Poster of the Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).