From the fight against the AIDS crisis to the struggle for Black liberation and international solidarity, Graphic Liberation! digs deep into the history, present, and future of revolutionary political image making.
What is the role of image and aesthetics in radical change? In his most recent book, Josh MacPhee interviews some of the most accomplished international political graphics producers, and through these conversations charts the importance of revolutionary aesthetics as a through line connecting the Black Panthers to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to the AIDS organizing of ACT-UP to the Palestinian struggle to organizing against nuclear power and militarism. MacPhee argues that the culture produced by and within social movements is both central to their organizing strategies but also their sense of community and social identity.
Josh MacPhee has created a composite work life that merges elements of designer, artist, author, historian, and archivist. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (Justseeds.org), the author of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, and coeditor of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He cofounded and helps run Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements (InterferenceArchive.org). He regularly works with community and social justice organizations building agit-prop and consulting on cultural strategy. work. In addition, MacPhee co-edits the publication Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture, and this event will also be the release party of the newly published Signal:09.
[Philly Anti-Capitalist note: We have been informed that Sprout Distro is back online.]
As some people have noticed Sprout Distros website appears to be down. An archive of the catalog page from February is available here but if you’re good searching the Internet Archive manually or know exactly what you’re looking for you can look through all their upload categories here.
What id really like to take this chance to do though is to encourage people and groups to create their own public digital zine archives so that theres less reliance on one Big Zine Site that can disappear or be taken down relatively easily. You can use a noblogs or blackblogs page to not just host the pdfs but also set up links and announce new things like Haters Cafe1312 Press, Ungrateful Hyenas. Or skip the webpage part and just upload to Internet Archive either anonymously (make a throwaway account then delete it) or regularly like Perfect Disorder Press and Fugitive Distribution but just be aware the Archive people don’t claim to be radical aligned and can do shit like put pro Palestinian stuff in the “fringe” section. True Leap Press makes posts featuring specific zines or larger collections, this is another model to consider. Sites dedicated to other things also have zine pages/sidebars like the ones on Scenes or Puget Sounds Anarchists. There are many options and I really encourage people to explore them soon on their own time rather than only after something bad happens and you’re scrambling for alternatives.
We hung up banners over the Schuylkill Expressway condemning BlackRock for their investment in both the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Elbit Systems.
O.R.C.A is a new nautical-themed social space in Philadelphia for anarchists and our radical friends. Organizing a reading group? looking for a space for an anarchist meeting? Screening a film or hosting a discussion/workshop? Hit us up if you want to do it at O.R.C.A! Expect open hours soon. We’ll be having our grand opening Sunday, February 11th! Come grab a zine, catch a film, and warm the space. Bring zines and posters to populate the space if you feel so moved.
We expect attendees to wear masks at this event, and will have masks available should you forget your own. We’ll have some seltzer and snacks, but always welcome more.
Access Info:
Unfortunately, O.R.C.A is not a very physically accessible space. Located in Southwest Philly off a trolley line, the space is up two flights of stairs in a building without an elevator. There are two gender-neutral bathrooms on the same floor as O.R.C.A.. The space is cold in the winter and warm in the summer. O.R.C.A has masks and covid tests available for free, always. Expect couches, chairs, benches, and soft surfaces in the space. If you have any access questions please feel fee to reach out.
Philadelphia, PA — On November 23, around 11 a.m., Black and Indigenous and anti-Zionist Jewish activists hung banners along Interstate 676, just blocks away from the Thanksgiving Day Parade on occupied Lenapehoking land, otherwise known as Philadelphia. They collaborated to highlight the ongoing injustice and struggles of Indigenous people in the U.S. while also displaying solidarity with those against occupation in Palestine.
Parade floats accompanied by police escorts on all sides sped below the 10th Street overpass just moments before the first banner was hung. It served as a timely punctuation as east bound traffic watched the banner unfurl to read, “The Pequot Remember the Massacre.”
The Pequot Massacre occurred on May 26, 1637. Settler-colonial Puritan soldiers, organized as the Massachusetts Bay Colony Militia, aimed to steal the tribe’s traditional land in a surprise ambush that murdered 700 Pequot adults and children. During the massacre, settlers set fire to the village burning any remaining people alive. Governor John Winthrop declared a celebration of this massacre later that year that some consider to be the first Thanksgiving. The following year, white settlers outlawed the Pequot language and name, seized tribal lands, and forced some surviving Pequot people into slavery. This further galvanized the massacre into a genocide.
The second banner to be dropped from the overpass faced west bound traffic and revealed the words “End Genocide from Turtle Island to Palestine.”
The following day, Black Friday, other autonomous groups got to work hanging banners along this same interstate which runs like a river through the city center. However, on that morning, similar anti-colonial and anti-Zionist messages could now be read throughout this corridor of the city in defiance of erasure.
These banner drops follow acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, direct actions, and marches that have been happening all over Philadelphia on a near-daily basis since Israel began bombing Gaza after October 7.
They also occur within a broader movement framework of autonomous actions across the country that commemorated November 23 as the Indigenous National Day of Mourning — a day that serves to highlight centuries of atrocities committed against Indigenous people and to correct present myths in history texts taught in American schools.
For the last 53 years on the fourth Thursday of November, the Indigenous National Day of Mourning has taken place to“honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.”
Since its first treaty, the U.S. government has continually broken each and every written agreement signed with Indigenous Nations as more white settlers wanted their land. Starting with the Treaty With the Delawares/Treaty of Fort Pitt in 1778 with the Lenni Lenape peoples.
In Pennsylvania in 1782, an American Revolutionary War officer and his militia slaughtered nearly 100 Lenape (mostly women and children) at the village of Gnadenhutten after wrongly believing they were responsible for attacks against white settlers. This led to more settler-colonialists moving onto Lenape territory, before the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795 forced the Lenape and other nearby tribes to surrender most of their lands.
All of this erasure, murder, and forced relocation continued to shrink and control the spaces where Indigenous people could inhabit. Thirty-five years later, in 1830, U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which codified the violent removal of Indigenous people from their ancestral lands en masse, in what’s known as the Trail of Tears. Today, data shows that Indigenous people in the United States have lost nearly 99% of the land they historically occupied.
Unicorn Riot heard about the aspirations of some of those involved in bringing the anti-colonial and anti-Zionist messaging into Philly’s downtown corporate Thanksgiving space.
UR: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Why do you think it’s important for this action to take place on Thanksgiving in the US?
“As an Indigenous activist it’s important to keep reminding people of the brutal history of ongoing displacement and genocide. My heart breaks for people all over the world who are actively displaced for the nation state war machine.
To have traditional food and practices whitewashed and fed back to us as if we should be grateful for the nod to our history while ignoring the part the capitalist U.S. state has played in killing us and our traditional practices is frankly disgusting.”
– K
“Much like we are seeing genocides in Palestine, Congo, Armenia, and Sudan be denied and erased in real time, colonizers have erased the continued and active genocide of Indigenous peoples in the so-called United States. They have taken our feasts and our foods, and have created a celebration from our suffering. They throw parades to commemorate their military victories while our people go hungry on our reservations and in our cities, homeless and in need in our own homelands. But we are here to remind them that we have not forgotten and we will not be silently erased.“
– F
UR: How did you bridge the gap between occupation in the U.S. and occupation in Palestine? What about the Pequot massacre did you want to invoke in this moment?
“To see the defense of Palestine is beautiful, but to condemn one genocide while celebrating another is not justice. Over 700 Pequot women, children, and elders were murdered in a surprise raid while many of their warriors were away. That is the true history of Thanksgiving. That is what is being celebrated today. Regardless of whether you can call it Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, or your fall feast, if you are not telling the true history & feeling it’s full weight then you are commemorating our genocide. “
– F
UR: What did you want people to take away most from this action?
“I hope that the banners incite conversations that question colonialism here and in Israel. For non-Native people like myself who are gathering with family or friends today, I hope they talk about how to be part of initiating repair and reparations for Indigenous people in the US. Similarly, as an anti-Zionist Jewish person, I hope Jewish families talk about the way our identities and trauma are being manipulated for colonial purposes, and how we can resist that to stand with Palestinians.”
– R
“We should stand against occupation and genocide around the globe, and that begins with the land beneath our feet. We must examine our own role in continued genocide and settler colonialism, and we must take responsibility for ending all States at war with the People, including our own. We are not free until we are all free, and we are not all free until every oppressive force has fallen to the ground. Start where you are, start today, and don’t stop til we free them all.”
[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
subMedia presents:
The Two Decades of subVersion Riot Porn Jamboree
Join the subMedia crew this December as we celebrate two decades cranking out anarchist propaganda. That’s right, subMedia has finally made it through its angsty teenager years. Before you know it, we’ll be setting riot porn to soft jazz! So before that happens and to mark this auspicious milestone, we’re throwing a series of screening events in select cities. A riot porn jamboree, if you will – culminating in a livestream screening party, where current and former crew members will be on hand to introduce some of our favourite videos, shoot the shit, and answer all your most burning questions.
So grab some popcorn, a crowbar and a gasmask to celebrate the way only subMedia can… with a two hour cavalcade of riot porn, direct from our projector to your eyeballs.
::TOUR DATES::
Dec 15 – Philly
Dec 21 – Online Livestream
Check our social media, or reach out for more details about local events.
This is a compilation of articles and other writings that I put together very quickly, because I needed a zine that explained pinkwashing and pushed back against the narrative that queer and trans people are invisible or nonexistent in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Thank you again to those who suggested the articles, poetry, and resources.
Across the so-called United States there has been a highly organized campaign pushing pro Israel propaganda in order to manipulate the public into supporting the ongoing genocide in Palestine. One of the main ways this has been has been happening is through the heavy dissemination of “kidnapped” fliers of Israeli colonizers. These fliers have been spotted taped up in public spaces and even broadcasted on digital billboards above highways. No matter what medium they appear in the intent behind them is clear: to manipulate people’s emotions into supporting Israel and to draw attention away from the genocide that is currently underway against Palestinians.
We cannot continue to allow this propaganda campaign to continue and propel the genocide against Palestinians further. We must highlight the actual victims, uplift their stories, and challenge false narratives.
The following fliers listed below are available for printing, online dissemination, and sharing across and all platforms. Please print, post, and share en masse. So far collections of these fliers have been spotted in NJ and the larger Philadelphia and NYC area.
The Office of Scholarly Communications at the Berkman School of Anarchy is pleased to announce the launch of our new counter-info project! We will be accepting all Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh specific submissions that are hostile to authority. Analyses, reportbacks, communiques, public flyers, and other relevant anti-authoritarian stuff are welcome. Submissions will be published right here, on this site, so check back often! Instructions for submission can be found on the Contact & Submissions page. We are excited to see what you have to send us 😉
Regional antifascists have been exposing the identities of local neo-nazi crew S14, for the last several months. So far five of their members have been unmasked and there has been an on the ground push to confront S14. Specifically antifascists have targeted leaders Kauffman and Sheaffer’s in North Philly, where they live. This left Kauffman visibly shaken and resigned to bitching in the S14 public telegram account, in the days after it was reported to Jersey Counter-Info.
The English language version of the “Community Alert” flier that has been distributed across Kauffman and Sheaffer’s North Philadelphia community.
Kauffman’s frustration and fear however are only getting worse, as antifascists have started an indefinite ongoing campaign against he and Sheaffer in North Philly. As of mid September, antifascists have hit Kauffman and Sheaffer’s neighborhood at least three separate times talking to community residents, business owners, neighbors, and distributing community alert fliers.
A group of North Philadelphia community members looking at and discussing the Kauffman and Sheaffer flier.
As time passes, more and more residents are becoming aware of Kauffman and Sheaffer’s presence in the neighborhood and their status as neo-nazis.
Community members have also been given extra fliers on several occasions to distribute and post up on their own.
Fliers have been strategically placed near high traffic areas like bus stops and cross walks to maximize reach and visibility.
Antifascists have also been heavily focusing on the block of E Wishart that Kauffman and Sheaffer live on, connecting in person with their neighbors.
A post in front of Kauffman and Sheaffer’s house with a Spanish and English language community alter flier on it.
A car in front of Kauffman and Sheaffer’s house with a community alert flier on the windshield.
The end of E Wishart Street where Kauffman and Sheaffer live.
At this point Kauffman and Sheaffer may still believe that if they do damage control and keep to themselves they can quietly live their lives. The reality of situation couldn’t be further from this. With each passing day more and more community members are becoming aware that neo-nazis are living among them and the targets on Kauffman and Sheaffer’s backs are only getting bigger.
