Freedom of the Press - Poster of the Week
Freedom of the Press
Bonnie Acker
Red Sun Press
Offset, 1994
Boston, MA
32079
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
–A.J. Liebling, The New Yorker, May 14, 1960.
“Press” includes media outlets and production facilities, the backbone of an informed
citizenry.
On Friday, September 18, President Donald Trump banned three national news outlets
from the White House, citing his disdain for “fake news.” It wasn’t his first effort to
muzzle public media, and it likely won’t be his last. A previous discredited president also despised unfavorable media coverage – in 1970 Richard Nixon’s administration charged CBS-TV with faking news about the Viet Nam* war. Even further back, during the 1860s and 1870s, New York City’s infamously corrupt politician William “Boss” Tweed was deftly targeted by cartoonist Thomas Nast, eventually complaining that “I don’t care so much what the papers write—my constituents can’t read . . . it’s them damn pictures.”
As journalist Liebling pointed out, one of the best ways oppositional voices can get the
word out is to own the means of production. And that’s exactly what dozens of
movement groups started to do during the “long 1960s.”
This poster promoted an exhibition curated by the Center for the Study of Political
Graphics and the Progressive Printers Network, showcasing over 80 agitational
graphics from 20 community-based progressive and primarily offset print shops from the United States and Canada. The poster featured 1994 original art from Boston’s Red Sun Press, one of the featured shops.
Movement presses in that exhibition included some that were no longer with us, such as the first independent New Left printshop, Glad Day Press in Ithaca, New York (1967-1973); Los Angeles’ Peace Press (1967-1987); and Jackrabbit Press in Eugene,
Oregon (1971-1976). But in the mid-1990’s many offset print shops were still actively
cranking out essential propaganda, and had formed the Progressive Printers Network to support each other.
In early 1988, six shops – Common Wealth Printing (Hadley, Mass.), Omega Press
(Philadelphia), Orange Blossom Press (Cleveland), Red Sun Press, North Star Express (Providence, RI) and Salsedo Press (Chicago) – worked together to organize a convention of cooperative printers, and the idea of a PPN was hatched. Subsequent
gatherings were held in 1991 (Salsedo, Chicago), 1993, (Inkworks, Berkeley), 1995
(Red Sun), and 2001 (Inkworks). Alas, changes in media technology and scattering of
political focus have resulted in very few such shops still existing – two examples are
RADIX, a worker-owned, union print shop and publisher in Brooklyn, NY, and
Community Printers in Santa Cruz, CA.
* Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, and the two-word spelling is used by the United Nations and the Vietnamese Government. The single word spelling is the colonialist spelling used by the French and U.S.
References:
If you're interested in learning more about independent printers and are in the Boston area, check out this exhibition:
"Re:Action – Red Sun Press and Radical Life in Boston 1974-2025"
Red Sun Press, a union/cooperative printing press closed its doors last year after 50 years of operation. This exhibition will display works of countercultural printing, plus a host of rare material unearthed from deep in the company's anti-capitalist past, in the revamped former Red Sun space which is now the home of Coop Social Club, a cooperative co-work and event space with a community-focused mission.
Saturday, Sept. 26, & Sunday Sept. 27
11am to 6pm
Preview and reception Friday Sept. 25, 5:30 to 8pm
Coop Social Club
The Gallery at Cultural Equity Incubator
Comments