Illegal? No Human Being is Illegal
Octavio Gomez
Central American Refugee Committees (CRECEN); Central American Refugee Centers (CARECEN); Central American Refugee National Network (CARNET)
Offset, circa 1989
Los Angeles, California
3008

This week’s featured poster, created by Octavio Gomez in 1989, and issued by Central American Refugee Committees (CRECEN), Central American Refugee Centers (CARECEN), and the Central American Refugee National Network (CARNET), advocates the protection of Salvadoran refugees, demanding a change in policy that would end deportations and allow refugees to work legally in the United States. The poster also acknowledges the difficult realities immigrants face due to social and economic conditions in their countries of origin.
         
This poster is especially pertinent now, as the United States has seen an influx of nearly 52,000 unaccompanied children and underage youths cross the U.S. border since October- with over 75% making their journey from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In July of this year, tensions rose in Murrieta, California, where anti-immigrant protestors blocked U.S. Homeland Security Department buses filled with immigrant children being transported to a processing facility in the area.
  
While demonstrations from both sides of the immigration issue have swept the nation in the past weeks, many ignore deeper roots of the issue, which include the dangerous social and economic conditions in these Central American countries. Honduras, for example, has the highest murder rate of any country, with a rate of 90 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants. According to the National Violence Observatory, more than half of those murdered in Central America are under the age of 30. In a region controlled by drug traffickers and criminal gangs, corruption, and instability - violence threatens the lives of Central American youth, who seek asylum in the U.S. as refugees.
          
The poster’s phrase “No Human Being is Illegal” is attributed to Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, who explained, “You shall know that no one is illegal. It is a contradiction in itself. People can be beautiful or even more beautiful. They may be just or unjust. But illegal? How can someone be illegal?” This poster attempts to shed light on the Central American refugees by framing the situation neither as a political or partisan issue but as one concerning human rights.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/immigration-protests-staged-around-the-country
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/21/i-went-to-central-america-to-find-out-why-all-those-children-are-immigrating-alone/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/central-america-child-migrants-us-border-crisis
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80740861/

Poster of the Week

9809

Frontieres = Repression

[Borders = Repression]

Atelier Populaire

Silkscreen

Paris, 1968

It’s May.  There’s an unpopular war raging on the other side of the world.  Students are protesting and the police respond with violence.  There is high unemployment, growing poverty and immigrants are frequent targets of workers’ frustration.   It could be the U.S. in 2012, but it is Paris 1968.


In May 1968, 11 million workers went on strike throughout France. It was the largest general strike ever, and brought the economy of France to a virtual standstill.  It grew out of pent-up anger and frustration over poverty, unemployment and the conservative government of Charles de Gaulle.


The mass movement for social change began with a series of student protests and strikes that broke out at a number of universities in Paris, following confrontations with university administrators and the police. The de Gaulle administration attempted to quell those strikes by force, but the brutality of the police only inflamed the situation further.  The demonstrations soon spread into factories and resulted in an unprecedented general strike. More than 22% of the total population of France participated in the strike which went for two weeks, and almost caused the collapse of the government of President Charles de Gaulle.


The faculty and student body of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, were on strike, and a number of students met spontaneously in the lithographic department to produce the first poster of the strike. On May 16th, art students, painters from outside the university and striking workers decided to permanently occupy the art school in order to produce posters that would, "Give concrete support to the great movement of the workers on strike who are occupying their factories in defiance of the Gaullist government." The posters of the ATELIER POPULAIRE were designed and printed anonymously and were distributed for free. They were seen on the barricades, carried in demonstrations and were plastered on walls all over France. Their bold and provocative messages were extremely influential and still resonate in our own time.   CSPG’s Poster of the Week was produced during this movement, and focuses on immigrant rights.


Statement by the ATELIER POPULAIRE

"The posters produced by the ATELIER POPULAIRE are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect. This is why the ATELIER POPULAIRE has always refused to put them on sale. Even to keep them as historical evidence of a certain stage in the struggle is a betrayal, for the struggle itself is of such primary importance that the position of an "outside" observer is a fiction which inevitably plays into the hands of the ruling class. That is why these works should not be taken as the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action, both on the cultural and the political plane."

Sources:  recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/France68/paris.htm

Johan Kugelberg, editor and Philippe Vermes, Beauty is in the Street, A visual Record of the May’68 Paris Uprising, Four Corner Books, London, 2011.

Poster of the Week

Keep Our Families Together!

Melanie Cervantes

Taller Tupac Amaru

Offset, 2008

Oakland, California

This poster is unusual in combining two themes—immigration and LGBTQ rights—that are rarely combined. Lesbian, Gay, and Queer families are impacted not only by racially discriminatory immigration laws but by heterosexist reunification laws that keep bi-national partners and their children from being together. This print honors those struggling families who are victims of these policies.

This is one of a 5 part poster series produced for the historic conference convened by TIGRA (Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action) that took place in May 2008 in Mexico City. It brought together over 300 migrant leaders from the United States, Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America to form a global association of remitters and their families. The other 4 posters in the series were designed by Jesús Barraza, Dylan Miner, Artemio Rodriguez & Favianna Rodriguez.

Keep Our Families Together! is included in two CSPG exhibitions:

Out of the Closet & Into the Streets—

Posters of LGBTQ Struggles & Celebrations

Currently on display at:

ONE Archives Gallery & Museum through September 26, 2010

626 N. Robertson Blvd. (entrance on El Tovar, North of Melrose)

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Friday: 4:30-8:30

Saturday & Sunday: 1-5

No Human Being is Illegal—

Posters on the Myths and Realities of the Immigrant Experience

Selections from this exhibition, including the poster of the week, are currently on display at:

The Annex at Avenue 50 Studio

Highland Park, CA 90042

323-258-1435

July 10 through August 8, 2010

Tue-Thurs 10-4 pm; Sat-Sun 10-4 pm

Poster of the Week

Warsaw 1943 Never Again!

Claude Moller

Silkscreen, 2002

San Francisco, California

Produced in response to the escalation of anti-immigrant sentiments and actions following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, this poster unfortunately remains relevant as anti-immigrant sentiments continue to be loudly and too often violently expressed. It uses one of the most famous photographs taken during the Holocaust to focus on the inhumanity of forced relocation, deportation and separation of families. The photo was taken after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was suppressed, May 1943, and shows Jewish families arrested by Nazi troops before being sent to Treblinka extermination camp to be gassed. The insurgency was launched in January, 1943, and the most significant portion of the rebellion took place from April 19 until May 16, 1943 when it was crushed by German troops.

April 19 is now commemorated as the beginning of the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust. “Never Again” was a cry following the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. It is attributed to the Soviet officer in command of the troops that liberated Auschwitz. In this poster, “Never Again” expresses the hope that humanity and justice will prevail.