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
Machismo is fascism
Women's Liberation
This Young Lords poster says,
Machismo is fascism – equality for women – women's struggle is the revolution within the Revolution – Equality for Women - Equality Now!! - Enough of oppression – Freedom Now
Young Lords Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1960s
poster
Youth International Party Manifesto!
New Left
The Youth International Party, known as the "Yippies," was founded in 1967 by Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, and Paul Krassner. Other activists involved with the Yippies included, Stew Albert, Ed Rosenthal, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Robin Morgan, Phil Ochs, Robert M. Ockene, William Kunstler, Jonah Raskin, Steve Conliff, John Sinclair, Dana Beal, Betty (Zaria) Andrew, Matthew Landy Steen, Judy Gumbo, Ben Masel, Tom Forcade, David Peel, Wavy Gravy, Aron Kay, Tuli Kupferberg, Jill Johnston, Daisy Deadhead, Leatrice Urbanowicz, Bob Fass, John Murdock, Alice Torbush, Judy Lampe, Walli Leff, Steve DeAngelo, Dennis Peron, and Brenton Lengel. According to Krasner, who coined the term, Yippies were “radicalized hippies.” In a 2007 essay in the Los Angeles Times, Krasner explained, "We needed a name to signify the radicalization of hippies, and I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed, an organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists. In the process of cross-fertilization at antiwar demonstrations, we had come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between putting kids in prison for smoking pot in this country and burning them to death with napalm on the other side of the planet." Further, Anita Hoffman liked the term, but felt that "strait-laced types" needed a more formal name to take the movement seriously. She came up with "Youth International Party," because it symbolized the movement and made for a good play on words. Some referred to the group as "Yippie!," as in a shout for joy (with an exclamation mark to express exhilaration). As Abbie Hoffman wrote, "What does Yippie! mean?" Energy – fun – fierceness – exclamation point!"
The Yippies were influenced by The Diggers in San Francisco and often used guerilla theater, pranks, absurdist forms of protest, as well as political and cultural disruption in their activism. They sought to merge the personal with the political… and have fun in the process. ABC News once stated, "The group was known for street theater pranks and was once referred to as the 'Groucho Marxists'." Among their many storied antics, the Yippies suggested lacing the New York City water supply with LSD, sent joints to hundreds of random people in New York from the telephone book, threw fake money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and suggested a circle of hippies could “levitate” the Pentagon during an October 1967 protest. The Yippies understood the dominant role of mass media and television in contemporary society and often went on television, but refused to obey the normal rules of corporate TV production, hoping to “break the frame” and reveal to audiences the constructed nature of mass media. The Yippies were also involved in the underground press movement. Much of the writing and visual culture they produced consisted of obscenity-laced diatribes against mainstream society, but made few serious calls to militant action.
Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies first suggested a “Festival of Life” in the park outside of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They also planned to nominate a pig, nicknamed “Pigasus,” for President. Other New Left organizations joined the effort, which ultimately descended into chaos when Chicago police, at the order of authoritarian Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, attacked and brutally beat demonstrators in front of reporters and television cameras, causing an international controversy. In the melee, many Yippies were injured and arrested, including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who were put on trial as a part of what become known as the Chicago 7.
In 1970, an estimated 200-300 members of the Yippies descended on the Disneyland amusement park in Anaheim, California, to hold what was billed as their “First International Pow-Wow” to protest the U.S.’s continuing involvement in the Vietnam War and to liberate Disneyland as a symbol of the establishment. Hoffman authored a pamphlet in 1967, titled, “Fuck the System”; two books, “Revolution for the Hell of It” (1968) and “Steal This Book” (1971); and an LP record, “Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album” (1969).
The Yippies began to fragment and disintegrate during the 1970s. A disillusioned Hoffman committed suicide in 1989. Jerry Rubin became a “Yuppie” during the 1980s, embracing capitalism and starting a number of businesses. He was killed in 1994 when he was struck by a car. Even so, a number of Yippie followers have carried on in the same spirit.
Along the bottom right of this poster, it reads: “more copies: YIP 333 East 5th Street, NYC."
The main text on the poster is the Youth International Party Manifesto and it reads:
YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY
MANIFESTO!
WE ARE A PEOPLE
We are a new nation.
We believe in life.
And we want to live now.
We want to be alive 24 hours a day.
Nine-to-five Amerika doesn't even live on weekends.
Amerika is a death machine. It is run
on and for money whose power
determines a society based on war,
racism, sexism, and the destruction
of the planet. Our life-energy is the
greatest threat to the machine.
So they're out to stop us.
They have to make us like them.
They cut our hair, ban our music
festivals, put cops and narcs in the
schools, put 200,000 of us in jail
for smoking flowers, induct us,
housewive us, Easy-Rider murder us.
Amerika has declared war on our New Nation!
WE WILL BUILD AND DEFEND OUR NEW NATION
But we will continue to live and grow. We are young, we have beautiful
ideas about the way we should live. We want everyone to control their
own life and to care for one another. And we will defend our freedom
because we can’t live any other way.
We will continue to seize control of our minds and our bodies. We can't
do it in their schools, so we'll take them over or create our own. We
can't do it in their Army, so we'll keep them from taking our brothers.
We can't make it in their jobs, so we'll work only to survive. We can't
relate to each other like they do - our nation is based on cooperation
not competition.
We will provide for all that we need to build and defend our nation. We
will teach each other the true history of Amerika so that we may learn
from the past to survive in the present. We will teach each other the
tactics of self-defense. We will provide free health services: birth
control and abortions, drug information, medical care, that this society
is not providing us with.
We will begin to take control of drug manufacture and distribution, and
stop the flow of bad shit. We will make sure that everyone has a decent
place to live: we will fight landlords, renovate buildings, live
communally, have places for sisters and brothers from out-of-town, and
for runaways and freed prisoners. We will set up national and
international transport and communication so we can be together with our
sisters and brothers from different parts of the country and the world.
We will fight the unnatural division between cities and country by
facilitating travel and communication
. We will end the domination of women by men, and children by adults.
The well-being of our nation is the well-being of all peace-loving
people.
WE WILL HAVE PEACE
We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose
is the destruction of life and the accumulation of "profit.”
Schools and universities are training us for roles in Amerika's empire
of endless war. We cannot allow them to use us for the
military-industrial profiteers.
Companies that produce waste, poisons, germs, and bombs have no place in
this world.
We are living in the capital of the world war being waged against life.
We are not good Germans. We who are living in this strategic center of
Babylon must make it our strategic center. We can and must stop the
death machine from butchering the planet.
We will shut the motherfucker down!
WE WILL MAKE OUR NEW NATION FIT FOR LIVING THINGS
We will seize Amerika’s technology and use it to build a nation based on
love and respect for all life.
Our new society is not about the power of a few men but the right of all
humans, animals and plants to play out their natural roles in harmony.
We will build our communities to reflect the beauty inside us.
People all over the world are fighting to keep Amerika from turning
their countries into parking lots!
WE WILL BE TOGETHER WITH ALL THE TOGETHER PEOPLES OF THE EARTH
Pig Empire is ravaging the globe, but the beautiful people everywhere
are fighting back. New Nation is one with the black, brown, red & yellow
nations.
Che said:
'You North Americans are very lucky. You live in the middle of the
beast. You are fighting the most important fight of all, If I had my
wish, I would go back with you to North Amerika to fight there. I envy
you.' "
Yippies
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 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
Confront the Warmakers
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster promotes the October 21, 1967, antiwar demonstration held in Washington, D.C. by a collection of organizations, including the Vietnam Peace Parade Committee in New York. The estimated 100,000 protesters who took place in the demonstration included radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans.
The rally 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.
Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster
Second Annual Vermont Peoples Fair
Counterculture
This poster advertises a "Peoples Fair" at Battery Park in
Burlington, Vermont
Vermont Peoples Fair
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1970s
poster
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
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
"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
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
Rutland Daily Herald
unknown
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Stop the Klan in Vermont
Anti-Racism
This poster promotes an anti-Ku Klux Klan "speak-out" in Wilmington, Vermont, on May 15, 1982. According to a UPI article dated May 28, 1982, “In the first public appearance of Klansmen in Vermont since the 1920s, a 17-member delegation of the white supremacists donned their hooded robes on a ballfield and stood behind a human barrier of troopers as about 150 counter-demonstrators shouted violent anti-Klan slogans.” Two weeks later, the Klan rallied again in nearby Brattlesboro, Vermont. According to a New York Times article, dated May 31, 1982:
Two dozen white-robed members of the Ku Klux Klan paraded onto the town common in a steady drizzle Saturday for a recruitment drive, defying the anti-Klan feelings vented against them in a noisy protest two weeks ago.
About 150 spectators, some of them shouting ''Go home!'' stood behind a police line ringing the bandstand where the Klan members made speeches. State troopers trained in riot control and local law enforcement officers were also present.
On May 15, more than 150 anti-Klan protesters heckled 15 Klan members at a recruitment effort in Wilmington, 10 miles from here.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1982
poster
Nguyễn Thị Bình
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Nguyễn Thị Bình is a Vietnamese communist leader and politician who helped negotiate and signed the Paris Peace Treaty of 1973, ending the War in Vietnam. Bình was born in 1927 and joined the Communist Party in Vietnam in 1948. Her anti-colonial activism led to her imprisonment by the French from 1951-1953. During the War in Vietnam, Bình received increasing international attention, serving on the Vietcong’s Central Committee, head of the South Vietnamese Women’s Liberation Association and as the foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, an underground government opposed to the regime of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Bình was seen as an international symbol of Third World women’s liberation. After the war, Bình served in a variety of roles in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, including two terms as Vice-President from 1992-2002. This poster is signed and inscribed, “Best wishes for American Women’s Liberation.”
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
poster
NLF Star
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster features the colors and star of the Vietcong flag, with silhouettes of Vietnamese people.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
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
unknown
poster
Ask the Free Wild Animals
Counterculture
This poster features references to the 1960s-era counterculture, like LSD and Timothy Leary and a "Weatherfreak."
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
poster
Burlington is Not for Sale
Electoral Politics
In 1981, Bernie Sanders successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
poster
Ten Days to Change the World
Yippies/Counterculture
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.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1972
poster
Save the Waterfront
Environmentalism
During the mid- and late-1980s, a coalition of environmentalists and politicians in Burlington, Vermont, fought to redevelop the city's derelict waterfront area into a primarily public and entertainment area, with limited private development.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid- or late-1980s
poster
Jornada de la Marcha Combatiente Hacia el Moncada
Cuban Revolution
On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led a small group of revolutionaries in an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The barracks was the second largest in Cuba and had been named for General Guillermon Moncada, a heroic figure from Cuba’s War for Independence in the 1890s. The attempted coup failed, with eight killed, several more wounded and more than seventy captured and tortured by the Batista regime, including Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul. Fidel Castro initially escaped into the countryside, but was later captured and placed on trial. During the theatrical trial, Castro famously said, "You may condemn me. History will absolve me." Following the 1959 revolution, Castro would mark the storming of Moncada as the start of the struggle against the Batista regime. This poster commemorates that event.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1980
poster
"Dile a Fidel que yo complire con mi deber"
Latin American Leftism
This Cuban poster features Argentinian President Salvador Allende holding a gun and stating, "Tell Fidel I understand my duty."
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1973
Y Salvador Allende Cumplio Su Palabra en Forma Dramatica e Impresionante
Latin American Leftism
This Cuban poster quotes a speech by Fidel Castro given on September 28, 1973 at the Plaza de la Revolucion, shortly after the CIA-backed coup in Argentina on September 11 that overthrew the Democratic-Socialist Salvador Allende and installed military dictator, Augusto Pinochet. During the coup, Allende took his own life.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
poster
Free Ruchell Magee
Black Power
Ruchell Magee was born in 1939. In 1963, Magee was convicted of aggravated kidnapping over a dispute involving $10 of marijuana. While in prison, Magee learned about African American history, the black liberation struggle and became politicized, joining the Black Panther Party.
While imprisoned during the 1960s, Magee dedicated much of his time to studying law and petitioning the court to challenge his conviction, stating the the U.S. criminal justice system “used fraud to hide fraud” to convict African Americans and other political activists. He was able to overturn his initial conviction and earn a new trial based on a falsified transcript. In essence, Magee argued that his conviction was based on fraudulent grounds, denying him his constitutional rights and holding him involuntarily, making him a slave. As such, he claimed, he and others had a legal right to do everything in their power to escape enslavement. “My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery,” he wrote. “This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.” During this period, Magee took the middle name “Cinque,” in honor of a slave who escaped the slave ship, Amistad, and won his freedom in a Connecticut court. Magee also hoped his case might draw attention to the broader injustices within the American legal system.
On August 7, 1970, just a few months before Magee was eligible for parole, 17-year old Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of black radical, George Jackson, burst into the Marin County courtroom of Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, where James McClain was on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake of Black prisoner Fred Billingsley’s murder by prison officials in San Quentin Prison in February of 1970. Carrying three guns registered to Angela Davis, Jackson, with the help of McClain and Ruchell Cinque Magee, who was set to testify as a witness in McClain's trial, seized Judge Haley and ordered attorneys, jurors and court officials to lie on the floor. Magee freed another testifying witness, Black Panther William A. Christmas, who also aided in the escape attempt. In addition to their own freedom, the group sought a trade -- the release of Judge Haley for the “Soledad Brothers,” George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette, who were charged with killing a white prison guard at California’s Soledad Prison. During an effort to flee the courthouse in a van, a shoot-out with police took place, killing Jackson, McClain, Christmas and Judge Haley. Two other hostages, Prosecutor Gary Thomas and juror Maria Elena Graham, were also injured, but survived. Ruchell Magee was the only abductor to survive.
In the legal proceeding that followed the incident, prosecutors attempted to get Magee to testify against Angela Davis, but he refused. Ultimately, he pled guilty to aggravated kidnapping in exchange for the Attorney General requesting a charge of murder be dropped. Magee later tried to withdraw his guilty plea, but was unsuccessful. In 1975, he was sentenced to life in prison. Over the years, Magee has continued to petition the court for his release and to help other prisoners with legal challenges.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
poster
Zimbabwe Liberation Day
Third World Liberation
This poster, promotes a Zimbabwe Liberation Day event in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the local chapter of the African Liberation Support Committee. According to the African Activist Archive, “The African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), a black activist organization that supported Pan Africanism, was organized at a conference in September 1972 in Detroit, Michigan. ALSC grew out of the first African Liberation Day (ALD) on May 27, 1972 that drew some 60,000 demonstrators in cities across the U.S. and Canada. The first ALD grew out of a trip of a group of black activists to Mozambique's liberated areas in the summer of 1971. One of the activists on that trip was Owusu Sadaukai who, upon his return, convened a meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina that led to the first ALD demonstration, which was designed to show support for African liberation struggles. A second ALSC conference was held in 1974 and was attended by 51 local committees from 27 states and six countries. ALSC organized African Liberation Day each May, and in 1973 demonstrations were held in more than 30 cities with an estimated 100,000 participants. The 1973 African Liberation Day included a call to boycott Portuguese products and Gulf Oil because of its operation in Angola. By 1974 ideological conflicts and other factors including class and regional differences weakened the organization. Many of those who had been involved in ALSC went on to found or join other organizations supporting African struggles against colonialism and apartheid.” During the late-1970s, the United States and Soviet Union engaged in diplomatic maneuvers to discuss Cold War politics on the African continent, including Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1970s
poster
1976 - What are We Celebrating?
U.S. Bicentennial
This poster asks, "1976 - What are We Celebrating?" and points out that "What Betsy Ross did as an act of freedom is now being done behind bars by women in prison."
Notation at the bottom says, "Amherst".
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1976
poster
International Women's Day, March 8
Women's Liberation
This poster promotes International Women's Day on March 8, 1975. The hand-written notation says, "Scrub-a-dub-dub, here's the rub. It's time to scrub out the greed and grub."
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1975
poster
Second Burlington People's Circus
Counterculture
This poster promotes the second Burlington People's Circus.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
poster
“The overriding rule I want to affirm is that our foreign policy must always be an extension of our domestic policy. Our safest guide to what we do abroad is always what we do at home.”
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster juxtaposes images of police violence from the siege at Columbia with a quote from Lyndon B. Johnson, stating, "The overriding rule I want to affirm is that our foreign policy must always be an extension of our domestic policy. Our safest guide to what we do abroad is always what we do at home.”
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
Rally on the Green
New Left
This poster promotes a series of workshops at Billings, Montana.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
New York - A Holiday in Any Language
Anti-War Movement
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. mid-1970s
poster
Joint Treaty of peace Between the People of the United States and the People of South Vietnam and North Vietnam
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
The “Joint Treaty of Peace Between the People of the United States and the People of South Vietnam and North Vietnam” was developed by representatives of student peace organizations from the U.S. and Vietnam in December 1970. That month, a delegation sponsored by the National Student Association flew to Paris and then attempted to fly to Saigon to meet with students, but were turned away. In Hanoi, they met with student representatives from South
Vietnam and North Vietnam. The participants in the meetings hoped to foster peace by detailing key principles that all parties in the conflict could agree on. The treaty was endorsed by a number of politicians and celebrities, including Eugene J. McCarthy, Daniel Berrigan, Phillip Berrigan, Noam Chomsky, Charles E. Goodell, I. F. Stone, George Wald, Erich Segal, Rock Hudson, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the New University Conference and others.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
December 1970
poster
Solidarity Vietnam
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
During the late-1960s and early 1970s, the flag of the North Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) became an increasingly visible symbol at U.S. anti-war demonstrations, particularly among radicals. The presence of the flag was controversial.
Paul Saba, of the revolutionary Youth Movement II, wrote an essay, "Why We Carry the N.L.F. Flag," in 1969, which offered his justification for the use of the flag:
A lot of people get mad when they see young people carrying the flag of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in demonstrations. They call us traitors. They call the NLF the “enemy.” We carry the NLF flag because we believe that the fighting National Liberation Front of South Vietnam is the best friend of the people of America. We carry the flag to make a concrete show of our support for the victory of the Vietnamese fighting to drive the U.S. out of their nation.
The Vietnamese people have fought for 40 years to drive foreign invaders out of their land. First the Japanese, than they whipped the French, and now the United States. The Vietnamese have stated: “We shall never put down our guns until the last American soldier has left our soil.”
We oppose those politicians who call for a “just peace,” and “honorable peace.” There will be peace in Vietnam only when the Vietnamese have full control of their nation.
The Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) believe that Americans must support the right of self-determination for all nations.
The American people are hurt and hurt bad by the Vietnam war. We pay for it in every way with soaring taxes and prices, anti-strike laws and falling real wages, and most of all, with the blood and lives of our loved ones, who are killed in Vietnam. But the rich, who are the only ones who profit from this war, can continue to oppress and rob American workers only for as long as we will stand for the oppression and exploitation of other nations around the world.
These same fat cats who wage the Vietnam war will be drafting our men to South American and African countries where the people are fighting to throw out American businesses and landlords; and once again the people’s war against the imperialists will win. We can see that Vietnam is leading the struggle for self-determination, and that all the oppressed rations will follow. The ruling class in this country will try to use the American people to keep down the people in other nations. Just as here in the U.S. the rich have always played poor whites off against oppressed black people, and men against women.
We believe that there are only two sides in the struggle against exploitation and oppression. On one side, are the rising people of the oppressed nations. On the other side are the imperialists – the only ones who benefit from these wars. WE MUST CHOOSE THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSED PEOPLE. A victory for the Vietnamese people will be n victory for us! This is why we carry the flag of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam.
VIETNAM WILL WIN!
U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM NOW!
SUPPORT THE NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT AND THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT!
Revolutionary Youth Movement II
507 North Hoover
Los Angeles, Calif
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
poster
Stop the War in Vietnam Now!
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
This poster features a photograph of an injured U.S. soldier in Vietnam.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
poster
abolish capital punishment people have always been punished by capital
Anti-Death Penalty Movement
This anti-death penalty poster was printed by ComeUnity Press in Lower Manhattan was started in the early-1970s as a 24-hour open access print shop run by a gay anarchist collective.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
unknown
poster
Stop the Draft Week on Trial - Defend the Oakland 7
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
In 1967, anti-war activists shifted tactics from “protest to resistance” to the War in Vietnam, seeking more militant means on the home front to challenge U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. In October of that year, anti-war activists organized the first “Stop the Draft Week,” an effort to engage in civil disobedience at draft induction centers. Most famously, in Oakland, hundreds of activists marched on the Oakland Army Induction Center in an effort to shut it down. Police responded with widespread violence and numerous arrests. This poster promotes an effort to support the Oakland 7.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1967
poster