Looking to History for Strength - Poster of the Week
- politicalgraphics
- Oct 3
- 3 min read
Free Paul Skyhorse and Richard Mohawk
Skyhorse-Mohawk Legal Defense
Printer: Peace Press; Tin Roof
Henry F. Klein
Offset, circa 1976
Los Angeles, CA
11120
As we enter the last quarter of 2025, it is difficult to find focus and strength amidst the relentless onslaught of Executive Orders, political violence, and attacks on civil liberties. In the past week alone, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order directing the federal government to crack down on “left-wing terrorism” and told U.S. generals that Democrat-run cities should be used as “training grounds for our military” to fight “the enemy within.” The demands are both dangerously unconstitutional and openly fascist. His intention is clear: to exhaust, bankrupt, and weaken the half of the country that opposes his attacks on human rights and freedoms.
CSPG’s Poster of the Week features an earlier period when the left was persecuted in this country. In 1974, George Aird, a cabdriver, was murdered in Ventura County, California. Acting on an anonymous tip, the FBI arrested Paul Skyhorse and Richard Mohawk, two organizers with the American Indian Movement (AIM), and charged them with first-degree murder. On May 24, 1978, after four years of incarceration, Skyhorse and Mohawk were found not guilty. However, the apparent frame-up had succeeded; the Southern California AIM chapter was financially devastated by the trial and fractured beyond repair. It is believed that the FBI, through its Domestic Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO), framed Skyhorse and Mohawk as part of the effort to discredit and destroy AIM.
COINTELPROs were covert and often illegal operations designed to infiltrate, destabilize, and destroy organizations that law enforcement and government officials considered to be threats to national security. In the 1940s and 1950s, COINTELPROs were directed almost exclusively at the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party, USA. During the late 1960s the vast majority of COINTELPRO operations were directed against Black organizations, in order to create internal dissent and conflicts with other Black organizations. They were also directed against AIM, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and almost all groups protesting the Viet Nam War.
Anyone who believes that the authoritarian regime of Trump’s is wrong cannot afford to squander resources fighting with one another. The most effective movements in American history have always involved partnering with other communities: Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition; the Third World Liberation Front; the Mississippi Freedom Movement; the New Deal Coalition.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the statement “Diversity is our Strength” is an “insane fallacy.” He is wrong. Resistance relies on coalition building. This week, 550 celebrities relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, a group originally formed in response to the House of Un-American Activities Committee’s attacks on artistic and political expression during the McCarthy Era. The No Kings protest earlier this year was one of the largest days of protest in US history, and later this month, on October 18th, a second No Kings protest will continue to unite us in this collective fight.
"Activism is about opening a door that makes it possible for people to be effective where they’re at…There’s no movement in history that has tried to force people into agreement about one strategy and one analysis that has succeeded. They have all failed, it does not work… Do not compromise, stick with what your justice vision is. But don’t waste your time trying to trash other people who have a different variation."
Writer, LGBTQ Rights Activist, AIDS Historian
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It's scary to see the echoes of what happened to AIM reverberate in the present. History doesn't repeat itself, but power always finds a way to silence dissent. Incredibox