disturbing imagery. Vaucher continues to create extraordinarily insightful imagery that strips away society’s veneer to reveal hidden truths. Her work is hard-hitting with a gripping aesthetic and has been exhibited internationally as well as been included in a number of books and publications.

For more about Gee Vaucher see:

http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2008/01

http://flavorpill.com/sanfrancisco/events/2007/12/14/gee-vaucher-introspective

Poster of the Week

2010-10-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Cobre Chileno/Chilean Copper
Vicente and Antonio Larrea
Offset, 1972
Santiago, Chile

Translation:

You are the fatherland, the pampa (prairie) and people, sand, clay, school, house, resurrection, fist, offensive, order, parade, attack, wheat , struggle, grandeur, resistance.

On October 13, 2010, the world celebrated the incredible rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,000 feet underground for 69 days in a gold and copper mine near Copiapó a desert city in Northern Chile. For the first 17 days, no one knew if any had survived the mine’s collapse, and the miners were in complete isolation. As much of the world anxiously watched the miner’s harrowing ordeal, few were aware that the mine owners in their generosity did not pay the men's wages while they were trapped underground.*

The joy and relief over their rescue must also not prevent more critical views of the circumstances leading up to the collapse. The San José mine had a history of accidents: over a dozen lives have been lost there in recent years. It became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On July 30, 2010, a Chilean labor department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies”, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed. We should not even be calling it an “accident” when it appears to be a crime caused by negligence and greed. **

As Chilean President Sebastian Piñera hugged each miner as they came out of the narrow escape shaft, it is important to remember how Chilean miners were murdered nearby under the Pinochet dictatorship just decades earlier.

In 1970, Salvador Allende was democratically elected President of Chile, despite active intervention by the United States to thwart his election. On September 11, 1973, Allende was overthrown by a C.I.A. instigated coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Under Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship over 20,000 were killed or disappeared, and an estimated 1,000,000 were in exile following the coup.

On October 17, 1973, just a month after the coup and 37 years before the mine rescue— almost to the day — one of Pinochet’s death squads murdered 16 men in Copiapó, including some copper miners. This same death squad, which came to be called the Caravan of Death, killed more than 70 Chileans suspected of leftist activities that month alone.

CSPG’s Poster of the Week commemorates the period before Pinochet’s coup against Chilean democracy. The text was taken from a poem by Pablo Neruda. Its use on the poster celebrates President Salvador Allende’s nationalization of copper in 1971, Chile’s main export and a national symbol. The poster shows all classes of Chilean society united in the cause — including the soldier who, as representative of the Chilean armed forces, would (with U.S. help) oust Allende and overturn his socialist programs just one year later.

*http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/trapped-chilean-miners-docked-pay-while-undeground/; http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2010/10/miners-are-rescued-and-their-memories.html

**Not unlike British Petroleum—BP—which has one of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in the U.S. With the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deep Water Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history. With a long history of negligence and safety violations, this too should be called a crime, not an accident.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/oct/13/chile-miners-rescue-mine-collapse

http://andyalcock.org/2010/10/16/rescue-of-the-chilean-miners-reminds-us-of-chiles-painful/

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20101015/ZNYT03/10153005/-1/news03?Title=Rescue-May-Redeem-a-Troubled-Past-for-Chilean-City

Posters of the Week

2010-10-08T08:00:00.001-07:00

Modern Electric Chair
Juliano Ijichi Machado
Brazil

Requiem para los del 3 de mayo
Vladimir Sabillón
Honduras

JUSTICE/EDALAT
Aida Torkamani Asl
Iran

It must be stopped
Natalia Lazarashvili
Georgia

Death is Not Justice*

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics’ Posters-of-the-Week commemorates October 10, 2010, the 8th World Day Against the Death Penalty.

The death penalty is a violation of human rights, and more than two thirds of countries in the world have banned executions. 58 still persist in killing people in the name of “justice.” In 2009, countries with the highest number of executions were Iran (with at least 388 executions), Iraq (at least 120), Saudi Arabia (at least 69), and the United States (52). In China information regarding the death penalty remains a secret, but according to Amnesty International China executes more people than the rest of the world combined.

Recently retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, said that the lone vote he regrets in his nearly 35 years on the High Court is one that he cast to restore the death penalty in 1976. **

To educate and inspire people to work against the death penalty, we are featuring some amazing posters produced for Poster for Tomorrow, an independent, non-profit organization based in Paris and founded by Hervé Matine. Matine invited Carol Wells, CSPG’s founding director to be one of 100 online international curators to select the top 100 posters out of several thousand submissions. A live jury then picked the 10 winning posters which can be seen at http://www.posterfortomorrow.org/

The ten winning designs will become part of the permanent collection of nine internationally acclaimed design museums. The Center for the Study of Political Graphics will be the only U.S. institution to receive them. The other museums are:

- Dansk Plakatmuseum, Denmark
- Design Museum Gent, Belgium
- Graphic Design Museum, The Netherlands
- Lahti Poster Museum, Finland
- Les Arts Decoratifs, France
- Museum für Gestaltung, Switzerland
- Wilanow Poster Museum, Poland
- Victoria and Albert Museum, England

Most of the activities of Poster for Tomorrow promote active citizenship through the medium of design. They want to encourage people, both those in and outside the design community, to make posters to stimulate debate in the local and international communities on issues that affect us all.

* The title of the anti-death penalty design organized by Poster for Tomorrow .

**For more on Steven’s thoughts on the death penalty and the interview:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130198344

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/john-paul-stevenss-one-re_n_749109.html

Poster of the Week

2010-09-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Build A Wall Of Resistance
Fireworks Graphics
Silkscreen, circa 1980
San Francisco, California

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week has been reproduced a number of times over the past thirty years, always in response to FBI harassment of activists and Grand Jury subpoenas. It is currently being reissued after FBI SWAT teams broke down doors of anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis and Chicago on Friday, September 24, 2010. The activists were served with Federal Grand Jury subpoenas; personal papers, photographs, computers and cell phones were seized.

Friday’s raids came on the heels of a Justice Department probe that found the FBI improperly monitored activist groups and individuals from 2001 to 2006. Just two days earlier, the Boston Globe published an editorial about contemporary red-baiting, and how groups such as The Catholic Worker and The Thomas Merton Center—which had absolutely no connection with 9-11—were being investigated by the FBI. For more on the FBI’s ongoing post 9-11 war against dissent, targeting environmental, peace and social justice groups see: http://warisacrime.org/content/inspector-general-criticism-doesnt-faze-fbi-raids-midwestern-anti-war-activists.

Poster history—Build a Wall of Resistance: Don’t Talk to the FBI.

This poster, designed by Fireworks Graphics Collective in San Francisco in the late 1970s, was silk-screened on newsprint and posted on the street. Its purpose was, and is, to inform people that they do not have to talk to the FBI, and that refusing to talk to the FBI or testify to Grand Juries are ways of supporting the movement for social change. It was one in a series of posters supporting members of the Puerto Rican independence movement in Chicago, New York, and Puerto Rico, who were being harassed by the FBI and being subpoenaed to testify at Grand Juries. Several people went to jail for refusing to appear, but no one testified, and the Grand Jury was unable to break the solidarity of the movement.

It was reprinted several times in the 1980s, including in 1984 to support members of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee in SF (JBAKC), who had been subpoenaed to a Grand Jury in Chicago under the ruse that a threatening letter had been sent with the JBAKC mailbox in San Francisco as the return address. After a few months of refusal to testify, the Federal Attorney dropped what was one of their more blatant fishing expeditions.

In 2005, three new San Francisco Grand Juries occasioned another reprinting of the Build a Wall poster.

Several environmental and animal rights activists were subpoenaed to a Grand Jury fishing expedition about small explosive devices that went off outside at Chiron corporation, an Emeryville (SF Bay Area) biotechnology firm, and Shaklee corporation in Pleasanton. The government was unable to find the suspect, so tried to get friends and animal rights activists to testify against him and the movement. It is believed that everyone resisted testifying, and the Grand Jury eventually died.

Also in 2005, Josh Wolfe, a San Francisco activist and videographer, was subpoenaed to a Federal GJ for video he took at a demonstration at which a policeman was injured. The San Francisco prosecutor refused to bring charges, so the police lied and said that the policeman’s car had been burned, and got a federal Grand Jury to subpoena Wolf based on the spurious “evidence” that since the Federal Government gave money to the SF police, the Feds had an interest in the car, and a right to call a Grand Jury. (Not a joke. That was the story). Wolfe was held for several months in the Federal prison in Dublin, CA for refusing to hand over video. Eventually the judge saw the video in question, told the prosecutor there was no footage of the injuring of the policeman, or of the burning car, (which never happened) and Wolfe was released.

In a resurrected conspiracy case in 2005, a San Francisco Grand Jury subpoenaed five former members of the Black Panther Party. All of the men refused to testify, and were put in jail for several weeks until the Grand Jury ended. In 2006 the five men plus four others, were charged by the California Attorney General with the killing of a San Francisco policeman in 1971. (Another case where local authorities were not willing to bring charges; in this case Jerry Brown, then the state Attorney General, brought charges). After being charged in January of 2006, they became known as the San Francisco 8. Evidence against the 8 was based solely on statements made by three men who were tortured by New Orleans police in 1973. Because of the torture, the case had been thrown out of court in 1975. Courtrooms were packed with supporters for the next five years. By late 2010 one defendant had died, two had pled to substantially lowered charges in exchange for probation, and the prosecution was forced to drop all charges against four of the others. One former Panther, Francisco Torres, still had one charge that the prosecution had not dropped by February 2011. www.freethesf8.org.

Since September 11th, 2001, many Muslims and people from Middle Eastern countries have been questioned by the FBI, some being asked to be agents within their own community, and some being set up on terrorism charges. This has caused a great deal of fear in the community, and concern about civil rights.

In the fall of 2010, several political activists’ houses in the midwest were raided by the FBI and Homeland Security, supposedly investigating support for terrorist organizations. (Several of the activists did solidarity work with Palestine or Columbia, and most of them had helped organize demonstrations against the 2008 Republican National Convention). Twenty-three people were subpoenaed to a Chicago Grand Jury. All refused to testify. In response to the Grand Jury, several Know Your Rights workshops were held in the SF Bay Area, organized by the National Lawyers Guild, and co-sponsored by several civil rights groups, including the local Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR, which was already concerned about civil rights issues within the community). Some of the materials for the workshops included the “Build a Wall of Resistance” poster. The poster was used by Fox News and various right-wing groups to attack CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights group in the US. A racist and McCarthyite Federal Congressional hearing was organized by Congressman Peter King (R-NY) in March 2011, which also used the poster to attack CAIR and other Muslim organizations for not being “cooperative”. Among other things, Congressman King alleged that “There is a real threat to the country from the Muslim community and the only way to get to the bottom of it is to investigate what is happening.”

The poster has been used against many other instances of government oppression for over three decades.

A short political explanation of the dangers of speaking to the FBI is available at http://grandjuryresistance.org/ .

If you or a friend is visited by the FBI or subpoenaed to a Grand Jury, contact the National Lawyers Guild at http://www.nlgsf.org/. In October of 2010 the Guild set up a hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265).

Remember, whatever they tell you, whether you are a US citizen or not, you are not legally required to talk to the FBI or any other police, and you should not do so. It is illegal to lie to the FBI, Grand Juries, or other police, and everything you say will be bent to enable the prosecution of someone. Just say: ”I do not want to talk to you”, ask for a business card, and close the door. If you do not feel comfortable with that, add: “I will talk to my lawyer and he will get back to you”. Do not say anything more, and call the National Lawyers Guild immediately.

Poster(s) of the Week

2010-09-10T11:39:00.001-07:00

One Picture Is Worth Zero

Paul Conrad
Offset, 1992
Los Angeles, California

Beginning of Empire
Patrick Merrill
Etching, 1999
California

Two special friends of CSPG died in the last two weeks: Paul Conrad and Patrick Merrill. Both artists used their talent and passion for justice to make the world a better place. We feel honored to have known them and to have their work in our archive.

Paul Conrad (June 27, 1924 – September 4, 2010 ) was an extraordinary political artist who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his editorial cartoons. For more than six decades he satirized American politicians and presidents. Many of his depictions of Nixon and Reagan still evoke rueful laughs. Conrad’s favorite distinction was his 1973 inclusion on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List, and his favorite irony was holding the Richard M. Nixon Chair at Whittier (California) College (1977-78).

Conrad was one of the most distinguished and honored political cartoonists in the world. The Center for the Study of Political Graphics honored him in 2002 with the Culture of Liberation award. The title derives from a statement by African independence leader Amilcar Cabral, Culture contains the seed of opposition becoming the flower of liberation.

Although he was chief editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times from 1964 to 1993, it was not without internal opposition. Conrad’s opinions became so strong during Watergate, that the Los Angeles Times moved his cartoons off the editorial page and onto the op-ed page. The Times even refused to publish some of his work – such as the 1977 cartoon of Nixon nailing himself to the cross just prior to the impeachment hearings. To see this and many other Conrad classics, visit http://www.proandconrad.com/

Among the many laudatory obituaries, Bill Boyarsky’s tribute includes a history of his rocky relationship with the Los Angeles Times.

The Conrad cartoon selected for the Poster of the Week was produced in response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King, an unarmed African American, by a number of Los Angeles police officers. The beating was videotaped and broadcast around the world. Four police officers went on trial, but their 1992 acquittals sparked the L.A. riots.

An exhibition of Paul Conrad’s work currently is at the Artists' Studio Gallery at The Village in Rolling Hills Estates. A public memorial service is planned for 11 a.m. Saturday at St. John Fisher Catholic Church, 5448 Crest Road, Rancho Palos Verdes.

Patrick Merrill (December 4, 1948-August 31, 2010), a passionate and talented mixed-media artist and printmaker, died after a long battle with cancer. His work included etchings, woodcuts, collographs, monoprints and intaglio relief prints. His topics ranged from self-portraits to the disasters of war. Merrill was also curator of Cal Poly Pomona's art gallery from 1997 to 2009, and was publicity and exhibition director for the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art from 1990 to 2000.

Merrill’s reaction to 9/11 resulted in 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Famine, War, Death, Petulance (2004). He described it as, “the war mania, revenge mind set, rising Nationalism--the fear, the anger in the air.” The original four large prints were reproduced for “Art of Democracy,” a national coalition of political art exhibitions all taking place in the Fall of 2008. Merrill’s 4 Horsemen was a central piece for many of the participating venues.

Nuclear explosions appeared frequently in Merrill’s work, warning against both war and environmental disasters. The Poster of the Week is Merrill’s Beginning of Empire. It juxtaposes the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima against an American Flag. Etched across the stripes of the flag are a series of Haiku, in Japanese with English translations, taken from, The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Kyoko Iriye Selden and Mark Selden. The Haiku on the etching are written below.

Fire flowers glow

bones must be burning under the river

-- Utsumi Kanshi

Out of the infernal fire

corpses in the summer river

-- Ichiki Ryujoshi

Blue fire on bare bones burns

a star falls

-- Okamoto Ogaku

Charred black

they hold perhaps a cicada-catering pole

perhaps they are brother and sister

-- Kozaki Teijin

Nothing to touch

ten fingers remain open

-- Sawaki Kin'ichi

I look across wide and far

where is the Lord autumn wind

-- Kimura Ryokushi

Like stakes

Tombs stand side by side

hammered in

-- Takayanagi Shigeroba

Swollen with burns

unable to make a weeping face he weeps

-- Hatanaka Kyokotsa

Whether of not I listen

ghosts sob on the atomic field

-- Taniguchi Seinosuke

Rainbow vanishing

a cross stood on the hill

-- Mori Tsuneo

Their whispers like ghosts of the dead

flies swarm

-- Seo Tets

Two exhibitions of Merrill’s work will open next month:

• Patrick Merrill - Conjunction: Intaglio and Relief at the College of the Canyons, Santa Clarita, California, October 19 - November 24, 2010.

• Patrick Merrill: Revelation at the Begovich Gallery at Cal State Fullerton Oct. 30 to Dec. 9, 2010

A memorial service/wake will take place at 2:00pm on Saturday, October 30, at the Begovich Gallery at Cal State Fullerton. This will be followed by a panel discussion of Merrill's art at 4:30pm and the opening reception from 5 to 8pm for Patrick Merrill: Revelation.

Poster of the Week

2010-09-02T14:37:00.001-07:00

UCLA Labor Center Banquet
Mark Orozco Justiniani and Joy Mallari
Offset, 2005
Los Angeles, California

CSPG’s poster of the week celebrates the work of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, which serves as a bridge between the university and the labor community in Southern California. As part of the university, the Labor Center is an important resource to interested scholars and students. Through its extensive connections with unions and workers, the Labor Center provides labor activists with access to UCLA's resources and programs.

Produced for the 2005 UCLA Labor Center Banquet, the poster depicts labor activists protesting in a Wal-Mart parking lot, highlighting the Labor Center’s work in organizing the international conference, “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” Conference participants took part in strategic workshops analyzing Wal-mart’s history of labor practices, the impact on global economics, and the different campaigns in Southern California against Wal-Mart. Each banner in the poster represents one of the individuals honored at the 2005 banquet: California State Assembly member Karen Bass, founder of the Community Coalition which works to improve the quality of life is South Los Angeles; California State Senator Gloria Romero, educator, social activist and prison reformer; Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Marvin Kropke, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11. The poster also honors the late Los Angeles labor movement leader, Miguel Contreras of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, with the sign reading “Miguel Contreras ¡Presente!”

About the Artists:
Mark Orozco Justiniani and Joy Mallari are both award-wining Filipino artists whose work has been exhibited internationally. Justiniani first gained critical acclaim when he won the grand prize in the Metrobank National Painting Competition in 1990. Mallari was a finalist in the Osaka Triennale and a top prize winner of the Philip Morris National Art Competition. They received critical recognition from the LA Times for their work with the DejaDesign Gallery in Los Angeles.

Poster of the Week

2010-08-25T10:21:00.001-07:00

The Silver Dollar (Rubén Salazar)
Rupert García
Silkscreen, 1990
Berkeley, California

The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based but fragile coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Viet Nam War. Led by activists from local colleges and members of the "Brown Berets", a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with an August 29, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 demonstrators.

Rubén Salazar was a well-known writer and journalist for KMEX-TV and the Los Angeles Times. After covering the Chicano moratorium march on August 29, Salazar and two friends stopped for a beer at the Silver Dollar Bar near Laguna Park. Police surrounded the place, allegedly looking for a man with a rifle, who had actually been caught hours before. Police threw a ten-inch tear-gas projectile into the bar attempting to make the occupants leave. The missile hit Salazar and killed him.

40 years later there are still many unanswered questions surrounding his death. Before dying Salazar had been working on a story that highlighted how local government seemed intent on ignoring all the complaints and violations involving police encounters with Mexican-Americans. No one was ever tried for his death, even though police admitted the tear-gas should not have been used in the incident.

In March 2010, the Los Angeles Times filed a California Public Records Act request for records of the shooting. On August 9, 2010, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca refused to release eight boxes of records regarding Salazar’s death. Three days later, in response to pressure from Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and other county supervisor board members, Baca agreed to reconsider his position. At the time of this posting, no records have been released.

About the Artist: After serving in the Viet Nam War, Rupert Garcia became fully involved in the Chicano and other civil rights movements. He studied painting and printmaking at San Francisco State University, earning a B.A. (1968) and an M.A. (1970), and a second M.A. in the history of art from the University of California, Berkeley (1981). He produced silkscreen posters for the 1968 San Francisco State student strike and for the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. Garcia became an influential force as a silkscreen print and poster artist, combining contemporary art forms, the aesthetics and images from the mass media and consumer culture with an expression of social conscience. In 2000, he received the “Art is a Hammer Award” from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.

Poster of the Week

2010-08-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

CSPG’s poster of the week commemorates Lolita Lebrón who died August 1, 2010 at age 90.

Lolita Lebrón ¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!
Linda Lucero
La Raza Silkscreen Center
Silkscreen, 1977
San Francisco, California

Todos Somos Pequeños, Solo La Patría Es Grande Y Está Encarcelada
¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!

All of us are all small, Only the Mother country is great and it is imprisoned!
Long Live Free Puerto Rico!

Lolita Lebrón (Dolores "Lolita" Lebrón Sotomayor) was an active and passionate advocate for Puerto Rican independence. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party after moving to New York City in 1941. Within the organization she promoted ideals based on socialist and feminist principles.

In 1954, Lebrón and three other Puerto Rican nationalists entered the visitors’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, unfurled Puerto Rico’s flag, shouted “Free Puerto Rico!” and shot pistols wounding five congressmen. She proclaimed that, "I did not come here to kill. I came here to die," and carried a note in her purse that explained their action:

Before God and the world, my blood claims for the independence of Puerto Rico. My life I give for the freedom of my country. This is a cry for victory in our struggle for independence which for more than half a century has tried to conquer the land that belongs to Puerto Rico.

I state forever that the United States of America are betraying the sacred principles of mankind in their continuous subjugation of my country, violating their rights to be a free nation and a free people, in their barbarous torture of our apostle of independence, Don Pedro Albizu Campos.

The four were sentenced to life in prison, and spent 25 years before being pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. After her release, Lebrón returned to Puerto Rico and became president of the Nationalist Party. She remained active the rest of her life.

In 2001, at age 81, Lebrón was arrested for protesting the bombing of the island of Vieques by the U.S. Navy. Puerto Rico, one of the last remaining colonies in the world, endured almost 60 years of U.S. aerial target practice and war games, including dropping napalm and depleted uranium shells on Vieques. The cancer rate in Vieques is 26% higher than the Puerto Rican average. The U.S. navy stopped bombing Vieques in 2003.

About the Artist:

During a trip to Cuba in 1974, Linda Lucero met many Puerto Ricans from New York, and was profoundly moved by their efforts for self-determination. Lucero also felt that there were many posters of heroic men, but not enough about heroic women. Upon returning to La Raza Graphics Center in San Francisco, Lucero produced a poster featuring Lolita Lebrón. Lucero produced a second poster featuring Lebrón in 1977, and it was reissued a year later. This is the poster featured here.

At a time when growing numbers of U.S. activists identified with and supported many liberation movements, Lebrón epitomized national liberation struggles, women’s struggles, and the struggles of a Spanish-speaking people under U.S. domination. Lucero’s posters were part of a growing movement within the United States and in Puerto Rico which demanded the Puerto Rican nationalists' freedom.

Poster of the Week

2010-08-11T21:13:00.001-07:00

Hiroshima-Nagasaki

U. G. Sato

Silkscreen, 1995

Tokyo, Japan

Produced for the 1995 JAGDA Peace and Environment Poster Exhibition

The Nuclear Age began 65 years ago this month, during World War II, when President Harry S. Truman ordered nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Monday, August 6, 1945, "Little Boy", the world's first nuclear bomb, was dropped over the central part of Hiroshima, Japan. The uranium-based detonation exploded about two thousand feet above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 thousand tons of TNT. On Thursday, August 9, “Fat Man,” a plutonium bomb, was detonated over Nagasaki. These two events are the only active deployments of nuclear weapons in a war. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians

The poster of the week was produced for the 50^th anniversary of the bombing. It was made for a poster exhibition sponsored by the Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc. (JAGDA). The JAGDA Peace Poster Exhibition was inaugurated in 1983 as a way of promoting peace through the medium of the poster. Since then it has continued, both in Japan and overseas, to hold exhibitions of posters with a message created by association members under themes including peace, the environment, World Heritage and Japan.

The featured poster text says, "I'm here." The ruined building was the closest building to ground zero—only a few meters away—to remain standing following the bombing. Designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel in 1916, it was the city's Industrial Promotion Hall. In 1966 it was made a UNESCO World Heritage site over the objections of the U.S. and China. It is known by several names: the Hiroshima Dome, A-Bomb Dome, or Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

Featured Artist: U. G. Sato was born in Tokyo in 1935. After graduating from Kuwasawa Design School in 1960, he established Design Farm in 1975. His works have been exhibited worldwide, including group shows and several solo exhibitions. His first U.S. exhibition took place in 2002, when the Center for the Study of Political Graphics produced, East West Graphics of Resistance--Posters of U.G. Sato (Japan) and Lex Drewinsky (Germany) at the Art Galleries of California State University, Northridge. This award winning artist has also initiated emergency Fax-Art campaigns. In 1995 he organized an anti-nuclear poster fax campaign in Paris and Tokyo to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific by France. In response to the United States military action against Iraq in 2003, he organized an anti-war poster fax campaign with Japanese artists.