In response to the Chicago police department's killing of four workers during a strike at the McCormick Harvester's Works on May 3rd, labor leaders organized a meeting at Haymarket Square for the following night. About 3,000 persons assembled, later dwindling to a few hundred. A detachment of 180 policemen showed up. The speaker said the meeting was almost over. Then a bomb exploded in the midst of the police, wounding 66, one of whom later died. Six others died from gunshot wounds from their fellow officers. The police fired into the crowd, killing several people and wounding 200. Eight anarchists were arrested and put on trial. Facing an openly biased judge in Joseph Gary and a clearly hostile jury, the Haymarket Affair is one of the most infamously unjust trials in American history. The prosecution focused on the men's anarchist ties rather than determining whether the accused had any real connection to the crime. Essentially, eight men (7 of whom were not present when the bomb was thrown) ewre tried and convicted because of their political beliefs.
August Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer were hanged. Louis Lingg killed himself before the state could. Samuael Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe were sentenced to prison (eventually being granted clemency in 1892). The Harymarket Riot was an important event for the labor movement. The year 1886 became known as the "the year of the great uprising of labor". From 1881 to 1885, strikes had averaged about 500 per year, involving perhaps 150,000 workers each year. In 1886 there was over 1,400 strikes, involving 500,000 workers.
*Have your poster shipped in a Poster Tube for extra protection! Posters not shipped in tubes will be folded in half for packaging and are more subject to wear while shipping.
Highlander opened its doors in 1932 with the express intent of enabling poor and working class people in the South to radically change society. Its educational philosophy valued democracy, justice, and learners' self empowerment. It became the first openly integrated educational space in the South while training union leaders in the 1940s. This led Highlander to be a nerve center of the Civil Rights Movement, hosting desegregation workspops and providing space for radical groups such as SNCC to strategize. Highlander was closed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1961, the victim of a red-baiting campaign aided by those who wanted to maintain a segregated southand keep organized labor under control. Highlander rechartered and moved to New Market, Tn. www.highlandercenter.org
Another great poster from Stumptown Printers in Portland, Oregon! This poster was designed by Sarah Contrary and a portion of the profits go to bicycle advocacy programs in the Rose City. The quote reads "We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope." (Muriel Rukeyster) Yep, that bridge in the background is none other than the Hawthorne Bridge, the oldest vertical lift bridge in the US!
On heavier paper stock!
**Poster tube especially recommended for this poster due to its thickness.
In 1913 thousands of Philadelphia longshoremen formed the nation's most progressive union. Local 8 welcomed African Americans, Irish Americans, Poles, Lithuanians, West Indians, and others. The dockers proudly belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which is that rare institution that both advocates and practices equality. Alas, such radicalism got Local 8 into trouble with employers and the government, which arrested its leaders, fomented racial tensions and locked out the unionists. The legacy of Local 8, nevertheless, lives on.
Environmental and labor activist who brought together loggers and tree protectors. Her activities were so threatening to paper companies and the U.S. government that her car was bombed by the FBI.
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The Korean Peasants League fights in solidarity with the indigenous farmers of the world against the destructive policies of the World Trade Organization. Since its creation, the WTO has forced developing nations like South Korea to import foreign produce such as rice and cut subsidies to their own agriculture. In consequence, hundreds of farmers have lost their land, their livelihoods, and thousands of years of traditions. On September 10, 2003 world attention was focused on the Korean Peasants League when one of their most respected leaders, Lee Kyung Hae, took his own life during a protest at the Fifth Ministerial of the WTO in Cancun. The League continues to struggle against the neoliberal agenda of the WTO and the forces of globalization.
A celebration of a Spanish women's militias that organized and fought in the Spanish revolution, 1936 during a time of severely restricted women's freedom.
On June 25th, 1876, General George Custer and a heavily armed cavalry regiment attacked a camp of Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in what is now South Dakota. Custer's regiment was a part of the forces clearing the region of indigenous peoples so white settlers could mine gold in the Black Hills. That day Custer met a crushing defeat at the hands of the assembled tribes, under the leadership of Crazy Horse and Gall. Custer and his men were entirely wiped out, in one of the greatest victories for Indian people during the last 508 years of Genocide in the Americas.
Los Gorras Blancas, or The White Caps, were a close-knit secretive group in collective struggle against powerful cattle ranchers, land owners, and railroad expansion. The encroaching settlers began fencing the best pasturing and watering lands that had previously been held in common. In 1889 The White Caps began cutting barbed wire, burning fences and railroad tracks, and destroying bridges. They quickly gained popular support among the Las Vegas, NM community.
"If the fact that we are law abiding citizens is questioned, come to our houses and see the hunger and desolation we are suffering; Be fair and just and we are with you, do otherwise and take the consequences."
The White Caps, 1500 Strong and Growing Daily.
Celebrate this World War I resistor. She spent 2 1/2 years in prison on a sedition conviction because she mailed out anti-draft leaflets. Scary echoes with the current direction the U.S. is moving.
A poster sized print of our classic "Mass Transit" design!
This poster is especially recommended for tube shipping due to its thickness.
A celebration of a little known act of resistance against the Vietnam war in Milwaukee. 14 people burned 10,000 draft cards with home-made napalm!
More bees opposing "free" trade, NAFTA, Military intervention, and commodification of the world on fun, big, detailed posters!
A celebration of this contemporary group of Chicana mothers which has successfully fought off the construction of both a prison and toxic waste incinerator in their community.
Stunning portrait of the greatest boxer of all time, this one focusing on his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.
New Cristy Road posters with artwork from the Icarus Project!
Critical Mass into the sky ala Peter Pan!
Now featuring new, heavier paper stock and better print quality!
(New Song) began in Argentina with a man caled Atahualpa Yupanqui whose guitar became its voice, and whose exile became its birth. It began in Chile where Violeta Parra gathered a life of songs and gave them all away.
It began as Victor Jara wrote songs to the rhythm of falling cannisters of tear gas, on the streets of Santiago.
Many of its voices died there, from Pinochet's bullets and from a world's silence. Yet still we hear Victor Jara, audible through the noise of the crowd, "walking, walking. I am the song remains unfinished..."
It was the autumn of 1969. Thousands of American Indians occupied the abandoned remains of Alcatraz, the federal penitentiary that housed America's most notorious criminals until closing in 1963.
Much of the graffiti from 30 years ago remains throughout the island today. The occupiers held the island for nearly eighteen months, from Nov. 20, 1969, until June 11, 1971, reclaiming it as Indian land and demanding fairness and respect for Indian peoples. They were an unlikely mix of Indian college activists, families with children fresh off reservations and urban dwellers disenchanted with what they called the U.S. government's economic, social and political neglect. Since well before Modoc and Hopi leaders were held at Alcatraz in the late 1800s, U.S. policy toward Indians had worsened, despite repeated pleas from American Indian leaders to honor treaties and tribal sovereignty. The occupation of Alcatraz was about human rights, the occupiers said. It was an effort to restore the dignity of the more than 554 American Indian nations in the United States. Historians and other experts say the occupation-though chaotic and laced with tragedy-improved conditions for the 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives alive today.
"Alcatraz was a big enough symbol that for the first time this century Indians were taken seriously," says Vine Deloria Jr., a University of Colorado-Boulder law professor, philosopher, author and historian. Alcatraz changed everything.
In the wake of the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, a student group called the Afro-American Organization at Brandeis University decided they were sick of getting treated like second class citizens at their own college. At 2:08 PM on January 8, 1969, 65 African-American students armed themselves and occupied Ford Hall, officially inaugurating it Malcom X University. Over 150 black students from other colleges came to Ford Hall to demonstrate solidarity. White Brandeis students held sit-ins, demonstrations, hunger strikes, and printed newspapers in support of the occupation. After 11 days the occupation ended, and the students were granted full amnesty. Their actions resulted in one of the first academic departments of African and African-American Studies in the nation. The students' other demands were soon realized as well, including increased recruitment of black students, Martin Luther King Jr Scholarships, and black student control of the hiring of certain administrators. The Ford Hall takeover coincided with simultaneous occupations at universities around the country, including the University of California, Columbia, Cornell, San Francisco State, and Swarthmore. Even though Ford Hall will be demolished in 2007, it's memory inspires students to this day.
Phoolan Devi: "What others called a crime, I called justice." February 1981: A 24 year old village woman, born into poverty in India, is labeled 'The Bandit Queen'. She is charged with a number of major offenses including murder, kidnap for ransom and looting villages. Most importantly, she is accused of killing 22 high-caste men in the village of Behmai, a massacre undertaken as revenge for the death of her lover and repeated gang rape against herself. The question was often asked how a poor, uneducated and illiterate woman became a bandit. But Phoolan Devi's life, and the injustice she suffered because of her gender and her class, only make us wonder why other low-caste women (for Phoolan's experiences were not in any way unique) did not also become bandits.
We learn about the imperialist history of the US' designs on Colombia via this beautiful and gigantic poster depicting ants! Comes with extensive, explanatory brochure!
*This poster automatically shipped in a giant tube due to its size and thickness. *
Combat the dragons in your head that are making you crazy with this splendid new poster from Cristy Road! (This one might give away the fact that we are big nerdz...)
An important cross roads that we come to in our activism is how to carry out things that we feel strongly about - and one of the first steps is the pen vs. the molotov. Now you decide - but think about it first.
Having returned home in 494 BC after fighting to defend their country, the Plebians of Rome found the Aristocracy had taken their land and sold many of them into debt slavery. They deserted the city and marched to a sacred hill outside of Rome, where they setup a people's council and elected tribunes to represent them. These actions curbed the arbitrary power of the Aristocracy and began the long struggle for equality in Rome.
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