Prison Nation:
Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex

Prison Nation: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex epitomizes the Center for the Study of Political Graphic’s (CSPG) mission to link art and social action. Powerful posters from artists, designers, activists, and organizations around the country and the world, cry out against the devastating nature of the rapidly growing prison system. These graphics reinforce CSPG’s claim that there has never been a viable movement for social change without the arts as pivotal to conveying the ideas and passions of that movement. Grassroots efforts are more effective when strong graphics project their messages.

Prison Nation was produced from vintage posters in CSPG’s archive and posters collected from throughout the US and internationally. The oldest posters date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and include posters from the Viet Nam War and Attica prison uprising. CSPG is continually updating its exhibitions so the most recent posters were produced in 2008. Graphic design classes from three universities—Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and Frostburg State University, Maryland—focused on Prison Nation and ten student posters are included. CSPG also linked several artists with grassroots groups working on prison issues. The powerful posters that resulted from these collaborations will continue to be important organizing tools.

While funding for education, public transportation and the arts plummets, funding for new prisons is skyrocketing. The United States has the largest prison population in the world—over 2.3 million inmates. In California alone, 32 prisons house over 180,000 men and women at an annual cost of $10 billion. Despite the current economic crisis California moves forward with plans to build 53,000 new prison and jail beds costing taxpayers $15 billion dollars. Since the 1970s, the rate of most serious crimes has dropped or remained stagnant, yet prisons have been filled at double capacity. People of color, the poor, the illiterate, the mentally ill, youth, and women are the primary occupants. 

The Washington, DC based Sentencing Project concluded that one in three black men and one in ten Latino men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine will spend time in prison or jail. The same study showed that the population of black women in prison increased seventy-eight percent in five years.

Between 1980 and 2005, the total number of women in prison increased from 13,400 to over 140,000. Valley State Prison for Women, in Chowchilla, California, holds over 3,500 women-twice its capacity—and is the largest women’s prison in the world. The next largest, and directly across the road, is the Central California Women’s Facility. Tens of thousands of women, many without prior offenses are serving 24 years to life on non-violent drug crimes and/or conspiracy convictions. As one poster asks, “Have Women Become That More Dangerous?”

The majority of those entering prison for the first time are convicted on non-violent drug charges. Under the California Three-Strikes laws, many prisoners are serving life sentences for petty theft convictions. In California, 80% of incoming prisoners are returning on parole violations. Resources necessary to successfully re-enter the community are scarce.

This phenomenal growth is due to harsh mandatory drug laws, conspiracy provisions, a dysfunctional parole system, inadequate legal representation, and huge profits made by the multinational corporations servicing the prisons.

This unique exhibition is relevant both to the community most effected by growing incarceration and to artists, activists, students, teachers, social service agencies, and community leaders. The posters in Prison Nation cover many of the critical issues surrounding the system of mass incarceration including:  the death penalty, the Three Strikes law, racism, women’s right to self defense, access to education and health care, the growing rate of incarceration, slave labor, divestment, privatization, torture, and re-entry into the community.  They show the power of art to educate and inspire.

PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (PIC)

The Prison Industrial Complex is a complicated system situated at the intersection of governmental and private interests that uses prisons as a solution to social, political, and economic problems. The lure of big money has corrupted the nation's criminal-justice system, replacing notions of safety and public service with a drive for higher profits. The Prison Industrial Complex refers to interest groups that represent organizations that do business in correctional facilities, like prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors, who become more concerned with making money than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates. Additionally, some prisons provide free or low-cost labor for state or municipal governments as well as jobs for prison guard union members, which can be seen as another motivation for building and maintaining a large prison system. The prison construction boom can also be linked to the huge increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms with the onset of the war on drugs, the repression of radical movements by people of color for self-determination, and the anti-imperialist struggles of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The War on Drugs and the national and local efforts to destroy radical political movements led to increasing police presence in communities of color and poor communities, higher arrest rates, and longer prison sentences.

This boom is also fueled by dramatic and racist reporting about “crime,” “delinquency,” and “rebellion,” creating a culture of fear in which it continues to be acceptable and desirable to many to lock people (primarily people of color, youth, and the poor) in cages for longer periods of time in the interest of “public safety.” The way the many parts of the PIC interact is exactly what makes it so powerful and destructive.

—Sources:  criticalresistance.org and wikipedia.org

I. BARS & STRIPES

1.  America

Cedomir Kostovic

Digital Print, 2004

Springfield, Missouri

24430

2. Attica

Ernest Pignon Ernest

Offset, 1974

United States

00880

Attica

On September 9, 1971, inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, rioted.  The underlying causes were overcrowding, poor food, inadequate medical care, rigid censorship and meager visiting rights. Four days after inmates seized control of an exercise yard and took guards as hostages, New York’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller ordered state troopers to attack.  43 people died at Attica.  Nearly all were killed—inmates and hostages alike—when state troopers stormed the prison and fired indiscriminately through a thick haze of tear gas. The assault took six-minutes.  Subsequently the troopers and Attica guards lied about what had happened, and resorted to brutal reprisals, beating and torturing inmates.  In January 2000, a federal judge in Rochester awarded $8 million to inmates who were beaten and tortured, as well as $4 million for lawyers’ fees.

3. 1976-What are We Celebrating?

Amherst Cultural Workers Collective

Offset, 1976

Amherst, Massachusetts

3803

4. USA

Amnesty International

Offset, circa 1998

Germany

22044

5.  Prison Nation...Highest Rate of Return

Doug Baker

Ultrachrome, 2006

Liberty, Missouri

24841

6.  Incarceration is not an Equal Opportunity Punishment

Sonia and Gabriel Freeman

www.prisonsucks.com

Offset, circa 2005

Madrid, Spain

24867

7.  Made by Prisoners

Sheila Pinkel

Digital Print, 2000

Los Angeles, California

16232

8. Prison Industrial Complex

Karen Fiorito

Silkscreen, 2006

Los Angeles, California

24889

9. Jail is Just a Kind of Warehouse for Poor People

Peg Averill

Offset, mid 1970s

New York, New York

10606

II. LEGALIZED SLAVERY

Incarceration as Legalized Slavery

It’s no coincidence that the first significant expansion to the U.S. prison system and the hiring out of prison labor to private business happened after the abolition of slavery in order to re-enslave thousands of African Americans. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”  Today, prisoners are regularly paid as little as 30 cents an hour, and work for hundreds of U.S. corporations including interests as diverse as telephone companies, airlines and clothing manufacturers.

10.  XIIIth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

Rodolfo "Rudy" Cuellar

Louie "the Foot" Gonzalez

Royal Chicano Air Force

Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery

Silkscreen, 1977

Sacramento, California

5372

11.  No More Cotton-Pickin Prisons

Danny Lyon, photographer

Offset, circa 1971

Austin, Texas
10900

One of the most prominent and influential photojournalists of the late twentieth century, Danny Lyon began documenting the civil rights movement in 1964 as a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). At a time when photographers were rarely allowed in prisons, Lyon photographed seven prisons in the Texas prison system in 1967-68, and published them in "Conversations With the Dead" (1971), including the photograph used here. Six years after "Conversations with the Dead" was published, it was used by the U.S. Justice Department in a massive lawsuit against the Texas prison system. Lyon testified and the pictures were introduced as evidence. The prisoners won the suit, and the prison system was temporarily improved. Thirty years later, in a 1995 interview by Nan Goldin, (Artforum, 9/95), Lyon said, "Actually it's supposed to be worse now. Since then the demographics of prisons have just gone the other way; the prison population has quadrupled since I photographed in Texas a generation ago. Still, my photographs were used by people who meant well to try to change prison conditions, and for a while prison conditions were forced to change.”

12.  Stop Prison Slave Labor!

Fireworks Grafix

Dorothea Lange photograph

Offset, mid 1990s

Northern California

21045

13.  Prison Amerikka's New Plantations

Michael Zinzun

Offset, 1998

Pasadena, California

24513

14.  Prisons: Slave Ships On Dry Land

Andalusia Knoll

Silkscreen, 2004

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

23082

15.  We Don't Lynch Them Anymore

Scott Boylston

Digital Print, 2006

Savannah, Georgia

24886

16.  Sam & Alec I

Real Cost of Prisons Project

Offset, 2005

Los Angeles, CA

25711

17.  Sam & Alec II

Real Cost of Prisons Project

Offset, 2005

Los Angeles, CA

25713

18.  Liberté et égalité?

Amnesty International

Offset, n.d

Lausanne, Switzerland

22499

Translation: United States: The Same Rights For All.  Liberties and equality?  That depends for whom. The black American way of life:  In the United States, the racial and ethnic minorities are the premiere victims of repression and of police brutalities.  About a third of young African-Americans are in detention or in police custody.

III. PRISON BOOM

19.  Meet the Builders of the Drug Prison Boom

Sabrina Jones

From comic book: Prisoners of the War on Drugs

Real Cost of Prisons Project

Photocopy enlargement, 2005

Northampton, Massachusetts

25021

The War on Drugs was one of the earliest tools used to fuel the rapid expansion of the police and prison state. By exaggerating the threat of illicit drugs and exploiting the public’s fear of drug-addicted youth, increasingly harsh sentencing laws for drug users and dealers were passed. The war’s earliest champions were Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York whose drug laws were the inspiration for the extreme mandatory minimums now in use throughout the U.S. and Ronald and Nancy Reagan who pushed kids to “Just Say NO.”

20.  TOOL

Roy San Filippo

Digital Print

Los Angeles, California

26403

21.  Steal The Poor

Josh MacPhee

Stencil, 1999

Chicago, Illinois

23269
 

Wackenhut Corrections Corp and Corrections Corp of America are international firms that operate private prisons in Australia, Britain and the US. Corrections Corp of America run 82 prisons worldwide with a total of 72,000 prisoners.  Wackenhut designs, constructs and manages prisons.  At year-end 2002, they managed 42,000 offender beds in North America, Australia, The United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa.

22.  Prison Machine

Justin Martinez

Ben Pagel

Silkscreen, 2004

Minneapolis, Minnesota

23649

23.  Privatized Prisons Suck

John Jennings

Digital Print, 2006

Champaign, Illinois

24846

24. Packing a Golf Ball

Dale Wittig; Resistant Strains

Offset, 1998

Vermont

10609

25.  I Wear a Suit to Work Every Day

Shane Patton

Digital Print, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

25016

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation, under Chaz Maviyane-Davies, Massachusetts College of Art, 2006

26.  If We Build It, They Will Come

Allison Coley

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility

Digital Print, 2004

Palmdale, California

25019

If We Build It, They Will Come was designed for the Prison Design Boycott, a national initiative of the Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR). Launched in 2004, the Prison Design Boycott calls on architects and design professionals to not participate in the design, construction, or renovation of prisons. 

The pledge for this initiative is: I believe that too many people are being incarcerated and that our society must immediately develop and implement alternatives to incarceration. I believe in creating design for a society with real security and social justice for all, and I will not contribute my design to the perpetuation of wrongful institutions that abuse others. In recognition of the deep injustice of the present prison system, I pledge not to do any work that furthers the construction of prisons or jails.

27.  The Cornucopia Of The World

Original art: Randy McNally, 1892

Prison Moratorium Project

Offset, n.d.

Berkeley, California

22501

The original 1892 poster was designed to attract immigrant labor to California.

IV. EDUCATION NOT INCARCERATION

28  California Republic

Kim McGill, Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2007

Los Angeles, California

27778

29.  It's the Prisons

Critical Resistance

Freedom Winter

Offset, 2000

Berkeley, California

11473

Poster design based on the popular orange-and-black It’s the Cheese advertisements promoting California cheeses.

30.  Save Our Children

Artist Unknown

Offset, 2000

California

11440

31.  California: #1 In Prison Spending

Inkworks

Critical Resistance

Design Action

Freedom Winter Coalition

Offset, 2001

Oakland, California

24898

California’s Proposition 21 was a voter-approved ballot initiative that passed in March 2000. The measure calls for prosecutors, rather than juvenile court judges, to decide whether youth aged 14 to 17 are tried as adults for serious crimes.

Juveniles tried in adult court face adult sentences of up to life in prison. Sentences in juvenile court last only until age 25.

Proposition 21 also limits judges’ authority to refer youths to treatment or probation rather than locked facilities after convictions. The measure requires adult prison sentences, in most cases, for 16-year-olds convicted of felonies in adult court. Under Prop 21, thousands of youth have been transferred into adult court regardless of the circumstances of their cases. It also expanded the number of crimes designated as violent and serious felonies, subjecting youth to longer sentences, often life sentences. Proposition 21 is not limited to violent crime. It turns low-level vandalism into a felony. It requires alleged gang offenders, with misdemeanors like stealing candy, to serve six month in jail.

32.  Investing in Our Future

Amy Files

Digital Print, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

24997

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Chaz Maviyane-Davies, Massachusetts College of Art, 2006

33. Prisons Are Sucking The Life Out Of Education

Lisa Roth

Offset, 2009

Bay Area, California

29330

V. YOUTH AND INCARCERATION

34.  Youth of California

Johanna Poethig, Ryan Sloan, Jill Thomas

Arts in Corrections, Inmates at Salinas Valley State Prison

Institute for Visual and Public Art

California State University, Monterey Bay

Digital Print, 1999

Monterey Bay, California

19316

35.  Shut Down CYA

Oscar Rodriguez

Kim McGill

Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2006

Los Angeles, California

24965

The California Youth Authority (CYA) is the world’s largest and most notorious youth prison system.  Public hearings, demonstrations throughout the state, research studies and several law suits have all exposed widespread abuse of youth by guards, including violence, mis-education, mis-use and over-use of medication, use of solitary confinement, under-feeding and systematic neglect of youth within the CYA.  Families frequently have a twelve hour round-trip from the facility where their child is incarcerated, so visits are often few and far between. In the past two years, five youth have died in the CYA: Roberto Lombana, 18; Durrell Feaster, 18; Deon Whitfield, 17; Dyron Brewer, 24; and Joseph Daniel Maldonado, 18.

36.  4.8.07 Action Update

We Are Not Illegal!

Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2007/2008

Los Angeles California

28016

37.  10.14.07 Action Update

Act Today to Impact Federal Gang Bill!

Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2007

Los Angeles, California

28018

The Youth Justice Coalition is working to build a youth-led movement to challenge the mass criminalization of young people in Los Angeles and California. LA County leads the nation and the world in the incarceration of men, women and children. The YJC's goals are to expose gender, race and class inequality in the juvenile and criminal in-justice systems and to mobilize youth, families and their allies to define and build justice and peace for our communities. The organization uses direct action organizing, advocacy, activist arts and political education to upset power and bring about change. YJC Action Updates are sent as emails to connect nearly 4,000 YJC members and allies to organizing, legal education, court support, resources and information on our issues.

38.  2,225 U.S. Prisoners

Brendan Campbell

Youth Justice Coalition

Digital Print, 2006/2008

Boston, Massachusetts

25000

In the United States at least 2,380 people are serving life without parole for crimes they committed when they were under the age of 18. Currently, in the rest of the world, there are no known cases of youth serving life for crimes committed when they were juveniles. (Since this poster was designed by Brendan Campbell in 2006, the number of youth committed to life as children in the rest of the world has gone from 7 to 0.) Although ten other countries have laws permitting life without parole, in practice most do not use the sentence for those under age 18. International law prohibits the use of life without parole for those who are not yet 18 years old. The United States is in violation of those laws and out of step with the rest of the world.

In 2005 the death penalty was found unconstitutional for juveniles by the United States Supreme Court. So instead, 227 young people in California have been sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives, with no opportunity for parole and no chance for release. Their crimes were committed as teenagers and they will die in prison. At the same time many of the adults who were codefendants in their crimes received lower sentences and will one day be released from prison.

—Source:  April 2008, Human Rights Watch - www.hrw.org

Amnesty International USA; IMA U.S.A., Inc.; nonstøck, Inc./David Mayenfisch

Offset

North America

24439

VI. WOMEN AND MOTHERS BEHIND BARS

39. 1 Out of Every 109 Women in America

Susan Willmarth

From comic book: Prisoners of a Hard Life

Real Cost of Prisons Project

Photocopy enlargement, 2005

Northampton, Massachusetts

25020

41. Have Women Become That Much More Dangerous?

Scott Boylston

Silkscreen, 2006

Designed: Savannah, Georgia

Printed: Los Angeles by Bony Toruño

Two Brothers Custom Silkscreen

25024

Scott Boylston originally made this poster in 2003, but was asked to update it for the Action Committee for Women in Prison. In 2003 there were 100,000 women in prison. Two years later there were 140,000. Here is his response to the new information he found:

".... My job of updating the information graphics of the poster was sobering, and it goes right to the heart of why graphics can be so compelling... Just redesigning it made the increase in female inmates from 2003 to 2005 disturbingly concrete. I hate to think what a poster like this will look like in five years..."

--Scott Boylston, Savannah, Georgia, 2006

41. Life Without Mommy

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Digital Print of 2005 photocopy

Pound, Virginia

28013

Kevin (Rashid) Johnson #185492

South Chicago ABC Zine Distro

Red Onion State Prison

P.O. Box 721

Pound, Virginia 24279

Homewood, Illinois 60430

Kevin (Rashid) Johnson perhaps most embodies the spirit and thirst for revolt

this vast, evil gulag system screams for. He is an incredibly talented artist,

but also a keenly aware political analyst and strategist.

Many of his drawings are collages, sort of many drawings in one, which

compound the effect he is succeeding in presenting. He has indeed, taken the

teachings of George Jackson to another, artistic level and given it a present

day urgency.

—Source: Anthony Rayson, Clamor communique #37 http://clamormagazine.org/communique/communique37.pdf

42. Health Care Not Death Care

ACT UP/LA

Critical Mass

Silkscreen, 1990

Los Angeles, California

5293

43. Rape Wasn't Part of Her Sentence

Amnesty International USA; IMA U.S.A., Inc.; nonstøck, Inc./David Mayenfisch

Offset

North America

24439

44.  Sexual Extortion is a Crime Not a Sentence

Mary McGahren

Digital Print, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

25014

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Chaz Maviyane-Davies, Massachusetts College of Art, 2006

VII. CRUEL & UNUSUAL

45.  Would You Joke Around About This Man Being Raped?

Stop Prisoner Rape

Offset, circa 2005

United States

24942

46.  If You Could Help Stop This Man From Getting Aids

Stop Prisoner Rape

Offset, circa 2005

United States

24952

47. Three Strikes You're in! For Life

John Jennings

Digital Print, 2006

Champaign, IL

24849

The media, prison guard unions, law enforcement officials, and politicians looking to get elected by looking “tough on crime” have instilled fear and outrage in the public over violent crimes, despite the fact that crime has been declining since the 1970s. This political climate of fear has led to laws requiring mandatory sentencing. As part of this trend, California voters passed Proposition 184 in 1994, one of the strictest criminal punishments in U.S. history. Sold to the voters with the slogan “three strikes and you’re out,” Proposition 184 prescribed that people with two violent felonies would get life sentences for any third felony conviction—even in cases where the third conviction is as minor as stealing a t-shirt, writing a bad check or small possession of drugs. Since 1996 Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes has built a state wide movement of strikers, families and their allies to challenge the law and bring thousands of people home who are serving life sentences for nonviolent third strikes.

—Source:  www.facts1.com

48.  3 Strikes You're Out 1994 Slavery Act

Mark Vallen

Shock Battalion

Offset, 1995

Los Angeles, California

4583

49. Vote Yes on 66

End Three Strikes For Nonviolent Offenders

Doug Minkler

Offset, 2004

24539

Originally produced in 1999 as a silkscreen opposing the 3 Strikes law.  The poster was updated in 2004 to support Proposition 66 which would have amended the 3 Strikes law to require increased sentences only when current conviction is for specified violent and/or serious felony. Proposition 66 did not pass.

50.  Inmates Have the Right to Maintain Personal Hygiene

Kaiti Robinson

Digital Print, 2005/2006

Frostburg, Maryland

24918

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Fereshteh Toosi, Frostburg State University, Maryland, 2005/2006

51.  Left to Die

Kelly Hickman

Digital Print, 2005/2006

Frostburg, Maryland

      24912

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Fereshteh Toosi, at Frostburg State University, Maryland, 2005/2006

During Hurricane Katrina, the sheriff’s department deserted a New Orleans jail, leaving more than 600 inmates locked in their cells. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1st, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.  Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they had no food or water from their last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench. 

"They left us to die there," Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation. 

Some inmates said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells. Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been evacuated during floods in the 1990s. 

Many of the men held at jail had been arrested for offenses like criminal trespass, public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Many had not even been brought before a judge and charged, much less been convicted.

52.  In America

Derek Luciani

Digital Print, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

24999

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Chaz Maviyane-Davies, Massachusetts College of Art, 2006

53. Stop Repression at San Quentin

Fireworks Graphics

Silkscreen, circa 1984

San Francisco, California

10942

54.  Inmates

Red Pepper Posters

Offset, 1980

San Francisco, California

12352

55. To Hell With Their Profits

San Francisco Poster Brigade

Offset, 1975-1981

San Francisco, California

21064

56.  Atmos-Fear

Doug Minkler

Berkeley, California

Silkscreen, 1987

3713

57.  25 Times in his Career, Muhammad Ali Fought for a Belt

Corbis Photo

Amnesty International USA

Offset, 1998

United States

24436

58.  Guantanamo Bay Luxury Resort

Sixten

Silkscreen, 2003

Sweden

24838

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base at the southeastern end of Cuba, has been used by the United States Navy for more than a century. The United States controls the land on both sides of the southern part of the bay under a lease set up in the wake of the 1898 Spanish-American War. The Cuban government denounces the lease on grounds that article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties voids treaties procured by force or its threatened use.

Since 2001, the naval base contains a controversial detainment camp for militant combatants collected from Afghanistan and later from Iraq.  After stories of torture and abuse were revealed, the US government said that these prisoners are not covered by the Geneva Conventions—which include prohibiting the torture of prisoners of war—because the prison is located outside the U.S. The justification of torture by the Bush administration is under intense criticism both domestically and internationally.  This poster treats the conditions with irony.

59.  iRaq

Forkscrew Graphics

Silkscreen, 2004

Los Angeles, California

22001

iRaq combines the infamous photograph of a prisoner tortured in Abu Ghraib, the U.S. run prison in Iraq, with the graphics of the internationally distributed iPod ad. The poster was produced soon after the photograph was first seen by the U.S. public in 2004. This is one of a series of four posters mimicking the iPod ads. The posters were inserted into rows of real iPod ads, so that the viewer would do a double take when passing by.  An almost identical spoof of the iPod ad was simultaneously produced by New York artist, Copper Greene, who also inserted his posters into the rows of iPod ads in the subways and on the walls of New York.

VIII. DEAD WRONG - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

60.  Capital Punishment

Peg Averill

Offset, 1980s

New York, New York

3462

61.   Racism and the Death Penalty

James Victore

Offset, 1993

New York, New York

9867

62.  Capital Punishment InJustUS

Noah Broder

Digital Print, 2006

Los Angeles, California

24891

14 year old Noah Broder designed this poster immediately after the execution of Stan Tookie Williams, to express his outrage over Governor Schwarzenegger’s refusal to grant clemency.

63. Everything is Bigger in Texas

John Magnifico

Digital Print, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

25015

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Chaz Maviyane-Davies, Massachusetts College of Art, 2006

64.  Playing God Since 1608

Gordon Riker

Silkscreen, 2006

Boston, Massachusetts

24998

65.  How Many Weren’t So Lucky?

Austin Arnold

Digital Print, 2005/2006

Frostburg, Maryland

24995      

From a class project to design posters for Prison Nation under Fereshteh Toosi, Frostburg State University, Maryland, 2005/2006

IX. DEMOCRACY DENIED:

Political Prisoners in the United States

66. Seremos Reivindicados por la Historia

Offset, 1975
Cuba

00127

We will be Vindicated by History

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for conspiracy to transmit classified military information on the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They were never indicted or found guilty of any act of espionage, and no witness testified that they ever passed any classified information to anyone. The case against them was created in an atmosphere of anti-Communism and anti-Semitism. Their accusers included FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Senators Joe McCarthy and Pat McCarran.

International pleas for clemency to President Eisenhower, came from the President of France, Pope Pius XII, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre, Reinhold  Niebuhr, Pablo Picasso, Israel's Chief Rabbis and many others.  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison, June 19, 1953 still asserting their innocence.  They were the only Americans ever executed for espionage by judgment of a civil court. Their execution orphaned their two sons, 6 and 10 years old. The Supreme Court's failure to review "The Case of the Century" was considered by Justice Felix Frankfurter as an "abject surrender to McCarthyism."  Justice Hugo Black protested bitterly and prophetically on the day of the executions, "It is not amiss to point out that this court has never reviewed this record and has never affirmed the fairness of the trial...there will always be doubts."  Indeed, Roy Cohn, assistant prosecutor and key architect of the frame‑up admitted in his 1988 autobiography, that Judge Kaufman had assured him before the trial began that he would sentence Julius to death. 

A year after the executions, General Leslie Groves, Commander of the Atom Bomb Project and Chief Security Officer stated that, "I consider the information passed in the Rosenberg Case of minor value." Because it so thoroughly repudiated the positions of Judge Kaufman and President Eisenhower in supporting the executions, this statement was kept secret for 25 years, until released in 1979 to the Rosenbergs' two sons under their Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

67. Dan Berrigan, Catonsville 9
Bob Fitch
Offset, ca. 1968
Oakland, CA

11196

Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine

Shortly after noon on May 17, 1966, seven men and two women walked into the Knights of Columbus Hall of Catonsville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. They climbed the stairs to the second-floor room housing the town's Selective Service office and proceeded to empty the contents of several filing cabinets into large wire trash baskets. They then burned the draft records. All nine were arrested and jailed and became known as the Catonsville Nine. They included David Darst, Christian Brother; Father Daniel  Berrigan, Jesuit Priest; Thomas Melville, a former priest of the Maryknoll order; Marjorie Melville a former Maryknoll nun; George Mische, former State Department employee; Mary Moylan, a registered nurse; John Hogan, a former Maryknoll brother; Thomas Lewis, Catholic civil rights activist; and Reverend Philip Berrigan of the Society of Saint Joseph. Their press statement read:

Today, May 17, 1966 we enter Local Board No. 33 in Catonsville, Maryland, to seize Selective Service records and burn them with napalm manufactured by ourselves from a recipe in the Special Forces Handbook, published by the U.S. Government. We, American citizens, have worked with the poor in the ghetto and abroad. We destroy these draft records not only because they exploit our young men, but because they represent misplaced power concentrated in the ruling class of America...We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in war and is hostile to the poor...Now this injustice must be faced, and this we intend to do, with whatever strength of mind, body and grace that God will give us. God have mercy on our nation.

In 1968, Daniel Berrigan and Boston University professor Howard Zinn, went to Hanoi in North Viet Nam, to assist in obtaining the release of three American pilots (1968). The last appeal for the Catonsville Nine was turned down in 1970. Seven of the defendants turned themselves in.  Daniel Berrigan and Mary Moylan went underground.  Berrigan was captured four months later and was the first Catholic priest in the history of the United States to serve sentence as a political prisoner. Mary Moylan was never caught.

68. Libertad para Angela Davis

Felix Beltrán

Silkscreen, 1971

Havana, Cuba

3251

ANGELA DAVIS (Born 1944) was raised in Birmingham, Alabama.  She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University and pursued graduate studies at the Goethe Institute in Frankfurt and the University of California, San Diego. 

Davis was a member of the UCLA Philosophy Department 1969/70.  The day her appointment began (July 1, 1969) the student newspaper published an article provided by an FBI undercover agent, informing the community that the Philosophy Department had hired a Communist.  The Regents of the University of California immediately and illegally attempted to fire her.  They were unsuccessful.  Her teaching, despite the pressures on her, was impressive, and the Philosophy Department requested that Davis be reappointed for the 1970-71 academic year.  The issue of a reappointment, however, became moot.  In 1970, Davis was charged with planning a prison revolt by three black prisoners and accused of supplying the gun that killed four people on August 7, 1970 at the Marin County Courthouse.  In one of the most famous trials in U.S. history, Davis was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy.  In 1972, after 16 months in jail, she was tried and acquitted of the charges. 

Davis is an internationally regarded writer, scholar, lecturer, and fighter for human rights.   She was a member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. from 1968 to 1990, and ran in 1980 and 1984 as their vice presidential candidate. She is a founder and co‑chair of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence.   Davis also serves on the national board of directors of the National Political Congress of Black Women and on the board of the National Black Women's Health Project.  She lives in California, where she teaches philosophy, aesthetics and women's studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, and the San Francisco Art Institute. 

69.  Face Reality

Campaign for Amnesty & Human Rights

for Political Prisoners in the USA

Offset, 1990

Chicago, Illinois

10844

70. Jericho ‘98

Cory Shaw

Ariel Shepard

Kris Rodriguez

Offset, 1998

Berkeley, California

11099

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL joined the Philadelphia Black Panthers in 1968 when he was 14 years old.  At the age of 15, the Federal Bureau of Investigation—with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department—placed Mumia under surveillance in the covert Counter Intelligence Program known as Cointelpro, amassing a file on him over the next decade that would run to 700 pages. Mumia became Minister of Information for the Philadelphia Panthers. Later he became a journalist and radio commentator.  He was known for his support of the activist group, MOVE, and for his condemnation of the Philadelphia police for their habitual brutality against blacks.  He served as president of the Philadelphia Society of Black Journalists, and has aired on National Public Radio and National Black Network. Unable to make a living as a conventional journalist because of his controversial views, Mumia supported himself by driving a taxicab in Philadelphia. One night in 1981 he spotted a police officer beating and arresting his brother, and went to find out what was going on.  At that point, Mumia’s story diverges from that of the police.  The police version is that Mumia shot the police officer twice in the head.  Mumia maintains that another person in the crowd that gathered shot the officer. Mumia was also shot by police and almost died that night.  The main civilian witnesses at the trial were two prostitutes. One changed her description of the assailant several times. The other subsequently stated that she was under pressure by police to testify. Witnesses to support Mumia’s version were never called to testify, and many inconsistencies were not examined. The prosecutor won a death sentence.  Mumia’s name is second on the list of death-row prisoners facing the electric chair.  Groups such as Amnesty International, the PEN American Center and Human Rights Watch have all questioned the fairness of the trial. An international campaign is currently being waged to obtain
a new trial.

THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE was the last major battle between U.S. troops and Native Americans.  It took place on December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek in the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, South Dakota. Among the 300 Sioux killed were many women and children. The soldiers later claimed that it was difficult to distinguish the Sioux women from the men.  On February 28, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized the village of Wounded Knee and challenged federal authorities to repeat the massacre.  After 72 days, three deaths—a member of AIM and two FBI agents—and the wounding of many Native Americans, they surrendered, having drawn attention to Sioux grievances.  The murder of AIM member, Joe Stuntz Killsright, who was shot in the back at close range, remains unsolved, as are the deaths of over 60 AIM members murdered between 1972 and 1976.  Four men were charged with the murder of the FBI agents at Wounded Knee, two were acquitted and charges against a third were dropped. LEONARD PELTIER, the fourth man accused, is still imprisoned. The Supreme Court has refused to review the case despite documents proving that the FBI faked evidence, perjured themselves in court and coerced witnessed to make false statements against Peltier.  Amnesty International, more than 50 members of Congress and 60 members of the Canadian Parliament have been unsuccessful in their appeals for Peltier to receive a new trial.

71.  Free the SF8

Free the SF8.org

Digital Print

29287

Eight former Black community activists—Black Panthers and others— were arrested January 23, 2007 in California, New York, and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973.  As of July 6, 2009, charges were dropped against all but one of the defendants.

72.  Free the SF8

Emory Douglas

Offset, 2007

Berkeley CA

28020

X. CHALLENGING THE PIC

73.  Power to the Convicted Class

Artist Unknown

Silkscreen, 1973

Chicago, Illinois

8054

74.  Mothers Of East Los Angeles

Just Seeds; Stumptown Press

Offset, 2004

Designed in Nashville, TN

Printed in Chicago, Illinois

23317

75.  Ban the Box

Garland Kirkpatrick

Digital Print, 2006

Los Angeles, California

25034

Ban the Box

When people apply for jobs, school, financial aid, housing and entitlements (such as welfare and food stamps) they are required to check a box if they have a former conviction. The slogan “Ban the Box” refers to the campaign to remove this box from all applications for public employment or with government contractors. Removing the box would not eliminate background checks, so community protections would still be in place. However, eliminating the box would go a long way toward easing the discrimination faced by people with criminal convictions.  Former prisoners are regularly denied access to resources necessary to succeed. Many people who have been locked up speak of the re-incarceration they experience on the outside. All of Us or None and A New Way of Life in Los Angeles head up the struggle to BAN the BOX locally.

—Source:  www.allofusornone.org

76.  No More Cages!

Thwart AB900

Emory Douglas, Mary Sutton

Digital Print, 2007

Los Angeles, California

27780

On April 26, 2007 California’s legislative leaders made a swift underhanded deal with Governor Schwarzenegger. They voted in Assembly Bill 900 to build 53,000 new prison, jail and juvenile detention beds in a $7.7 billion package using lease revenue bonds. AB900 is the biggest single prison construction project in history. AB900 will cost $15 billion after interest on the bonds is paid. After construction, there is no money left for staff or programming to operate the new and expanded prisons and jails. That will cost California taxpayers another $10 billion a year.

77.  Vote No On Prop 6

Labor Community Strategy Center

Digital Print, 2008

Los Angeles, CA

28894

After more than 20 years of Rightwing laws and policies that have led to the mass incarceration of Black and Latino people, California State Senator George Runner (R-Antelope Valley) put an initiative, Proposition 6 or the Runner Initiative, on the November 2008 ballot that aimed to lengthen sentences, expand the number of penalties, and increase funding to prisons, jails, probation and police. The Runner Initiative continues the policy of exploiting the fear of crime in urban areas in order to position the prison and police system as the only solution to the symptoms of urban neglect and structural racism—drug use and violence—and in doing so, further criminalize the youth and communities of the inner city. The Runner Initiative is called the Safe Neighborhoods Act but it will NOT make our neighborhoods safer.

Proposition 6 was defeated. This victory was largely due to the work done by a well organized and diverse coalition, initiated by the Strategy Center.

Unfortunately Proposition 9 passed. Prop 9 is an expensive and unnecessary effort to reform California’s prison system. It duplicates existing victims' rights law, and could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. California is currently experiencing the worst budget crisis in history. This is the wrong time to spend billions of dollars on a Prop 9 that put more money in the dysfunctional prison system, and takes it away from schools, healthcare, fire protection and other worthwhile programs. -www.votenoprop9.com

And, unfortunately, Proposition 5 did not pass. Prop 5, The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act proposed the largest rehabilitation program in history of the U.S. The program would help young people struggling with drug problems and prioritizing rehabilitation and treatment instead of incarceration. These are measures that states around the country are implementing to reduce prison populations and keep people out of prison.

78.  Divest

Mary Sutton, Sara Olson

Northland Poster Collective

Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee

Silkscreen, 2001

Minneapolis, Minnesota

15099

Divest is the opposite of Invest. For decades, apartheid South Africa relied on transnational corporations for capital and technology. In the 1970s and 1980s, the divestment campaign aimed at moving individuals and institutions to sell their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. Religious leaders informed their followers, union members pressured their stockholders and consumers questioned their store-owners. Students played an especially important role by compelling universities to change their portfolios. Eventually, institutions pulled the financial plug, and the South African government thought twice about its policies.  This poster proposes using this same divestment tactic against corporations making huge profits in the prison industry.

79. CR10

Critical Resistance

Digital Print, 2008
Oakland, CA

28027

(To be included)

80.  While There Is a Lower Class I Am in It

Artist Unknown

Offset, no date

United States

5700

EUGENE  VICTOR DEBS (1855-1926) was the closest thing to a folk hero ever produced by the American Left.  He was born to French parents in Terre Haute, Indiana, where his father ran a small grocery store. At age 15 he went to work on the railroads. After serving as secretary of his local of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (1875-80), he became the union's national secretary and editor of its magazine (1880-92). He then served in the Indiana legislature from 1886 to 1888.  Championing the cause of industrial unionism, he organized the American Railway Union in 1892, and led the boycott of all Pullman cars during the great strike of 1894; for defying the government's injunction he was jailed for six months. Converting to socialism while in jail, he helped found the Social Democratic Party in 1897, which merged in 1901 with another group to form the Socialist Party (SP). In 1905 he helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as the IWW or Wobblies), which he eventually disavowed because of its use of violence. He ran for the U.S. presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912 as the SP's candidate, winning over 900,000 votes, 6% of the total cast, in the 1912 election. During these years he supported himself by lecturing and writing. In 1918 he spoke out against the trials being conducted under the 1917 Espionage Act, under which individuals opposed to America participating in the world war were being charged with sedition; he himself was then tried for sedition and sentenced to ten years in jail. While in jail in 1920, he again ran for president on the Socialist ticket; he received his largest vote ever. Public protest persuaded President Harding to release him in 1921, but Debs never ceased working for the cause of Socialism. He died on October 20, 1926

81.  Free

Cedomir Kostovic

Offset, 2002

Springfield, Missouri

22073