"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
"False Promises/Nos Engañaron"
Counterculture
The San Francisco Mime Troupe was an avant-garde, “guerilla theater” troupe created by R.G. Davis in 1959 and dedicated to political satire. Peter Berg directed the group throughout its heyday in the 1960s. Initially performing in lofts and basements, the SFMT gained notoriety during the mid- and late-1960s for its rambunctious free performances outdoors in public parks, particularly Golden Gate Park. Their performances targeted political repression in the U.S., American military intervention abroad, racism, sexism, materialism and capitalism. Seen as a part of the countercultural movement, the SFMT also had several well-known run-ins with law enforcement, often charged with “obscenity”. Their 1965 Minstrel Show, Or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, was performed in black face and offended some — both black and white. In another piece, an actor played a military policeman who paraded prisoners into Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza and began to abuse them. The troupe was also arrested on the campus of the University of California-Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement. Berg later went on to co-found, the Diggers with Emmett Grogan, a collective that brought a sense of theater to their charity work with the hippies and the poor in San Francisco.
This poster by Jane Norling, was created for the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 1976 original production of the play, "False Promises/Nos Enganaron.” According to the Troupe’s website, provides the following summary of the play: “Set in a Colorado mining town in 1898 where Mexican and American workers are organizing a copper mine, this simple story evolves into an epic that links the stories of Mexican and white miners, black and white dance hall queens, and a black soldier to the global machinations of Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan. The play also ties in U.S. expansion into Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii with the development of the American West.”
The play was written by Joan Holden, directed by Arthur Holden, with music and lyrics by Andrea Snow, Bruce Barthol and Xavier Pacheco. It featured Marie Acosta, Lonnie Ford, Sharon Lockwood, Melody James, Ed Levey, Dan Chumley, Esteban Oropeza, Patricia Silver and Deb'bora Gilyard and a band, the “Rough Riders,” including Bruce Barthol, Barry Levitan, David Topham and Jack Wickert. The production toured West Germany, Italy and France after its initial run in San Francisco.
artist Jane Norling
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1976
poster
"La mujer hebrea" de Bertold Brecht; "El Holandés" de Leroy Jones
Theater and Culture
This pop art-inspired poster promotes Cuban productions of Bertolt Brecht's play, "The Jewish Wife," and LeRoi Jones's, "The Dutchman."
Rolando de Oraá Carratalá, artist
Consejo Nacional de Cultura, publisher
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
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
"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
"When You Finally Notice Something..."
Anti-Nuclear Movement
This 1975 anti-nuclear power poster by Gillado Booth and White Whippet Press includes the quote, "When you finally notice something that's been a long while coming you don't have much time left." During the 1970s, many environmental activists opposed nuclear power because of concerns over nuclear waste disposal.
art by Gillado Booth and published by White Whippet Press in Huntington, New York
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1975
poster
“Break And Enter / Rompiendo Puertas"
Anti-Poverty and Housing Rights
“Break And Enter / Rompiendo Puertas,” also known as “Squatters,” is a short film by the Newsreel collective in New York City. It focuses on "Operation Move-in," an anti-poverty and urban redevelopment campaign by Puerto Rican and Dominican families to actively reclaim unused, vacant housing on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
A July 22, 1970, New York Times article, by Edith Evans Asbury, titled, “Squatter Movement Grows As Housing Protest Tactic,” offered a view of the campaign as it unfolded:
City officials, the courts, a hospital, Columbia University and private landlords were embroiled in a growing squatter movement yesterday as about 170 families illegally occupying apartments insisted on what they called their “Moral” right to remain.
At the end of the day, 25 men, women and children evicted from a building on West 15th Street won a promise from the city's Housing and Development Administrator, Albert A. Walsh, that the city would negotiate with the, landlord who evicted them.
The group, which went first to City Hall to see Mayor Lindsay, held a sit‐in at the administration's head quarters at 100 Gold Street all afternoon. They represented six families who had moved into empty apartments at 233 West 15th Street and were evicted by the police Monday.
The Rev. Robert O. Weeks, who had accompanied the families, hailed Commissioner Walsh's announcement as a “great victory,” declaring that “bureaucracy does work.”
City to Furnish Cots
Others in the group ex pressed skepticism, but left the Gold Street offices cheer fully, minutes after a contingent of policemen had arrived.
Mr. Weeks had sheltered the evicted families the previous night in Holy Apostle Episcopal Church, of which he is rector. He led them back to the church at Ninth Avenue and 28th Street, with Commissioner Walsh's assurance that the city would furnish them with 50 cots and blankets.
The group had demanded that the city take over the building from which they had been evicted‐ and convert it to units for low‐income families. They said the owner, Leon Nagin, of 425 Beach 146th Street, Far Rockaway, Queens, had boarded if, up prior to converting it to luxury units.
The announcement that sent the squatters away smiling at 5:45 P. M. yesterday was that Mr. Nagin had agreed to suspend any dernolition work for the rest of the week while he discussed selling the building to Housing and Development Administration for rental to low‐in come families.
Mr. Walsh told the group that there was “a very real possibility” that the city's proposal would be accepted, but warned that it might take several months to rehabilitate the building.
Housing Promised
Meanwhile, Commissioner Walsh promised to provide temporary apartments for the squatters in unoccupied apartments of city‐owned buildings in lower Manhattan urban renewal areas.
Buildings in Manhattan's Upper West Side Urban Renewal Area already contain about 150 squatting families, according to Operation Move In, a group of several anti poverty and community organizations in the area.
The families in the Upper West Side buildings, and in other buildings, have been as in moving into the vacant apartments by a variety of tenant organizations, community groups and churches.
They say that poor and middle‐income families are being squeezed out of Manhattan as the buildings they occupy are vacated and demolished to make way for new housing that they cannot afford. They argue that the current housing shortage is so critical that the poor and middle‐income families have a moral right to move into habitable boarded up buildings.
These arguments were offered in Civil Court yester day by volunteer lawyers on behalf of several families who made an unauthorized take over of apartments on East 13th Street. But a jury re turned a verdict in favor of the landlord, and authorized him to proceed with their eviction.
Hospital the Landlord
In this case, the landlord is the New York Eye and Ear Hospital, which owns four tenement buildings on 13th Street between First and Second Avenues.
The hospital seeks to clear tenants from the buildings to convert them to a residence for nurses.
Six squatter families were welcomed into the buildings, at 317 to 327 East 13th Street, on June 5 by families already living there.
“I was delighted to see them move in,” Mrs. Rose Arak, a resident for 40 years of 319 East 13th Street, said yesterday. “When those apartments were vacated and the tin was put over the windows, it was an open invitation to addicts and junkies and bums, and I was afraid to go into the halls alone.”
One of the squatter families moved from a city‐owned building in Brooklyn where it had been robbed of all furniture and clothing, and arrived with nothing but two sleeping bags, according to Mrs. Arak. “Now their apartment is completely furnished —by neighbors around here,” she added.
Philip Goldrich, a Bronx teacher who has lived at 317 East 13th Street for five years, also helped to welcome the squatters.
“I can't find a decent apartment at a price I can pay, so I know they can't,” Mr. Gold rich said yesterday.
Eric Greenbush, one of the lawyers representing the 13th Street squatters' families, will be back in court to day to press, for a stay of their eviction from Judge Richard W. Wallach, before whom the case was tried.
Over on East 11th Street, a group of squatters moved into buildings owned by a private landlord.
Here, too, the squatters were welcomed by people al ready living in the building. And here, with the help of Mrs. Francis Goldin, of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, tenants, supporters and the squatters were able to persuade the landlord to discuss letting the squatters stay.
“He's really a wonderful landlord,” Miss Susan Hirsch, an elementary school teacher and a resident, said yesterday.
“He takes wonderful care of our buildings, as you can see,” she said, waving a hand at freshly painted, well lighted halls. “But he wants to hold apartments empty so he can sell the buildings for a lot of money, and that's just not fair in a housing crisis.”
The owner, Jack Gucker, was not available for comment yesterday. But squatters' representatives reported that they had met, with him and that he was considering letting the squatters stay for a limited time as rent‐paying tenants.
“I hope it is true,” said 13‐year‐old Luz Rosado, in a sunny, fifth‐floor apartment at 120 East 11th Street.
“On Allen Street we all had to sleep in one room,” the girl went on, gesturing toward her three brothers and a sister. “Here I have my own room, and everything is so nice.” She translated for her mother, Mrs. Anna Rosado, who already had sheer white curtains hung, at all of the windows and was talking of painting the kitchen white.
Another landlord that yielded somewhat toward a squatter this week was Columbia. University. It permitted Mrs. Juanita Kimble, who moved in with her eight children, to have the gas turned on and plumbing connected at 130 Morningside Avenue.
“No, we have not accepted her as a tenant,” a university spokesman said yesterday. “We acted on a humane basis.” The building is scheduled for eventual demolition and replacement, he said.
Newsreel
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
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
1959-1969 Tenth Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban rebellion
Cuban Revolution
This poster was created by self-taught Cuban artist, Rene Mederos, in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. The image heroicizes Fidel Castro as a leader of people’s liberation struggles.
Rene Mederos
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
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
A assurer... la relève
Quebec Separatist Movement
This poster promotes the Front de Liberation du Quebec, a radical separatist group within the broader Quebec sovereignty movement. The FLQ adhered to a Marxist-Leninist ideology and engaged in a number of violent paramilitary attacks between 1963 and 1970. A 1963 leaflet that was widely distributed in Montreal included the following inscription:
"Suicide-commandos of the Quebec Liberation Front have as their mission to completely destroy, by systematic sabotage:
1. "All the symbols and colonial institutions (federal), in particular the RCMP and the armed forces.
2. "All the information media of the colonial language (English) which holds us in contempt.
3. "All enterprises and commercial establishments which practice discrimination against Quebec people, which do not use French as their primary language, which have signs in the colonial language (English).
4. "All the factories that discriminate against French-speaking workers"
In general, FLQ members embraced “propaganda of the deed,” a term that referred to political action that was aimed at providing an example for other liberationist groups. The group issued a variety of statements that called for a socialist insurrection against oppressors they identified with "Anglo-Saxon" imperialism. They also encouraged the overthrow of the Quebec government, the independence of Quebec from Canada and the creation of a French-speaking "workers' society.” The FLQ enjoyed popularity among the broader global New Left.
FLQ violence reached its peak during the late-1960s with the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969 and what came to be known as the October Crisis on 1970, when the group kidnapped Canadian Trade Commissioner, James Cross, and later Labor Minister Pierre Laporte, who was then killed by a FLQ cell. The October Crisis led to a decline in support for the French separatist movement and a severe crackdown by the Canadian government. In total, the FLQ conducted at least 160 violent incidents during this period, resulting in property damage and the deaths of eight people and a number of other injuries. As support for the FLQ waned in Canada, a small number of members fled to Cuba.
Front de Liberation du Quebec
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s or early-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
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
Anti-WW3 International Arts 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
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
Anti-WW3 Internationalist Arts 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
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
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
Assata Shakur - Free All Black Liberation Fighters
Black Power
Assata Olugbala Shakur is a political activist, author, fugitive and aunt of hip-hop artist, Tupac Shakur. She was born in 1947 in New York City, JoAnne Deborah Byron. Following her parents’ divorce, Byron spent much of her childhood moving between her grandparents and other family in Wilmington, North Carolina, and New York City, where her mother moved after she remarried. As a student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and then City College of New York, Byron was exposed to African American history and Black Nationalism, which made a significant impact on her political development. She met her husband, Louis Chesimard, and began participating in the student movement, anti-war activism and the struggle for black liberation. In 1970, while visiting Oakland, California, Byron met members of the Black Panther Party and joined the Harlem branch upon her return to New York, where she worked with the breakfast program. Frustrated with the Black Panther Party’s unwillingness to work with other black radical organizations, Byron left the party in 1971 and joined the Black Liberation Army, an underground Black Power group whose goal was to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.” In her autobiography, she wrote, “the Black Liberation Army was not a centralized, organized group with a common leadership and chain of command. Instead there were various organizations and collectives working together and simultaneously independent of each other.” The group believed "the character of reformism is based on unprincipled class collaboration with our enemy" and asserted the following principles:
1. That we are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist.
2. That we must of necessity strive for the abolishment of these systems and for the institution of Socialistic relationships in which Black people have total and absolute control over their own destiny as a people.
3. That in order to abolish our systems of oppression, we must utilize the science of class struggle, develop this science as it relates to our unique national condition.
It was also at this time that Byron changed her name to Assata (“she who struggles”) Olugbala (“love for the people”) Shakur (“the thankful”).
In 1972, the FBI issued a warrant for Shakur’s arrest for alleged crimes committed by the BLA and was the subject of a multi-state manhunt by law-enforcement. During a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973, Sundiata Acoli Zayd Malik Shakur and Assata Shakur got into an altercation with two police officers, Werner Foerster and James Harper. The incident resulted in the deaths of Zayd Shakur and Foerster. Harper and Assata Shakur were also wounded in the shoot-out. Over the next few years, beteen 1973 and 1977, Shakur was charged with a variety of crimes related to the 1973 incident and others, including murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery and kidnapping. Six of the charged were ultimately dismissed, though she was convicted of Foerster’s murder and seven other felonies related to that incident in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years. Many black liberation and New Left activists argued that Shakur did not receive a fair trial. In 1979, three members of the BLA helped Shakur escape from prison. For the next few years, Shakur lived underground, ultimately fleeing the U.S. for Cuba in 1984, where she was reunited with her daughter, who had been born in prison while she was on trial. Shakur continues to live in Cuba and remains on the FBI’s list of “most wanted terrorists.”
The quotation printed on this poster is from a letter Shakur wrote on July 4, 1973 from prison. The full letter is here:
Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.
I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots who protect them and their property.
I am a Black revolutionary, and, as such, i am a victim of all the wrath, hatred, and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.
I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.
I am a Black revolutionary, and, by definition, that makes me a part of the Black Liberation Army. The pigs have used their newspapers and TVs to paint the Black Liberation Army as vicious, brutal, mad-dog criminals. They have called us gangsters and gun molls and have compared us to such characters as john dillinger and ma barker. It should be clear, it must be clear to anyone who can think, see, or hear, that we are the victims. The victims and not the criminals.
It should also be clear to us by now who the real criminals are. Nixon and his crime partners have murdered hundreds of Third World brothers and sisters in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. As was proved by Watergate, the top law enforcement officials in this country are a lying bunch of criminals. The president, two attorney generals, the head of the fbi, the head of the cia, and half the white house staff have been implicated in the Watergate crimes.
They call us murderers, but we did not murder over two hundred fifty unarmed Black men, women, and children, or wound thousands of others in the riots they provoked during the sixties. The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives. They call us murderers, but we were not responsible for the twenty-eight brother inmates and nine hostages murdered at attica. They call us murderers, but we did not murder and wound over thirty unarmed Black students at Jackson State—or Southern State, either.
They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder, by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us murderers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World people.
Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen percent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of murder victims are Black. For every pig that is killed in the so-called line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the police.
Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.
They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squires (who is accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was kidnapped on April z, 1969, from our Black community and held on one million dollars' ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two hours to deliberate. Brother Squires was innocent. Yet he was kidnapped from his community and family. Over two years of his life was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika's concentration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither bail nor lawyers.
They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture, of our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives. They call us thieves, yet it is not we who rip off billions of dollars every year through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.
They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers. They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the people who live there are sick and starving. The rulers of this country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal, vicious crimes in history. They are the bandits. They are the murderers. And they should be treated as such. These maniacs are not fit to judge me, Clark, or any other Black person on trial in amerika. Black people should and, inevitably, must determine our destinies.
Every revolution in history has been accomplished by actions, al-though words are necessary. We must create shields that protect us and spears that penetrate our enemies. Black people must learn how to struggle by struggling. We must learn by our mistakes.
I want to apologize to you, my Black brothers and sisters, for being on the new jersey turnpike. I should have known better. The turnpike is a checkpoint where Black people are stopped, searched, harassed, and assaulted. Revolutionaries must never be in too much of a hurry or make careless decisions. He who runs when the sun is sleeping will stumble many times.
Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.
There is, and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the future. We must defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our liberation by any means necessary.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
Right edge has "Jackrabbit Press 464 Willamette Eugene Oregon" printed in black and a black stamp for the Assatta Shakur Defense Committee.
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
poster
Asylum for Kristina Berster
New Left
On July 16, 1978, West German, Kristina Berster, and two American accomplices were picked up by U.S. Border Patrol officials in Vermont for illegally crossing into the United States from Canada. Initially, the FBI and other law enforcement claimed Berster was a terrorist on the lamb from Germany, where she was a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction.
Baader-Meinhof was a radical, left-wing organization established in 1970 that engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies and shoot-outs with police over the course of three decades, though their activity peaked in 1977. Stefan Aust, who wrote a book about the history of Red Army Faction, detailed the background and emergence of the group, “World War II was only twenty years earlier. Those in charge of the police, the schools, the government — they were the same people who'd been in charge under Nazism. The chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been a Nazi. People started discussing this only in the 60s. We were the first generation since the war, and we were asking our parents questions. Due to the Nazi past, everything bad was compared to the Third Reich. If you heard about police brutality, that was said to be just like the SS. The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it. You see your action as the resistance that your parents did not put up.” As Red Army Faction member, Gudrun Ennslin, is reported to have said after the death of one his comrades, “They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven't. We must arm ourselves!” Aust went on to explain the appeal of Baader-Meinhof to some West Germans, “The Baader-Meinhof Gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States, like the Weather Underground, never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed that a quarter of West Germans under forty felt sympathy for the gang and one-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness (as) Germany even into the 1970s was still a guilt-ridden society. When the gang started robbing banks, newscasts compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde. (Andreas) Baader, a charismatic action man indulged in the imagery, telling people that his favourite movies were Bonnie and Clyde, which had recently come out, and The Battle of Algiers. The pop poster of Che Guevara hung on his wall, (while) he paid a designer to make a Red Army Faction logo, a drawing of a machine gun against a red star.” Red Army Faction was organized into cells and practiced what Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella called the “urban guerrilla.” According to Marghella, an urban guerrilla, was “A person who fights the military dictatorship with weapons, using unconventional methods... The urban guerrilla follows a political goal, and only attacks the government, big businesses, and foreign imperialists.” In response, West German authorities initiated a growing clamp-down on left-wing activists and lawyers, as well as critics of the government, generally.
At the same time in the U.S., legislators and law enforcement were growing increasingly concerned about “terrorism” and looking for legal and social bases to tighten strictures on so-called “terrorists.” One point of concern was the northern border with Canada. In this context, many saw the Kristina Berster case as an opportunity for U.S. law enforcement in the post-1960s era to promote this new anti-terrorism agenda. At first, the FBI Press Officer claimed the arrest “marked the first time a member of the notorious urban gang has been caught trying to enter the country.” In Burlington, Vermont, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Jerome O’Neill, stated that Berster was one of the 34 most wanted persons in the world. These were explosive claims that were picked up and repeated by national press across the country, including the New York Times. Quickly, though, those grand assertions began to unravel. West German authorities corrected FBI statements, saying that Berster was not, in fact a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang, and that they may not even be interested in extraditing her, prompting a corrected statement by the FBI. Yet, the cat was out of the bag in the U.S. media and the retraction did not change the overall tenor of coverage in the case, with most media continuing to refer to Berster as a “terrorist.”
American journalist Greg Guma has written extensively about the Berster case. In an article titled, “How disinformation turned Kristina Berster into an ‘enemy of the state,’” he described the context of growing radicalism in Germany when Berster entered the university:
“WHEN KRISTINA Berster, then 20, arrived in Heidelburg in late 1970, the student movement was well underway. The young in Germany were restless and angry, mostly about Vietnam. The rhetoric had turned revolutionary since the days of ‘Ban the Bomb!’ and the Berlin Wall. Student radicals numbered over 170,000, some of them turning gradually to Communism or Maoist ideology.
In a sense, German youth were emulating American dissent. The New Left in the US had reached a crisis point with the police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago and the Days of Rage, which sparked the formation of the Weather Underground. German protest erupted with demonstrations in Berlin and the bombing of two empty department stores by Andreas Baader and Gudrin Ensslin.
The purpose of the bombings, said Baader, was ‘to light a beacon’ against the consumer society. As Ensslin explained, ‘We set fires in department stores so you will stop buying. The compulsion to buy terrorizes you.’ The analysis was superficial, but it struck at the core of German complacency in an era of intensive economic development.
With their accomplices, the couple was caught and convicted on arson charges, but they found support from one of Germany’s leading leftist journalists, Ulrike Meinhof.
When they were released in 1969, pending appeal of their cases. Baader and Ensslin went underground with help from Meinhof, and on September 29, 1970, the Red Army Faction (RAF) was officially born with the robbing of three West Berlin banks. Baader said the first problem of ‘the revolution’ was finding financial support.
By early 1971, West German police were turning to automatic weapons and brutal tactics at demonstrations. Anyone who looked like a nonconformist risked a spontaneous interrogation. New search, arrest and gun laws were passed; roadblocks were a common sight on the Autobahn. The excuse for the broad extension of police powers was a nationwide search for the Baader-Meinhof group, even though the political fugitives were responsible for only five out of 1,061 bank robberies committed during their heyday. The first suspect killed by police was a 20-year-old hairdresser named Petra Schelm.
Berster was interested in psychology and grew increasingly alarmed at what she viewed as the isolation, atomization and alienation of people in West German society, as well as the frightening new psychological tactics authorities were developing against political dissidents. Berster was deeply influenced by radical concepts of therapy articulated by people like Thomas Szasz, who wrote, “The parallel between political and moral fascism is close. Each offers a kind of protection. And upon those unwilling to heed peaceful persuasion, the values of the state will be imposed by force: in political fascism by the military and the police; in moral fascism by therapists, especially psychiatrists.” After Berster was implicated by an informant as a left-wing sympathizer, she was detained and imprisoned for six months. During that time, she saw first-hand the erosion of legal rights in the West German system, as her lawyer was targeted and sanctioned by the state.
When Baader and Meinhof were arrested in 1971, they were placed in what was called “wipe-out detention.” As Guma explained, “It was a world of total sterility: luminous white, with fluorescent lights always on and all windows covered. The cells were soundproofed and filled only with white noise. In the ‘Dead Wing’ there were no visitors except lawyers and relatives. Reading materials were censored and other prisoners were never seen nor heard. When Jean-Paul Sartre saw Baader after two years in the ‘Dead Wing,’ he said, ‘This is not torture like the Nazis. It is torture meant to bring on psychic disturbances.’
Berster called this form of solitary confinement ‘the most effective way to destroy personality irreversibly. Humans are social. When you cut that off, when people are not able to talk or relate to others, an internal destruction begins. You become catatonic; somatic problems begin.’”
As a result of her own experience and the treatment of members of the Red Army Faction, Berster became increasingly interested in and involved with the prisoner’s rights movement in her country through the Socialist Patients Collective. In 1972, West German political leaders passed repressive new legislation against radicals, heightening concern that Berster and others would not receive fair trials. At the same time, growing debate divided the New Left in West Germany over the necessity of armed struggle. Berster later told supporters in Vermont that she had “problems with violence… I can’t shoot someone. I could never do violence.” As the 1970s pressed on, Berster decided to flee West Germany, spending time in Yemen, obtaining an Iranian passport and then ending up in Montreal. At her trial, Berster explained why she had crossed over to the U.S. in Vermont, “When I was in Paris, I was told that to get into the States, all you had to do was walk through Vermont’s northern border… They gave me a plan, with a map they drew, to enter from Noyan, Quebec, to Vermont.” Berster hoped to receive asylum in the U.S.
The Berster case attracted the support of a group of New Left activists in Vermont, including Roz Payne, as well as famed radical lawyer, William Kunstler, who represented Berster and saw in her case an opportunity to press back against increasing legal attacks against leftist lawyers in Germany, as well as new forms of political repression in the U.S. “This case goes far beyond Kristina Berster,” Kunstler told the press. “I am very concerned with West Germany’s treatment of so-called terrorists and the so-called left wing lawyers who defend them.” Kunstler also expressed concern over the “panic” reaction in the U.S. over the “terrorist” label, which resulted in $500,000 bail for Berster, to date the largest amount ever set for a border charge. The Berster Defense Committee in Vermont conducted a regional survey to assess public perceptions of the case and mounted rallies in support of Berster.
In October of 1978, after the longest jury deliberation in Vermont history, Berster received a mixed verdict, convicted on a felony and misdemeanor charge related to her border crossing, but acquitted of the more serious conspiracy charge. Several jurors were clearly sympathetic to Berster’s political plight and expressed hope after the trial that she might still win asylum in the U.S. The judge sentenced her to 9 months in jail, all but two weeks of which she had already served. The prosecutor in the case continued to stoke public fears about Berster, revealing to the media that Berster had spent time in Yemin. Immediately, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated deportation proceedings against Berster. Roz Payne worked as an investigator and paralegal for attorneys Bill Knsutler, Jesse Berman, Bill Kittel and Chris Davis on Berster’s immigration case. Ultimately, in 1979, a deal was brokered between U.S. and West German officials to drop the original charges against Berster and allow her to return home without a deportation order.
Reflecting on the case years later, Guma wrote:
“What to make of the Kristina Berster case? In one sense, it was a matter of human rights. Victimized by shifting international politics, a student activist whose only crime was crossing a border to seek asylum had spent almost two years in prison, in Germany and then the US.
But there was more to it than that. Berster’s case demonstrated how a campaign against terrorism can easily go off the rails, threatening anyone who actively tries to change the way society is run – from civil libertarians and prison reformers to anti-nuclear protesters and feminists. Across the country, despite claims that the days of COINTELPRO were over, reports were surfacing – harassment, covert agents provoking violence in nonviolent groups, wiretapping, political grand juries, and intrusive surveillance. As the 1970s wound down a chill was setting in, and terrorism was becoming an excuse for virtually any tactic the government found effective…
[Berster’s] US stay had revealed a few things — for example, that officials, working in and with intelligence agents, were ready to lie in court and sanction illegal surveillance, and that some media could be used to distribute rumors and falsehoods; The evidence remained circumstantial, but it also looked like Vermont had witnessed the manufacturing of a terrorist scare, an attempt to warp public perceptions for political gain. The FBI had lied, so had the prosecutor. Anyone who supported the defendant was targeted for surveillance. Then there was the simulated terrorist ‘siege.’
In essence, it looked like a concerted effort to influence public opinion, what would soon be labeled ‘perception management’ in a Defense Department manual. Basically, this tactic involves both conveying and denying information ‘to influence emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.’ The goal is to influence both enemies and friends, ultimately to provoke the behavior you want. ‘Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations,’ according to DOD.
In the Reagan years this type of operation was euphemistically labeled ‘public diplomacy,’ which was officially expanded to include domestic disinformation during the Bush I administration. In those days it was mostly about stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Qaddafi, and anyone else on Reagan’s hit list. Clinton modifications were outlined in Directive 68, which still showed no distinction between what could be done abroad and at home. When Bush II took office, the name was changed again, this time to ‘strategic influence.’
Kristina Berster Defense Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1978
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
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
Black Power
Black Power
This 1968 poster, by Cuban designer and filmmaker, Alfredo Rostgaard, promotes the Black Power movement and revolutionary violence. 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. Rostgaard was the artistic director of OSPAAAL for nine years, beginning in 1966. A statement by OSPAAAL was included with this poster: “On the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, we have published a poster that is now being circulated all over the world. We are sending you herewith a certain amount of these posters, which may be used in your country for the activities to be carried out in this regard.” This poster was later re-purposed by the Black Panther Party as a part of the Free Huey! campaign. OSPAAAL published several posters by Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party.
Alfredo Rostgaard
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
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
Bring Abbie Home Rally
Counterculture/Yippies
These posters promote two events - one in New York City at Madison Square Garden and the other at Grant Park in Chicago - in August of 1978 to support Yippie leader, Abbie Hoffman, who had been underground for four and half years. The New York event featured celebrities and movement activists playing music, giving testimonials and performing a mock-trial. Participants included Rip Torn, William Kunstler, Rennie David, Bobby Seale, Terry Southern, Larry Rivers, Taylor Mead, Jon Voight, William Burroughs, Ossie Davis, Dave Dellinger, John Froines, Jerry Rubin and others. Many wondered if Hoffman was in attendance in disguise. A recorded message from Hoffman was played at the event.
Bring Abbie Home Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
August 1978
posters
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Day of International Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe
Third World Liberation
This 1967 poster, by Cuban designer and filmmaker, Alfredo Rostgaard, promotes a Day of International Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe. 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. Rostgaard was the artistic director of OSPAAAL for nine years, beginning in 1966.
Alfredo Rostgaard
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
poster
Day of Solidarity with the Afro-American People
Black Power
This 1968 poster, by Cuban designer, Daysi Garcia, promotes the Black Power movement through a day of solidarity of Afro-American people. 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.
Daysi Garcia
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1968
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
Decade of Social Change, 1974-1984
Philanthropy
The Haymarket People's Fund is a philanthropic organization in Boston, Massachusetts, that funds grassroots efforts toward social justice.
Haymarket People's Fund
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1984
poster
Due to Circumstances Beyond Its Control Whitehall Will Be Closed
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. In December, anti-war organizations organized a second “Stop the Draft Week.” In New York, Dr. Benjamin Spock and poet Allen Ginsburg led more than 1,000 demonstrators to the Whitehall induction center in New York.
A December 6, 1967, New York Times article by Homer Bigart, titled, “264 Seized Here in Draft Protest,” offered an account of the protest:
The police arrested 264 persons, including Dr. Benjamin Spock and the poet Allen Ginsberg, during a demonstration yesterday between 5 A.M. and 6 A.M. by more than 2,500 antidraft, antiwar protesters at the armed forces induction center at 39 Whitehall Street.
The mass arrests, anticipated by both the demonstrators and the police, brought the only turbulent moments in a generally orderly demonstration.
But the police were alerted for a livelier protest today when a coalition of more that 40 antiwar groups plans to surround the induction center with 5,000 demonstrators who have been instructed to paralyze traffic in the area.
The Police Department issued an order marshaling all available manpower in the 28,000-man force on either an active or a standby basis, effective through Friday. About 4,000 men were expected to be on duty at the induction station today.
The center opens at 5:30 A.M., Mondays through Fridays, and that is why the demonstrators are obliged to be up long before dawn.
Yesterday's siege failed to disrupt either the induction center or the neighboring tip of the financial district.
The ranks of demonstrators thinned out before the morning rush hour. Leaders said they had no intention of trying to force a halt in the induction process; they merely wanted a "symbolic" protest. But today, they said, would be different.
Starting at 5:30 A.M., according to instructions issued by the Stop the Draft Week Committee, demonstrators will not only block streets in the area but will try to intercept inductees and persuade them to join the protest.
The police massed more than 2,500 men yesterday and defended the induction center, a faded nine-story red brick building of 1886 construction, with barricades so formidable that Dr. Spock had to plead for an opening so that he could sit on the entrance steps and be arrested.
Among those arrested were Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University, and his wife Maire, daughter of the former deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Sean MacEntee. The O'Briens were among a group staging a sit-in at Broad and Pearl Streets, one block from the induction center.
Mrs. O'Brien told newsmen that mounted policemen drove their horses into the sitting group and her husband was assaulted by policemen who followed on foot.
"They [the police] kicked Conor around quite a bit," she said.
Dr. O'Brien, who headed the United Nations mission to Katanga during the 1961 Congo crisis, insisted on medical attention, according to Mrs. O'Brien. She said the police took them both to Bellevue Hospital, where it was found that Dr. O'Brien had suffered bruises. He was discharged yesterday afternoon.
Assembling in early morning darkness, the demonstrators arrived in Peter Minuit Plaza armed with notebooks and cameras so, they explained, they could record instances of police brutality.
But the police, operating under a set of "instructions and principles" issued by Chief Inspector Sanford D. Garelik, behaved in a manner that drew praise later in the day from Mayor Lindsay.
Mayor Lindsay told a City Hall news conference that he had received a full report on the demonstration and believed it was "handled very well by the police."
The Garelik instructions warned the police to respect the rights of the dissenters so long as the demonstrators did not impede the rights and the free movement of others.
All of the 264 persons arrested - there were 171 men and 93 women - were paroled when arraigned in Criminal Court on charges of disorderly conduct. Hearings have been set from Jan. 10 to Jan. 24.
In an unusual step, those arrested were not booked at a police station but were taken directly in police vans to the Criminal Court Building at 100 Centre Street. There, close to the courtroom, the police had set up a booking desk. Equipment for fingerprinting and photographing any who might be charged with a felony was also at hand.
In addition to disorderly conduct, two of the prisoners were charged with resisting arrest. They were Tuli Kupferberg, 44 years old, of 301 East 10th Street, an editor of East Village Other, and Jonathan Miller, 20, of 120 West 106th Street.
Judge Walter H. Gladwin released all without bail but warned the defendants that if they were brought before him after participating in any other demonstrations this week "I shall have to set bail for you."
Hearings for Dr. Spock and Mr. Ginsberg will be held Jan. 10.
Dr. Spock told reporters out of court that he had been "cheerfully straight-armed" by the police when he tried to climb over a triple row of wooden horses and reach the steps of the induction building.
Reporters who saw the incident recalled that the 64-year-old Dr. Spock after failing in an effort to crawl under the barricade, mounted the wooden horses but was gently pushed back into the mass of demonstrators by policemen on the other side.
Finally, a police official showed Dr. Spock an opening at the end of the barricade. Whereupon the child doctor and antiwar agitator led about a dozen demonstrators from the picket line in the middle of Whitehall Street to the building steps. There, surrounded by policemen, they were allowed to squat on the cold stones for a few symbolic moments before they were arrested.
As soon as the van had taken them off, a second, group, this one headed by Mr. Ginsberg, was allowed to repeat Dr. Spock's performance. Mr. Ginsberg, the bearded beatnik poet, was wearing an orange batik shawl, a huge flowered tie, a rosary and a Buddhist amulet.
There were cymbals on his fingers, of the sort affected by Egyptian belly dancers, and he made a cheerful tinkle as the police hustled him to a van.
Some of those who sat on the steps went limp as policemen approached and had to be carried to the wagons while the pickets cheered.
But there was no violence here. Many of the pickets seemed middle-aged or older, and were not inclined to be violently demonstrative. One of the demonstrators, Beatrix Turner, 68, an artist, even praised the police: "I think the police behaved well; I'm full of compliments for them."
Very few Negroes were seen among the pickets.
A younger, much more militant outpouring was predicted today. Tactics "inspired" by the antidraft demonstration in Oakland, Calif., last Oct. 16 will be used, according to the sponsors. At Oakland, missiles were thrown and vehicles set afire.
But spokesmen for four of the sponsoring groups insisted that the protest today would be "nonviolent," even though it would involve "active interference with the war machine."
Meanwhile, inside the induction center, the commanding officer, Lieut. Col. James McPoland, called yesterday's demonstration "a big zero." Induction operations were normal and he predicted that the center would continue to process about 250 men daily.
Youths carrying brown envelopes containing orders to report for induction made their way unmolested through picket and police lines during the height of the demonstration. They vanished through an elevator door that bore the slogan "The Security of World Peace Starts Here."
"Somebody's gonna fight," said Pedro Anton Baez, 19, as he neared the building. "If I have to go to Vietnam, I'll go."
Stop the Draft Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1967
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
First Annual Detroit-Area Hookers' Halloween Masquerade
Sexual Liberation
Text at the top reads, "First Annual Detroit-Area Hookers' Halloween Masquerade October 28 9-2 Detroit City Women's Club Park at Elizabeth Tickets at the door - $5.00 Regular $3.00 Unemployed, welfare, youth, seniors, costume contest at 12 prizes for costumes from the fast life, best hooker, trick, pimp vile-cop, live music and entertainment. Cash Bar." Text along the bottom reads, "sponsored by CUPIDS Citizens to Upgrade Prostitution in Detroit and Suburbs. Sister to Coyote chapter of PEP the Prostitution Education Project of Michigan PO Box 32174 Detroit 48232 (313) 331-7703."
CUPIDS Citizens to Upgrade Prostitution in Detroit and Suburbs
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1990
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
Free All Political Prisoners
Political Prisoners
This poster was created by designer Rafael Morante in 1971 to support political prisoners across the global Third World liberation movement. 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.
Rafael Morante
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1971
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
Free the Panthers
Black Panther party
This poster encourages support for the Panther 21 in New York and includes a quotation from Afeni Shakur: “We will have our liberation or Babylon will have ashes to sleep on.”
In April of 1969, after a lengthy, coordinated effort by local and federal law enforcement to infiltrate and disrupt the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, District Attorney Frank Hogan indicted 21 members of the organization, claiming a widespread conspiracy to murder policemen and blow up four police stations, five department stores, railroad lines, the Queens Board of Education building, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Ultimately, 13 Panthers, including Afeni Shakur and Dhoruba Bin Wahad, stood trial in a case that became a cause celebre among black militants and the broader New Left. For ten months prior to the trial, the jailed Panthers were held in solitary confinement with lights on 24 hours a day and denied reading materials, recreational facilities and family visitation. Several were not given mattresses and the two female Panthers were limited to four sheets of toilet paper per day. It was also reported that prison officials harassed Panther attorneys. Famed composer, Leonard Bernstein, helped raise bail money for the “New York 21.” During the court proceedings, District Attorney Hogan referred to the Panthers as a “terrorist organization,” read from Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” showed jurors the film, “The Battle of Algiers” and attempted to introduce political posters from one of the defendant’s apartment into evidence. In what was, at the time, the longest and most costly trial in New York state history, the Panthers were acquitted of all 156 charges on May 12, 1971. In the wake of the failed prosecution, local law enforcement and the FBI continued to target the New York Black Panther Party.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969-1971
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
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
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
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