Poster of the Week

Unite to Fight!

Su Negrin

Offset

Times Change Press, New York, NY, 1973

Inkworks Press, Berkeley, CA, 1976

Unite to Fight! commemorates the Stonewall Riots that began on June 28, 1969.

The Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, was a mafia-owned heterosexual nightclub. In 1966, the owners re-opened it as a gay bar. The age range of the clientèle was between the upper teens and early thirties, and the racial mix was evenly distributed among white, black, and Hispanic.

Despite weekly police payoffs, police raids were frequent. But the early morning raid of June 28, 1969 was different. People fought back. The Stonewall riots are generally credited with being the first instance in the U.S. that that gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they became the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the U.S. and around the world.

Unite to Fight! was originally printed in New York, NY, at Time Change Press, circa 1973. Times Change Press was founded in 1970 by Tom Wodetzki and Su Negrin, and provided opportunities for artists representing various themes on the political spectrum, including anarchist, Marxist-Leninist, communitarian, socialist, feminist, lesbian and gay. Times Change Press closed in 1974, the same year that Inkworks Press was founded in Berkeley, California. Inkworks, a democratically run worker collective and a union shop, reprinted it in 1976.

Unite to Fight! is featured in CSPG’s newest exhibition, Out of the Closet & Into the Street—Posters on LGBTQ Struggles & Celebrations which opens in West Hollywood on July 3, 2010.We hope to see you there.

Out of the Closet and Into the Street:
Posters of LGBTQ Struggles & Celebrations

July 3 – September 26, 2010

Opening Reception: July 3, 5-8 pm

at the ONE Archives Gallery & Museum
626 N. Robertson Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
(entrance on El Tovar)

Gallery Hours:
Friday: 4:30-8:30
Saturday & Sunday: 1-5

Sources:
Wikipedia: The Stonewall Riots
Online Archive of California: Guide to the Times Change Press Political Posters (PDF)