by Carol A. Wells

Prison Nation–Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex epitomizes the Center for the Study of Political Graphic’s 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.

This unique exhibition is relevant both to the community most affected 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, 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.

In Spring 2006, CSPG premiered Prison Nation—Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex at the Watts Towers Arts Center, in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. From planning to curating, this exhibition was an educational, organizing and outreach tool. National and local organizations doing prison work were notified about the project, and solicited for posters, contacts and financial sponsorship. We were awarded a small matching grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and needed to raise a lot more.

Activists from Los Angeles area prison rights organizations were also invited to participate in planning meetings. At the first meeting we showed posters from the archive and discussed both the topics that were covered and what was missing. Participating organizations included the Action Committee for Women in Prison, All of Us or None, Critical Resistance, Death Penalty Focus (LA), Ex-Offender Action Network, Families Against California’s Three Strikes, New Cost of Prisons Project, No New Jails Coalition, Northern California Innocence Project, Western Prison Project, and the Youth Justice Coalition. Under the direction of Mary Sutton, CSPG’s Program Director, we linked artists with many of these groups and helped produce posters for them. The powerful graphics that resulted from these collaborations will continue to be important organizing tools.
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 the1971 Attica prison uprising. The most recent were produced just days before the exhibition opened. Graphic design classes from three universities—Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and Frostburg State University, Maryland—all focused on Prison Nation and more than a dozen students’ posters were included. One teacher wrote that in the process of researching and producing the posters, some students changed their position from “why should I care about people in prison,” or “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” to “this is too depressing…it isn’t fair.”

In response to an email call for posters that was included in many list-serves, we received posters about the US prison system from as far away as Sweden and Spain. Australian posters dealt with the similarity between our prisons and theirs. The larger organizations, such as Amnesty International, Critical Resistance, and Prison Moratorium Project, had been producing posters for years. The Los Angeles-based Youth Justice Coalition couldn’t afford posters, but produced stencil slap-tags demanding the closure of the California Youth Authority. But most of the posters came from individuals and art collectives.

In addition to the exhibition that is now available to travel, there were panels, youth workshops, and a prison film series all promoted in a tabloid newspaper, “Prison Times” that was produced for the exhibition. Ten thousand copies were printed, and given out at the exhibition and to each participating organization to distribute. “Prison Times” included descriptions and contact information for the local Los Angeles and many national prisoner rights organizations, a glossary of prison-related terms (such as prison industrial complex, three strikes, ban the box, privatization, abolition, etc.), many posters, and a calendar of events. Several participants plan to continue publishing it. A discussion followed each film. The closing event, “Hip Hop is Not a Crime,” was organized by the Youth Justice Coalition. It was an amazing multi-media event with stencil making workshops, open mikes, art contests, music and spoken word. Over 150 youth participated.

In addition to organizing exhibitions like Prison Nation, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics collects, conserves and documents more than 50,000 human rights and protest posters—both US and international–dating from 1900 to the present. The majority of the collection is 1960s to the present and CSPG holds the largest collection of post World War II political posters in the US.
CSPG grew out of grass roots activism in the 1980s, opposing US intervention in Nicaragua and Central America. The Center’s very first exhibition, “Art and the Nicaraguan Revolution,” premiered in 1981, and through word of mouth was hosted by solidarity committees from coast to coast.

This became the template for more than two dozen traveling theme-based political poster exhibitions produced from the Center’s archives, including the Prison Nation exhibition described above. As every CSPG exhibition is intended as an educational and organizing tool, they are fully annotated, and visitors can learn at their own speed, at their own time, in the non-threatening environment of an art gallery, university, library or community center. The exhibitions stand alone as educational resources but their effectiveness can be expanded when incorporated into organizing work. Publicly accessible spaces also ensure that the audiences will include supporters, the undecided and opponents, and are far more politically diverse than participants in teach-ins or demonstrations.

A good poster should only make one or two points—too many words can destroy a poster. But an exhibition with 70–80 posters raises dozens of issues. CSPG’s exhibitions can stand on their own, or be used by the larger movement for social change along with teach-ins and/or demonstrations. Political posters appeal to the converted because they reinforce their view of the world. They are also relevant for the unconverted, as they provoke and provide a different view of the world, and show that there are many different ways of analyzing an issue and tackling a problem. And If you can’t inspire minds through graphics, ad agencies are wasting millions of dollars.
Posters also show how organizing around a specific issue–be it prisons, immigration, women’s rights etc.– has both similarities and differences when compared to the same struggle in other countries and from other historical periods. As the posters also record victories, they give hope during times such as now, when all our advances are under attack simultaneously.

All CSPG exhibitions are multi–cultural and interdisciplinary, and link issues that are too often divided. The women’s rights, international labor, and immigration exhibitions all deal with racism, sexism, classism as well as the impact of war, poverty and globalization. CSPG’s exhibitions demonstrate how these issues cannot be separated. They also confront common stereotypes and misconceptions: The Black Panther exhibition includes a letter from Huey Newton praising the gay liberation movement and the exhibition on sexism and homophobia includes a poster with Cesar Chavez at the front of a gay rights demonstration in Washington, DC.

CSPG preserves more than 50,000 posters, and collects more each year. Each one is a powerful living reminder of struggles worldwide for peace and justice. Protest posters flaunt their politics to generate controversy. Raw and aggressive or polished and sophisticated, political posters are the graphics of dissent from existing injustices.

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Carol A. Wells is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, which long ago received a grant from Resist. CSPG’s current exhibition, Prison Nation, is available to travel and will soon be an online exhibition on CSPG’s website: www.politicalgraphics.org. Poster donations on any political theme are welcome and are tax-deductible. For more information, contact CSPG, 8124 West Third Street, Suite 211, Los Angeles, CA 90048-4309; cspg@politicalgraphics.org.