Poster of the Week

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.

Poster of the Week

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.