Handwriting On the Wall, no. 2
New Left
This SDS poster as a "wall newspaper" which was posted on city streets in Chicago by members of the group as a means of circulating their political agenda in the wake of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. This poster, the second in a series, discusses protests, skirmishes with police and strategy for upcoming activism.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
"wall newspaper"
Phase 1: Nixon Eviction
New Left
This poster publicized the "Phase 1" of the "Evict Nixon" campaign, which featured a demonstration in Washington, D.C., in August of 1971. An estimated 1,000-1,500 protesters listened to speakers and marched toward the White House. Around 300 were arrested by police during the march, including Milwaukee civil rights leader, Fr. James Groppi, and anti-war activist, Rennie Davis. After Mayday demonstrations the previous spring, police over-prepared for this demonstration putting 2,000 Guardsmen, 2,000 federal troops and 5,100 police on alert. They also rented the Kalorama Skating Rink to use for mass arrests. Demonstration leaders also participated in a phone call with NLF representatives in Paris. It was hoped that the demonstration would kick off a year of anti-Nixon activism that would lead to his ouster from the White House in 1972. In reality, Nixon won re-election in a landslide.
People's Coalition for Peace & Justice, Washington, D.C.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1971
poster
FNL de Vietnam del Sur
Cuban Revolution
According to a 2015 article in Slate Magazine by Rebecca Onion, this poster was one of a set created by Cuban artist Felix René Mederos Pazos, "the product of a trip Mederos took to Vietnam in 1969, on assignment from the Cuban government's Department of Revolutionary Orientation.
Cuban artists often addressed international subjects, in alignment with the Cuban Revolution's political focus. (Other posters produced around this time expressed solidarity with anti-colonial guerrillas in Angola, Black Panthers in Watts, California, and the people of Hiroshima, Japan.) These Mederos posters repeated the slogan 'Como en Vietnam,' which was meant to encourage Cubans to emulate the resourcefulness of the North Vietnamese in their daily lives." Roz Payne travelled to Cuban during the 1960s-era as a part of the Venceremos Brigade.
To read Onion's full article, click here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/05/01/history_of_cuba_and_vietnam_posters_by_rene_mederos.html
Cuban artist Felix René Mederos Pazos
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
poster
Fred Hampton
Black Panther Party
This poster, created by Black Panther Party Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas, ca. 1969, features Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Hampton was murdered by the FBI after a raid on Panther headquarters in Chicago on December 4, 1969. The poster includes two quotes. The quote at the top reads "You can jail a revolutionary/ but you can't jail the/ revolution. You can run a/ freedom fighter around the/ country but you can't run freedom/ fighting around the country. You/ can murder a liberator, / but you can't murder/ liberation." The second reads "Fred Hampton Deputy/ Chairman Illinois Chapter/ Black Panther Party/ Born August 30, 1948/ Murdered by Fascist Pigs/ Dec. 4, 1969."
Emory Douglas for the Black Panther Party newspaper
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
poster
May Day Gathering of Tribes in Atlanta
Counterculture
This poster is a promotional piece for the 1967 Atlanta May Day Gathering of Tribes. The artifact does not include a year. The May Day Collective was loose-knit anti-war organization that eschewed national leadership and promoted local organizing. The group played a key role in massive protests that took place in Washington, D.C., in May of 1971.
May Day Collective
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster
Teenager Reflections on Guns and War
Anti-War Movement
This poster of quotations was created by Roz Payne following a workshop she did with local teenagers in Vermont. They were discussing guns and war and violence and she had them write down a reflection. These quotes are taken from those reflections.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-2000s
poster
Vietnam Anti-Imperialism
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster shows a U.S. tank behind some local Vietnamese people riding in a cart. It suggests the overwhelming military power of the U.S. against a poor Asian country and is resonant with the view that American involvement in Vietnam was an "imperial" endeavor.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
Yippie, Miami 1972
Counterculture and Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster promoted Yippie protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1972, the last time both major parties held their presidential conventions in the same city. Notably, these protests also included a break-away group from the original Yippies, led by Tom Forcade and called the "Zippies," for "Zeitgeist International Party." Contingents at the demonstrations also included the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and a large group of women’s liberation activists.
At the Republican Convention, about 3,000 anti-war activists, many wearing painted death masks and some splattered with red paint, confronted delegates, chanting, cursing, jostling and pounding on cars. Protesters aimed to force well-dressed delegates to walk through a "gauntlet of shame" as they approached the guarded gates of the convention. Protesters yelled, “Murderers, murderers” and "delegates kill!" Some protesters also broke windows along the main thoroughfare in Miami Beach during the protests, resulting in 212 arrests. Black Panther Party leader, Bobby Seale, who had recently been released from four years in jail as a result of his participation in the 1968 demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago, participated in the protests and at one point led demonstrators in chanting, “One, two, three, four. We don't want your f---ing war.” Daniel Ellsberg, who was facing criminal prosecution for releasing the Pentagon Papers, spoke to a more subdued crowd of anti-war demonstrators outside the convention center as Nixon was being nominated inside. Vietnam war veteran turned anti-war activist, Ron Kovic, also participated in the protests at the Republican National Convention.
The Democratic Convention also saw a variety of protests, inside the conventional hall and outside of it. Inside, previously excluded political activists clashed with traditional party leaders and activists in sessions that often extended late into the night. Outside, anti-war, black freedom, feminist, gay rights and other activists rallied and demonstrated. Anti-poverty advocates constructed "Resurrection City II," named after "Resurrection City," which had been constructed in Washington, D.C. in 1968 as a part of the Poor People's Campaign. "Gonzo" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, chronicled the 1972 Democratic Convention in his book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Youth International Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
poster
"The Spirit of the People Will Be Stronger than the Pig's Technology"
Black Power Movement
This wall poster was created by the Black Panther Party and encourages revolution.
Black Panther Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
"On to November..."
Black Power
This wall poster was created by unknown black power advocates and describes organizing efforts around the election of 1968, including organizing efforts in Chicago, a boycott by high school students on election day in New York, as well as prison organizing.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Crime in the Streets
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This wall poster was created in the lead-up to the November 1968 presidential election, in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations in Chicago. The poster details police repression against demonstrators, an upcoming boycott by high school students on election day, as well as National G.I. Week, which also coincided with the election.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Whitney Museum Presents "Newsreel: Ten Years of Political Documentaries"
Underground Press
This poster promotes an exhibition of films by Newsreel Films at the Whitney Museum in New York City.
During the mid-2000s, Roz Payne wrote a brief essay on the early history of Newsreel Films:
"In 1967 a group of independent filmmakers, photographers, and media workers formed a collective to make political relevant films sharing our resources, skills, and equipment. As individuals we had been covering many of the events that we considered news, demonstrations, acts of resistance, and countless inequities and abuses. Sometimes films were made and some times not. Most often they were made too late and did not go to the people who could use them best.
We met in a basement in the lower eastside of New York and later at the alternate U, then more basements until we got an office. The only news we saw was on TV and we knew who owned the stations. We decided to make films that would show another side to the news. It was clear to us that the established forms of media were not going to approach those subjects which threaten their very existence.
I was a school teacher in New Jersey who shot photos. My marriage with Arnold Payne, Mr. Muscle Beach Jr. had broken up, I left a little house on the Palisades, overlooking the boats on the Hudson River right over the Spry sign across from 96th Street. I would sit looking at the burning windows of the NYC skyline as the sun set. That fire and the fire from a GI's Zippo lighter on the straw of a Vietnamese hut helped ignite me. I moved to New York City.
Walking down Second Ave and 10th Street with my camera one afternoon Melvin Margolis, a wild looking hippie stopped me and said, 'Hey, your a photographer and there's a meeting tonight of all the political film people. You have to go. It is very important. Make sure that you go. I'm not kidding.' I showed up that night, to the first meeting of Newsreel.
About 30 people met weekly to talk about films, equipment, and politics. I think we were great because we came from various political backgrounds and had different interests. We never all agreed on a political line. We broke down into smaller groups to work on the films. The working groups included anti-Vietnam-war, anti-imperialist, high school, students, women, workers, Yippies, Third World, and the infamous sex, drugs and party committee.
We wanted to make two films a month and get 12 prints of each film out to groups across the country. We wanted to spark the creation of similar news-film groups in other major cities of the United States so that they would distribute our films and would cover and shoot the events in their area.
The first film I worked on was the 1968 student take over of Columbia University. The students had taken over 5 buildings. We had a film team in each building. We were shooting from the inside while the rest of the press were outside. We participated in the political negotiations and discussions. Our cameras were used as weapons as well as recording the events. Melvin had a W.W.II cast iron steel Bell and Howell camera that could take the shock of breaking plate glass windows.
Newsreel worked to expand the awareness of events and situations relevant to shaping the movement. Our films tried to analyze, not just cover; they explored the realities that the media, as part of the system, always ignores.
In the 67 the FBI started the Counter-intelligence program to try to destroy African Americans, especially the Black Panther Party and the New Left. We worked with Third World groups. We produced various films that these groups could use to tell their stories and to use in organizing in their own communities and workplaces, hopefully serving as catalysis for social change.
Newsreel not only made films but we were among the first to distribute films made in Cuba, Vietnam, Africa, and the Middle East.
As Newsreel grew we spread out, opened offices and distribution centers across the country. We had offices in San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, Kansas, Los Angeles, Vermont, and Atlanta. We made films and distributed our films in the hope that the audiences who saw them would respond to the issues they raised. We wanted people to work with our films as catalysis for political discussions about social change in America and to relate the questions in the films to issues in their own communities.
We had many struggles in Newsreel around class, women, political education, cultural and worker politics, the haves and have nots. It was hard to hold to the correct political line. Little by little the groups changed from film-maker control to worker control, to women control, to third world control. Today, Third World Newsreel is in New York, California Newsreel is in San Francisco, and there is a Vermont Newsreel Archives.
In l972, myself and others moved to Vermont. We continue to distribute Newsreel films, shoot videos, use computer graphics, and maintain a film, photo, and document archive. With the easy accessibility of video cameras thousands of people are making their own documents to tell the stories of what is happening around them. I am shooting history of retired FBI agents that worked on Cointelpro against Don Cox, an exiled Black Panther and the white women who helped him. I teach History of the Sixties, Civil Rights Movement, Women, and Mycology at Burlington College."
Whitney Museum
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1977
poster
Che Guevara's Farewell Letter to Fidel Castro
Cuban Revolution
After playing a pivotal role in the Cuban revolution and early Castro regime, Che Guevara left the island nation in 1965 to help foment revolution in other Third World nations.
In April of 1965, Guevara wrote this farewell letter to Fidel Castro, which was read publicly in Cuba by Castro in the presence of Guevara's wife and. children in October of that year.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
poster
Gotta Get Out of the Blues Alive
Counterculture
This poster features a poem reflecting on the deaths and loss off Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
poster
Free the San Quentin 6
Prisoner's Rights Movement
The San Quentin 6 were six prisoners at the San Quentin State Prison in California - Hugo Pinell, Willie Tate, Johnny Larry Spain, David Johnson, Fleeta Drumgo and Luis Talamantez- accused of participating in the 1971 escape attempt that resulted in six deaths, including celebrated black radical, George Jackson, as well as three guards, Frank DeLeon, Paul Krasenes and Jere Graham, and two white inmates, John Lynn and Ronald L. Kane. After the longest trial in California history, a preceding that garnered widespread national publicity, the San Quentin 6 received a mixed verdict.
Jane Norling
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
poster
The Wood Chip Plant is Coming
Environmentalism
Environmental advocacy poster from Burlington, Vermont.
Burlington Environmental Alliance
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
poster
Rutland Daily Herald
unknown
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
poster
Exorcise the Pentagon
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster promoted the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
Martin Carey
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster
Day of the Heroic Guerrilla
Cuban Revolution
This 1970 poster, by Cuban designer Lazaro Abreu, commemorates the "Day of the Heroic Guerrilla," a celebration of the life and legacy of Ernest "Che" Guevara. The poster was published by OSPAAAL, the Organisation in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the main publisher of international solidarity posters in Cuba. Notably, these colorful propaganda posters were not designed to be posted on walls within Cuba, as others were. Instead, they were folded and stapled inside the magazine, Tri-Continental, where they were then distributed internationally.
Lázaro Abreu
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
poster
Stop the Draft
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster incorporates a variety of other anti-war stickers and graphics into a collage.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
poster
Chicago '68 Democratic Convention Protest Update
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
During the protests outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, activists created wall posters to inform other demonstrators of what was happening.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Bernie Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1983, Bernie Sanders ran for re-election as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, running as an Independent, narrowly won the mayor's office in 1981 by a margin of ten votes over his Democratic opponent, but won the 1983 election by a more comfortable margin, earning 52% of the vote, compared to 30% for his closest competitor. Sanders served three terms as Mayor of Burlington before moving on to the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years (1990-2005) and then the U.S. Senate in 2006, where he continues to serve. Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving Independent in U.S. congressional history. In 2016, Sanders mounted an insurgent campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, narrowly losing to Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose in the general election to Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders for Mayor
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1983
Poster
en-US
Physical Object
Huey P. Newton Birthday Rally
Black Power
This poster promotes a rally at Stanford University in celebration of Huey P. Newton's birthday and as a fundraiser for political prisoners.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
Free Vermont
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
A New Left poster from Burlington, Vermont, that offers a variation on German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller's poem, "First they came ..." The poem offers a critique of the cowardice of German intellectuals who failed to act as the Nazis rose to power, targeting group after group, until the tragedy of fascism and holocaust was upon them. In this case, activists were protesting a visit by President Richard Nixon to Burlington in 1970. In Nixon's arrival speech, he said:
October 17, 1970
Governor Davis, Senator Prouty, Congressman Stafford, all of the distinguished guests on the platform, and all of the distinguished members of this audience:
As you probably are aware, this is the first campaign stop that I have had the opportunity to make in 1970, and I am proud that it is in the State of Vermont. There are personal reasons for that statement that would be of interest, I am sure, to the young people here. My two daughters have very fond memories of their visit to this State to Camp Teela Wooket. I am glad to be back because of that.
The other reason is that as I look back on the record of the State of Vermont, in a personal sense, again, on all the occasions that I have been on the national ticket, I have lost some States but I have always carried Vermont. Thank you very much.
A third reason is that I am very proud to be here on a special day which is nonpolitical in one respect, certainly, the homecoming day of the University of Vermont. I also want to say that, speaking of the university, lets pay our respects to the Rice Memorial [High School] Band over here. How about that? And to the Canadian Geese 1 in the back. The Vermont Turkeys are going to go up to Canada on an exchange visit for the Canadian Geese next week.
1 The Canadian Geese Rock Band of Saint Michael's College, Winooski, Vt.
But there is a more fundamental reason in this year 1970 that I am very happy to be here to open this campaign in Vermont. It has to do with the fact that I have enormous respect for the men who are candidates on your ticket here this year. Let me mention them each briefly. Bob Stafford, who has been formerly your Governor, then a Congressman.
One thing that you know about the people from Vermont is this--and it is true of all of those representing Vermont in Washington and in the statehouse-whether it is George Aiken, who is a man whose wise counsel I have benefited from as President of the United States and prior to that time, or whether it is a case of Bob Stafford, a man who came to the Congress in the 87th Congress, and all of the Congressmen in the country who were elected that year elected him as their leader.2
2Representative Robert T. Stafford was president of the 87th Club which was made up of freshmen Republican Members of the 87th Congress.
That is an indication of what they think of Vermont and Bob Stafford in Washington, D.C.
I have had the opportunity to meet all the Governors of the 50 States at various Governors' Conferences, and I respect them all. But there are some who stand out and one who stands out is your Governor because he has courage, the courage to do what is right for his State, to take a mess fiscally and clean it up in the State of Vermont.
There is another reason that I admire your Governor and also your Congressman and your Senator, and that is their tenacity. When anything involves the State of Vermont, they are down there in my office pounding on that door until we do something about it.
For example, over these past 2 weeks they have expressed concern about a possible fuel oil shortage in the State of Vermont. Let me tell you I talked to General Lincoln, the head of the Office of Emergency preparedness before I left Washington.
There will be no fuel oil shortage--we will see to that, thanks to what your Governor has told us and your Senator and your Congressman--in the State of Vermont.
Now I come to your Senator, Win Prouty, the man who is running in this State for reelection. Can I speak to all of you now about the importance of this one man, this one vote, and your one vote in this State of Vermont?
Let us understand that in 1968 the country elected a new President, called for new leadership. We also recognized that at that time we had the Congress, both the House and the Senate, under the control of Members of the other party. Nevertheless, we worked with that Congress. Sometimes they voted against, sometimes for.
But in the United States Senate particularly-and all of you, particularly you who studied political science at the university and those who studied it also in high school will know, and all of you who read your papers and listen to television-the United States Senate on the great issues, the issues that involve whether we are going to have a program to bring lasting peace in the world, the issues that involve whether or not we are going to have a program that will stop the ruinous inflation that is robbing your pocketbooks and making it impossible to balance your family budget--when we look at all of these problems we find that in the United States Senate on vote after vote a majority of one determines the outcome.
A shift of one Senator, sometimes two, will determine whether the President's program goes through or whether it doesn't go through. I want to say to you, without Win Prouty's vote I couldn't stand here today and speak with pride of a record of accomplishment in this great field. He is providing that majority of one.
I would like to take the three issues, and I think I am going to take the hardest one first. I hear some of the young people here say stop the war, and I heard it said outside. I understand that.
Let me tell you what we found and then you judge the record and you judge Win Prouty on the basis of that record. When we came into office, we found 550,000 Americans in Vietnam. There was no plan to bring them home. There was no plan to end the war. There was no peace plan that had been submitted.
And what have we done? Let me tell you. We have implemented a plan to bring Americans home, and during the spring of next year half of the men that were in Vietnam when we got there will be coming home. That is what we are going to do.
Second, we wound down the fighting by the strong stand that we took to clean up the sanctuaries in Cambodia. We have cut American casualties to the lowest level in 4 ½ years.
I am not going to be satisfied until not one American is killed in Vietnam, but we are cutting them down and we are going to continue on that course.
And third, my friends, we have presented to the North Vietnamese, over national television--and I am sure many of you heard it--a far-reaching peace plan. We have offered a cease-fire without conditions. We have offered to negotiate all the political settlements with regard to South Vietnam, one that would allow all those in that country to participate in the making of that settlement. We have offered also a plan that would provide for the release of war prisoners on both sides. We have offered a conference on all of Indochina.
Now let me tell you exactly where it stands today. As I stand before you today, I can say confidently the war in Vietnam is coming to an end, and we are going to win a just peace in Vietnam. It will come to an end either--if the enemy accepts our proposal for a cease-fire, it can come to an end more quickly.
If it does not accept that proposal, then we will bring it to an end by continuing to withdraw Americans and replacing them with Vietnamese and allowing the Vietnamese to have the right to choose their own government without having it imposed by North Vietnam or by the United States. Now, isn't that the fair thing to do?
Now let us see what the other side of the argument is. I know the people in this State. My good friend Consuelo Bailey, 3 who has always advised me about Vermont, she has said to me from time to time, "The people up in this State, they want to hear both sides of the argument and want to make up their minds."
3 Consuelo Northrop Bailey, National Republican Committeewoman for Vermont and Secretary of the Republican National Committee.
Let me tell you the other side. I know there are people who say: Why this long road? Why don't we just end the war? I could have done it the day I came into office.
I could have brought all the Americans home. Let me tell you ending a war isn't very difficult. We ended World War I. We ended World War II. We ended Korea. And yet, in this century we have not had a generation of peace.
My friends, what we want to do is to end the war so that the young people that are shouting "Stop the War" will have a generation of peace, and that is the kind of plan that we are trying to implement. So that is what we are doing.
We are ending the war in a way that will discourage those who might start a war.
We are ending the war in a way that will bring permanent peace in the Pacific. It is that kind of program that Win Prouty has stood firmly by.
So I say let us work for what all of us want, not just peace for the next election but peace for the next generation so that the younger brothers and the sons of those who have fought in Vietnam won't have to be fighting in some other Vietnam sometime in the future.
So there is the choice. It is a clear one. Win Prouty, who stands for a just peace and a generation of peace, and those on the other side who say without regard to the future, let's simply end the problems that we are in today.
This is real statesmanship. That is one of the reasons I am here for him.
Let me turn to another subject of equal interest, equal interest in the sense that it affects the pocketbooks of everybody and every family budget. You all know what has happened to prices. You know that when we came into office we found prices going up and up.
You will find also that the reason they were going up and up was that in the years previous to our coming into office that the previous administrations had spent $50 billion more than the economy would have produced in terms of taxes at full employment.
And what did that do? Because Washington spent more than it was taking in or that it could have taken in in full employment, it raised the prices for everybody.
I said when we came into office we were going to stop that. That is why I had to veto some measures--that I felt people were poor in many instances.
Let me just say this: What we have to realize is that we need Senators and Congressmen who have the courage to vote against spending programs that may benefit some of the people but that raise prices and taxes for all people. That is the kind of a program that we stand for. That is the kind of fiscal responsibility that your Governor stands for. It is the kind of fiscal responsibility that Win Prouty stands for.
And we come to a third area, the area of progress. The great choice that the American people had in 1968 and that we now have a chance to reaffirm in 1970 is this: Do we continue to pour good money into bad programs so that eventually we end up with both bad money and bad programs or do we reform the programs of America? That is why this administration says let's reform the welfare system, let's reform our educational system, let's reform our health system, so that America can move forward on a new road. That is the kind of proposal that we offer.
And here the issue is clear. On the one side there are those who say keep pouring the same amount of money, billions, into the welfare program. Let me tell you what I think. I say that when a program makes it more profitable for a man not to work than to work, it is time to get rid of it and get another program. And that is why Win Prouty's strong support of the Family Assistance Program in which we provide help for all of those who need it, but in which we provide that those who are able to work will not only have an incentive to work but a requirement to work--let them work, I say, and if they cannot work then, of course, the welfare will be provided. It is that kind of reform that we stand for.
I could go on in other fields. Take the environment. I noticed that as the plane came down and I looked down on this magnificent countryside, and I know that pretty soon the tourists, the winter tourists, will be coming in, the summer influx having gone home. I can only say to you this, that as I look over America, and I fly over it many, many times, of course, on the way to California, to Florida, and to other States, this is a beautiful country. But, my friends, what we have to realize is that because of our wealth, what we are doing is that we are poisoning our water. We are also poisoning our air. We are having our cities choked with traffic and terrorized by crime. So what we have to do now is to clean up the environment of America.
That is why we have presented to the Congress an historic new program to clean up the air, to clean up the water, to provide open spaces for these young people to go to in the years ahead.
And, my friends, that is the kind of progressive legislation that Win Prouty supports, and that is another reason we need him in the United States Senate.
Then one other program I should mention-and Governor Davis, you will be interested in this and all of your fellow Governors--I think back to the history of this country, to the fact that Vermont has played a proud role from the time of the beginning of America. I think back to the fact, too, that when America was young the States felt that they had responsibilities and then power began to flow, particularly in this century, from the people and the counties and the cities and the States up to Washington, D.C. And Government in Washington got bigger and bigger and bigger, and government in the States found that they didn't have the funds to handle their problems, and taxes, particularly on your property, went up and up and up. So I said this has got to change.
That is why we have authorized and asked the Congress to approve, and they will not yet act on it, a program of revenue sharing, where the Federal Government will turn over to the States funds that the States can use to handle their own problems.
Let me tell you why this is important. For 190 years, my friends, power has been flowing from the people, from you, and from the States, to Washington. I say that it is time now for power to flow back from Washington to the States and to the people of America. That is the kind of a program, again, that Win Prouty supports.
Now one final point. I realize that in this year 1970 there are those who have very deep disagreements with our country's policy, whether it is abroad or at home. I know there are those who demonstrate and say that America is a sick society, that everything is wrong.
Just let me say this: I can tell you, my friends, I have seen this country, and I have also been abroad. I have just finished a trip to Europe. I was in a Communist country, Yugoslavia, and 350,000 people stood out in the rain cheering, not for me but for the United States of America. I was in Spain, in Italy, in Ireland, in England, and the same thing happened. The same thing happened in Asia last year, in India, and other countries.
Let me tell you something: Yes, there are those that criticize America, many abroad among leaden criticize our policies. But to millions of people ca this earth we can be proud of the fact that the United States of America--not because simply we are the strongest country and the richest country but because we are a country that provides the greatest freedom and the greatest opportunity for people in the history of the world--the United States is respected, and let's be worthy of that respect.
Now the question is: The voices are being heard in the year 1970. You hear them. You hear them night after night on your television, people shouting their obscenities about America and what we stand for. You hear those who shout against speakers and shout them down, who will not listen. And then you hear those who engage in violence. You hear those, and see them, who, without reason, kill policemen and injure them, and the rest. And you wonder: Is that the voice of America?
I say to you it is not. It is a loud voice, but, my friends, there is a way to answer: Don't answer with violence. Don't answer by shouting the same senseless words that they use. But answer in the powerful way that Americans have always answered. Let the majority of Americans speak up, speak up on November 3d, speak up with your votes. That is the way to answer.
My friends, the people in this great State may well determine whether or not on the great issues which will determine whether we can have a program that will bring lasting peace for a generation, progress in the field of the environment and welfare, and all these other areas that I have described, a program of strong and fair law enforcement whether or not we have that majority of one in the United States Senate, a majority that crosses party lines, may well determine on what you do in the State of Vermont. I say this to you because Win Prouty not only provides that vote but because this quiet, confident man has such enormous respect among his colleagues.
Let me tell you something. I have known the Senate and the House, served in both, and anybody who has known those bodies will agree with me that there are the doers and the talkers. Win Prouty isn't a talker; he is a doer. He gets things done. He works for the elderly. He works for progress. He works for education. He is a man who for 20 years has given his life. There isn't a man in that Senate that works harder than he does for Vermont and America.
And because he is a doer and not a talker, send him back and give us that majority of one.
Thank you.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
poster
Che Guevara
Cuban Revolution
The image of Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara became an icon among U.S. radicals during the 1960s, particularly after Guevara's assassination in 1967. To many activists, Guevara symbolized Third World solidarity in a global liberation struggle.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
poster
Fuck Communism
Anti-Communism and Irreverent Obscenity
In 1963, Paul Krasner and John Francis Putnam collaborated to produce this satirical poster and distributed it through the free-thought magazine, The Realist. The poster pokes fun at anti-communist fervor, combined with the politics of obscenity, which were an integral part of the era. Typography for the poster was done by Putnam, who also wrote a regular column for the magazine, "Modest Proposals." Krasner was the founder and publisher of the magazine.
American author, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote a brief reflection on the poster:
Foreword
by Kurt Vonnegut
Paul Krassner, 63 at this writing (1996), old enough to be my baby brother, in 1963 created a miracle of compressed intelligence nearly as admirable for potent simplicity, in my opinion, as Einstein's e=mc2. With the Vietnam War going on, and with its critics discounted and scorned by the government and the mass media, Krassner put on sale a red, white and blue poster that said FUCK COMMUNISM.
At the beginning of the 1960s, FUCK was believed to be so full of bad magic as to be unprintable. In the most humanely influential American novel of this half century, "The Catcher in the Rye," Holden Caulfield, it will be remembered, was shocked to see that word on a subway-station wall. He wondered what seeing it might do to the mind of a little kid. COMMUNISM was to millions the name of the most loathsome evil imaginable. To call an American a communist was like calling somebody a Jew in Nazi Germany. By having FUCK and COMMUNISM fight it out in a single sentence, Krassner wasn¹t merely being funny as heck. He was demonstrating how preposterous it was for so many people to be responding to both words with such cockamamie Pavlovian fear and alarm.
What hasn't been said about that poster, and surely not by Krassner, is that its author was behaving harmoniously with most of the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States and the Sermon on the Mount. So, too, were his now-dead friends Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, roundly denounced and even arrested for bad manners and impudence, and now mourned and celebrated as heroes, which indeed they were, in this important book. They were prophets, too, at the service of humanity in jeering, like the prophets of old, at mean-spirited hypocrisies and stupidities and worse that were making their society a hell, whether there
was a God or not.
And this book is emphatically not nostalgic, but raffishly responsive to the here and now. Nor are decades like chains of knockwursts, sutured off from one another at either end. To think of them as such, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s and so on, is merely a mnemonic device. The only 1960s people are those who died back then. Everyone alive today has no choice but to be, like Paul Krassner, a 1990s person. Krassner does a good job of that. So should we all.
I told Krassner one time that his writings made me hopeful. He found this an odd compliment to offer a satirist. I explained that he made supposedly serious matters seem ridiculous, and that this inspired many of his readers to decide for themselves what was ridiculous and what was not. Knowing that there were people doing that, better late than never, made me optimistic.
Paul Krasner and John Francis Putnam
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1963
poster
Ring Around the Rosey
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Anti-nuke poster, drawing on the children's rhyme, "Ring Around the Rosy," which is believed to have originally referenced the Great Plague in London in 1665, which parallels the apocalyptic tones of the Cold War era.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
poster
Lenin Karl Marx: The 60 anniversary of the Revolution Russia
Russian Revolution
This poster was created by designer Rolando Cordoba for the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The poster was published by OSPAAAL, the Organisation in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the main publisher of international solidarity posters in Cuba. Notably, these colorful propaganda posters were not designed to be posted on walls within Cuba, as others were. Instead, they were folded and stapled inside the magazine, Tri-Continental, where they were then distributed internationally.
Rolando Cordoba
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1977
poster
The Living Theater Collective
Experimental Theater
The Living Theater is the oldest experimental theater group in the U.S., founded in New York in 1947 by Judith Malina and Julian Beck. The group produces work collectively, usually with a political, often anarchist or pacifist, bent. According to the collective's website, "During the 1950′s and early 1960′s in New York, The Living Theatre pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama – the plays of American writers like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Rexroth and John Ashbery, as well as European writers rarely produced in America, including Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht and Pirandello. Best remembered among these productions, which marked the start of the Off-Broadway movement, were Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Tonight We Improvise, Many Loves, The Connection and The Brig." This poster promotes a visit to the University of Vermont.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970s
poster
A Ritual Exorcism
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster, featuring a mandala incorporating beat poet and counterculture icon, Allen Ginsberg, Uncle Sam, a peyote-eater, a mushroom cloud and a skull, promoted the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations. The estimated 100,000 protesters included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally began in front of the Lincoln Memorial started peacefully. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby specialist, author, and ardent critic of the war gave a strong speech, labelling President Johnson “the enemy.” Afterward, demonstrators marched toward the Pentagon, where some violence erupted when the more radical element of the demonstrators clashed with U.S. troops and Marshals. The protesters surrounded and besieged the military nerve center until the early hours of October 23. By the time order was restored, 683 people, including novelist Norman Mailer and two United Press International reporters, had been arrested.
One of the notable aspects of the Pentagon protest, in addition to its size, was the participation of both the political and counter-cultural wings of the New Left. Famously, in a bit of political theater, Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, claimed demonstrators would perform an "exorcism" on the Pentagon. Surrounding the five-sided building with a circle of hippies, “they would make the Pentagon rise from the ground a few inches. And all the evil was going to leave.”
Rubin stressed to the media that “we were going to close down the Pentagon” – which was taken more seriously than the levitation. President Johnson retorted, “I will not allow the peace movement to close down the Pentagon.” As Rubin pointed out later, “By saying that he wasn’t going to allow us to close it down, he gave us the power to have that possibility. So in a way, just by announcing it, we created a victory.”
In an essay for The Nation, titled “Bastille Day on the Potomac,” Robert Sherrill described the protest at the Pentagon:
“The strange thing about the confrontation, at least at first, of the troops and the protesters at the Pentagon was that there seemed almost to be a rapport, partly contrived but also partly natural. The troops who met the marchers and turned them away were sometimes cursed, but more often they were merely lectured as flower children might lecture a nosy cop in DuPont Circle. One boy stuck chrysanthemums in the muzzles of the rifles confronting him; late in the day, a soldier was seen tossing a package of cigarettes into the sprawl of sit-inners he was guarding. More significant than these random, amiable acts, however, was the fact that the protesters, although they made repeated forays with their identifying banners onto forbidden territory (one participant said it reminded him of the schoolboy game, Capture the Flag), never seriously contested or baited the troops physically—except for the one occasion when half a dozen protesters outflanked the main cluster of soldiers, raced through an unguarded Pentagon door, and made their coup, before being tossed out. A handful of stones, a couple of bottles, a few pieces of heavy cardboard were tossed at the soldiers during the day—but considering the size of the crowd, at peak emotion, acting over a period of several hours, these peaceniks were really peaceful. And by day, so were the troops. At dusk, they shot a couple of canisters of tear gas into the protesters’ ranks; and after dark they used their boots and rifle butts more freely than they had during the day….
On the occasion of the actual penetration of the Pentagon, there was rough stuff on both sides, but the only brutalities were committed by the marshals. When the protesters raced for the Pentagon entrance, The Nation’s reporter was in the van, not fast enough to get into the building with the six who made it, but in time to reach the doorway just as the bodies came hurtling back through, borne on a wave of soldiers. In the midst of this, he observed, one of the protesters was knocked down and lay imprisoned among the legs of the soldiers. A marshal seized this opportunity to start beating the helpless young man with all his might. and the beating continued for so long and seemed of such homicidal intent that the several newsmen caught in the crush began screaming at the marshal to quit. Finally the soldiers stopped him. The Nation’s reporter saw the marshals beating demonstrators on five occasions, four of these beatings were administered when the demonstrators were either on the ground or helpless.”
The Pentagon protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe. In one raucous incident outside the U.S. Embassy in London, 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster
Bring the Troops Home Now
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This anti-war poster was designed by Nancy Conor for the Student Mobilization Committee, a national organization that sought to foment student anti-war activism on U.S. campuses during the early-1970s.
Student Mobilization Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
poster
Corporate Imperialism
Anti-Imperialism
This poster depicts an anti-imperial alliance of U.S. movements and Third World liberation movements breaking up U.S. corporate militarism.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
Bread and Puppet Presents Joan of Arc
Experimental Theater
Bread and Puppet Theater is a radical theater group founded in 1962-63 in New York City by sculptor, dancer, baker and German émigré, Peter Schumann. During the 1960s, the experimental troupe participated in anti-war protests with large-scale puppets and was enmeshed in the countercultural scene. In 1970, they relocated to Plainfield and then Glover, Vermont, where they continue to perform today. The name of the group refers to their tradition of sharing bread with the audience to symbolize community and the significance of art to everyday life.
Bread and Puppet Theatre Company
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1977
poster
Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America
U.S. Interventionism in Central America
In 1984, a group of artists in New York joined forces to use their creative talents to challenge U.S. intervention in Latin America under the Reagan Administration. This poster was a call for artists to join the effort and was created by American sculptor, Claes Oldenburg. The final version of the poster differed from the one here, listing 1,087 participants, from individual visual artists and collaborative teams, performance artists, poets, filmmakers, curators, art critics and writers, as well as 80 events, including 29 exhibitions, 20 film showings, 7 dance and performance festivals, 6 poetry brigades, 6 video and TV installations, 6 reading series, 2 street actions, 2 window installations, and 2 panel discussions. According to artist, Doug Ashford, "Artists’ Call Against US Intervention in Central America was a nationwide mobilization of writers, artists, activists, artists organizations, and solidarity groups that began in New York in 1983. Quickly mobilizing artists and their organizations across the country, Artists Call collectively produced over 200 exhibitions, concerts and other public events over a period of 12 months. These events increased awareness of our government’s involvement in state terrorism across the hemisphere, linked the notion of aesthetic emancipation to revolutionary politics and provided concrete resources for the cultural workers and public intellectuals in the region and in exile."
Claes Oldenburg
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1984
poster
Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1983, Bernie Sanders ran for re-election as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, running as an Independent, narrowly won the mayor's office in 1981 by a margin of ten votes over his Democratic opponent, but won the 1983 election by a more comfortable margin, earning 52% of the vote, compared to 30% for his closest competitor. Sanders served three terms as Mayor of Burlington before moving on to the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years (1990-2005) and then the U.S. Senate in 2006, where he continues to serve. Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving Independent in U.S. congressional history. In 2016, Sanders mounted an insurgent campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, narrowly losing to Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose in the general election to Donald Trump.
Sanders for Mayor Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1983
poster
Grand Slam for Burlington
electoral politics
Bernie Sanders was first elected Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, by ten votes. He subsequently won re-election in 1983, 1985 and 1987 before moving on to the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate. This poster was created for his 1987 re-election campaign, which he won 56% to 44% over Paul Lafayette.
Sanders for Mayor Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1987
Chicago '68 Wall Poster
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
During protests at the 1968 Democratic Presidential Convention in Chicago, activists made wall posters to circulate information about what was happening. Many of this posters were made by Ramparts Magazine.
unknown (perhaps Ramparts Magazine)
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Ramparts Wall Poster
1968 Chicago Democratic Convention
During the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests, activists created wall posters that they used to circulate information. Ramparts Magazine was a prominent creater of these wall posters. The particular wall poster focuses on the double-arrest of SDS leader Tom Hayden, and an account of election jockeying.
Ramparts Magazine
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
poster
Bernie Benefit
Electoral Politics
This poster promotes a benefit event for Bernie Sanders' re-election campaign featuring an art auction and performance dances.
artists for Sanders
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1980s
poster
Thank You for Pot Smoking
Marijuana Legalization
The American Cannabis Society and its famous catchphrase, “Thank You for Pot Smoking,” was created in 1978 by Madison, Wisconsin, resident, Bob Kundert and his sons, Jeff and Eric. In a 2016 interview with the Psychedelic Times, Jeff Kundert, who is the current President of the organization, reflected on the origin of the group and its iconic slogan:
“My dad and my brother were watching TV and saw a placard on the television that said ‘Thank you for not smoking,’ and then ‘American Cancer Society’ underneath it. My brother in fun changed the ‘n’ to a ‘p’, then dad changed the word ‘cancer’ to ‘cannabis.’ We thought it was funny then, and it just stuck.”
He continued, “After I got back from Vietnam, I introduced my dad to cannabis and he really enjoyed it. We were hard working professionals, my dad owned a large construction company, and he found cannabis to be a big help in his life. He enjoyed what the youth were doing more than what the establishment was doing, which often involved things like drinking lots of alcohol.”
“Dad was worried that cannabis was being maligned and had been maligned for a long time. He thought, ‘Since people aren’t being given the truth about cannabis, why don’t we start a society just to disseminate the culture of cannabis — what people do when they’re high, what it feels like to be high, how to pass a joint correctly, things like that.’ Of course, there was pushback, but he stayed in that fight with the American Cannabis Society until his passing in the year 2000, when he was still wearing his ‘Thank You for Pot Smoking’ shirt, and was the most loved person in the nursing home with his friendliness, spunk, and humor.”
Another 2016 article in Madison’s Isthmus Magazine, further explained, “Members of the American Cannabis Society see themselves as freedom fighters on a mission to overturn nearly a century of federal marijuana prohibition. Their crusade to ‘free the herb’ isn’t so people can get high — which they do in spite of the law — but to have peace of mind while doing so. ‘The point,’ Kundert explains, ‘is that no one is going to put me or anybody else in jail for enjoying and sharing this sacred herb.’”
American Cannabis Society
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1978
poster
Fuck the Rich
Anti-Capitalism
This anti-capitalist poster features the comic book character, Richie Rich.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown [ca. mid-1980s]
poster
Oct. 22, Where Will You Be?
Anti-Nuclear Movement
In October of 1983, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a British-based anti-nuclear organization that started in 1957, held a massive anti-nuke demonstration in cities across Europe to oppose the introduction of Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles at military bases in the U.S. and across Europe, as well an increase in submarine-based Trident missiles. In all, nearly 600 new nuclear missiles were planned to be placed in European NATO countries as a part of renewed Cold War bellicosity between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. The London action drew an estimated 300,000 people, bringing the city center to a virtual standstill. Labour leader, Neil Kinnock told a crowd at Hyde Park, “We believe that the only sane use for the Polaris system is to put it into negotiations to ensure our nuclear disarmament and to… force reduction in the rest of the world." In West Germany, where the United States had a large military presence and was soon to place new Cruise Missiles, roughly 600,000 people came out to demonstrations. Protests also occurred in Rome, Paris, Madrid and Brussels. In all, an estimated 3 million people took part in actions across Europe. CND chair, Joan Ruddock, remarked afterward, "The demonstration put [to rest] the notion that the peace movement is on its last legs.”
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1983
poster
Gone With the Wind
Anti-Nuclear Movement
This poster, which parodies the iconic promotional poster for the epic romantic 1939 neo-Confederate film, “Gone With the Wind,” starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh, features conservative U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, and conservative British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in a passionate embrace. The poster pokes fun at the cozy relationship between the two politicians and their advocacy for a renewed and heightened Cold War with the Soviet Union, particularly an escalation in nuclear weapons.
This poster, which parodies the iconic promotional poster for the epic romantic 1939 neo-Confederate film, “Gone With the Wind,” starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh as tragic white southerners, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, features conservative U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, and conservative British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in a passionate embrace. The poster pokes fun at the cozy relationship between the two politicians and their advocacy for a renewed and heightened Cold War with the Soviet Union, particularly an escalation in nuclear weapons.
Text on the poster reads: "The Film To End All Films/Most Explosive Love Story Ever/Milton Freedman In Association With Pentagon Productions Presents 'Gone With The Wind'/Screenplay By Kid Joseph/Directed by Hank Kissinger/Music By Eddy Heath." Caption below image reads "She Promised To Follow Him To The End Of The Earth. He Promised To Organize It!" And, “Now Showing World Wide.” Small printed notation at the bottom also says, “An IMF Picture” and “Right Rank Inc.” In the lower left corner, it reads "Bob Light/John Houston For Socialist Worker."
design by Bob Light and John Houston, printed by East End Offset Ltd in the U.K., and published by Socialist Workers Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
poster
Vermont Vietnam
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster features an image of the Vietnamese countryside and peasants.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
poster
Would You Be More Careful If It Was You Who Got Pregnant?
Women's Liberation
This is a reprint of a pro-birth control poster originally created by photographer, Alan Brooking, art director, Bill Atherton, and copywriter, Jeremy Sinclair, who all worked for Cramer Saatchi advertising agency in Britain. The poster provocatively asks men, "Would you be more careful if it was you who got pregnant?" Many people found the poster shocking and some offensive when it first appeared. Contraception was a much-debated subject and not usually on display in public spaces. The image itself also challenged popular notions of masculinity. These shock tactics effectively drew men's attention to the issue of unwanted pregnancy and has become a famous example of the power of advertising. The poster has been reconceptualized and reused a number of times since the 1960s-era.
photographer, Alan Brooking, art director, Bill Atherton, and copywriter, Jeremy Sinclair, who all worked for Cramer Saatchi advertising agency in Britain
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
poster
Go Home
Puerto Rican Independence
This poster was created by Cuban artist Heriberto Echeverría in 1970 to promote the global “Day of Solidarity with Puerto Rico.” The image depicts various symbols of U.S. militarism thrown into a garbage can with the words “Go Home” on it. The poster was published by OSPAAAL, the Organisation in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the main publisher of international solidarity posters in Cuba. Notably, these colorful propaganda posters were not designed to be posted on walls within Cuba, as others were. Instead, they were folded and stapled inside the magazine, Tri-Continental, where they were then distributed internationally.
Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States as a part of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War. Quickly, large U.S. economic interests, particularly Domino Sugar and American banks, came to dominate the Puerto Rican economy. As M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky has written, "Puerto Rico was turned into a plantation for U.S. agribusiness, later an export platform for taxpayer-subsidized U.S. corporations, and the site of major U.S. military bases and petroleum refineries.” Nationalist and independence movements have existed in Puerto Rico from the outset of U.S. occupation, with a nationalist surge occurring during the 1930s. In 1950, Puerto Rico gained a semi-autonomous commonwealth status with the United States, but nationalists continued to push for full independence. A new period of Puerto Rican nationalism took place during the 1960s and 1970s, both on the island and on the U.S. mainland, particularly in New York City, which was home to a large Puerto Rican community. Many activists viewed the Puerto Rican independence movement as a part of the broader Third World liberation struggles of the period.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1973
poster
Primer Año de Gobierno Popular
Chilean Politics
This poster celebrates the first year of popular rule in Chile by socialist President Salvador Allende. Allende was elected in 1970 and served until a CIA-backed military coup deposed him in 1973, bringing to power General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled as a military dictator until 1990.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1971
poster
Strike!
Labor Movement
Rubber Band
Roz Payne
In 1970, workers in the four largest rubber companies went on strike. These pages, from a broadside, support striking workers and offer a global economic analysis of the rubber industry. The images were created by Lisa Lyons and produced by Rubber Band, a student research collective in Berkeley, California.
To Whom Does Palestine Belong?
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
This poster was created by Palestinian artist, Mohamad El Farah, in 1970, as a part of a poster series for Fatah, the Palestinian nationalist movement. It juxtaposes an image of Golda Meir with Ayesha Audi and asks, “To Whom Does Palestine Belong?”
Golda Meir was born in Kiev, but emigrated to the United States with her family when she was a small child. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was active in Zionist politics as a teenager. In 1921, Meir and her husband moved to Palestine, where she played a variety of important roles in the emergence of the new Israeli state. During the first two decades of Israel’s existence, Meir served as Labor Minister (1949-1956) and Foreign Minister (1956-66), and in 1969, after a brief retirement, she was elected as the nation’s Prime Minister, a position she held until 1974.
Less is known about Ayesha Audi. She was born in Palestine in 1944 and later became a school teacher. Audi was a pan-Arabist and ultimately joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967. In the late-1960s, Fatah began to launch operations inside Israel. In 1969, Audi placed two bombs in West Jerusalem, killing two people. In response, Israeli forces destroyed Audi’s family’s home, imprisoned her and tortured her. Audi was released from Israeli prison in 1979, as a part of a prisoner swap where 76 jailed Palestinians were exchanged for captured Israeli Defense Force soldier, Avraham Amram. She then lived in Jordan and became a member of the Palestinian parliament in 1981.
Many New Left activists viewed the Palestinian liberation struggle as the vanguard of the broader Third World liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Mohamad El Fara
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
poster
Anti-WW3 Internationalist Art Show
Anti-War Movement
The Anti-WW3 Internationalist Arts Festival was organized by the San Francisco Poster Brigade in 1981-1982 as a travelling exhibit of roughly 2000 works of contemporary art and poetry that dealt with themes related to peace and social justice. Stops included San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tucson and New York. This poster was designed by artist, Rachael Romero.
Rachael Romero
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981-1982
poster