Poster of the Week

Amerika Is Devouring Its Children

Jay Belloli

Silkscreen, 1970

Berkeley, CA

18120

CSPG’s Poster of the Week commemorates the tragic death of Aaron Swartz.  It epitomizes the complicity of the state in destroying one of the most creative and productive of our youth.  Aaron’s commitment to democracy and open access to information was threatening to an increasingly authoritarian state. On January 11, 2013, 26 year old Aaron committed suicide, unable to face the prison sentence he was threatened with by overzealous prosecutors.  Aaron was being charged with allegedly illegally hacking into a network at MIT to download scholarly articles only accessible through an expensive subscription service. He had previously said the knowledge belonged to the world.

Although Congressional criticism is mounting against the Federal prosecutors, and both Democrats and Republicans are questioning whether he had been inappropriately targeted, it’s too late for Aaron. 

The title, Amerika is Devouring Its Children, speaks directly to the U.S. Justice Department treating the best of its youth as enemies to be destroyed.

Aaron Swartz

PRESENTE!           

Background to Poster:
In April 1970, when the U.S. invaded Cambodia, a neutral country during the Viet Nam War, college campuses throughout the US erupted in protest, and one-third of them shut down.  At Kent State University in Ohio, four students were killed by national guardsmen deployed to repress the protests. Two days later, two students were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

Outraged by the escalating violence abroad and at home, students at the University of California, Berkeley walked out of their classes.  They silkscreened over 100 designs such as this onto reams of used computer paper, transforming the Goya into an anti-Viet Nam War statement.

Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2013/1/14/freedom_to_connect_aaron_swartz_1986

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-swartz-congressional-scrutiny-20130118,0,640020.story

Poster of the Week

Justice for Oscar Grant

Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2010

Los Angeles, California

Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old black man, was shot and killed by Johannes Mehserle, a white BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer, at a station platform in Oakland on New Year's Day in 2009. Mehserle fired a single round as he stood over Grant, who was lying face-down on the subway platform. Grant was struck in the back and died hours later. The shooting was captured on cell phone cameras by several passengers on the crowded train. Some of the footage was broadcast on television and the Internet, stirring public outrage, including riots on the streets of Oakland on Jan. 7, 2009. The video of Mehserle shooting Grant can be seen on YouTube or linked through the Huffington Post.

Mehserle, 28 years old, had been on the force for less than two years, and resigned from the department days after the shooting. His trial began in Los Angeles this week. The trial was moved from the Bay Area, where the shooting occurred, to Los Angeles, due to the extensive media coverage in the Bay Area. More cynical interpretations see this as a scheme to bury the case under the outpouring of celebrity news endemic to Los Angeles. Murder charges are rarely filed against police officers in connection with an on-duty shooting, and legal experts say convictions of officers are difficult. The L.A. Times reported that the jury, which includes no blacks, is expected to hear testimony for two to four weeks.

The racially tinged case has evoked parallels with the 1992 trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King. All four were acquitted, sparking riots in Los Angeles.

This poster is simultaneously publicizing the case and promoting action by calling for people to monitor the trial.

Poster of the Week

Las Drogas Causen la Juventud Perdida
by Malaquías Montoya

My other “voice” is the poster/mural. It is with this voice that I attempt to communicate, reach out and touch others, especially to that silent and often ignored populace of Chicano, Mexican and Central American working class, along with other disenfranchised people of the world. What better function for art at this time? A voice for the voiceless. My personal views on art and society were formed by my birth into that silent and voiceless humanity. Realizing later that it was not by choice that we remained mute but by a conscious effort on the part of those in power, I knew that my art could only be that of protest – a protest against what I felt to be a death sentence. We must not fall into the age-old cliché that the artist is always ahead of his/her time. No, it is most urgent that we be on time.

Artwork © 2008 Malaquías Montoya
www.malaquiasmontoya.com