Corporate Seeds

FARMERSBLEED

Here’s anoth­er poster on the pri­vate con­trol of seeds. Such a heavy cost on farm­ers, and con­se­quent­ly on us all. If you’d like to see a short video on this top­ic, check out Seed: The Untold Sto­ry. It’s a quick, elo­quent overview of our sit­u­a­tion with a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant moment as a woman describes the impact forced depen­dence on cor­po­rate seeds has on her abil­i­ty to pro­vide for her family.

Forests!

deforestation, desertification

Forests safe­guard life. Ensure life. They hold water, give us oxy­gen, shel­ter, food, ani­mal life, med­i­cine, cul­tures. Mas­sive defor­esta­tion caus­es the destruc­tion of ecosys­tems jeop­ar­diz­ing all of human­i­ty. For the prof­it of whom?

No War

NoWar

This is not a cliché. Unfor­tu­nate­ly. We are caught in an end­less war. Our gov­ern­ment has a wait­ing list of wars as if the ones they have going now are not enough. On and on we (?) bomb, shoot, sab­o­tage, rape, poi­son, and tor­ture to serve the few. So, as an artist, I must do this poster that will be con­sid­ered by some to be a cliché, but is not.

Wars Rage, Cities Crumble

A soci­ety bent on war can­not take care of its own. When we destroy the lives, homes, and pos­si­bil­i­ties of peo­ple around the world we can­not fund, pro­tect or nur­ture own lives, homes and pos­si­bil­i­ties. We destroy our­selves.  With a col­lec­tive fist, which should hold right­eous­ness and gen­eros­i­ty, we hand over our own lifeblood to forge a relent­less attack on the human rela­tions we have nev­er both­ered to know. We acqui­esce in a ter­ri­ble deci­sion. Or do we?

Commune (The Verb)

It is easy when doing polit­i­cal posters to focus on our trou­bles. There are many, after all. Some­times, how­ev­er, I nudge myself to con­cen­trate on our vision of a bet­ter life, to remind myself why I got involved in move­ments in the first place. The pow­er and joy of deep con­nec­tion with earth, the nat­ur­al world, with oth­er human beings. The impor­tance of cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tems and social insti­tu­tions that hon­or and sup­port those con­nec­tions. Doing this poster brought me back to those first excit­ing, very con­nect­ed days way back when.… Sigh.

Choose Your Long Haul

LongHaulChoseWeb

But­ter­flies grace us with their pres­ence as they alight quick­ly, ten­ta­tive­ly on blades of grass, a quick kiss on their long dis­tance jour­neys.  We watch, trans­fixed and delight­ed. They make our days a lit­tle more spe­cial, beau­ti­ful.  And, yet, they are dying in stag­ger­ing num­bers, vic­tim to an econ­o­my which digs up, paves over, pol­lutes and just gen­er­al­ly mess­es up the frag­ile paths our winged friends trav­el. Do we real­ly need this kind of econ­o­my, rep­re­sent­ed here by our mechan­i­cal, more destruc­tive long haulers?

Water Democracy

 

H20Right

Water. Fun­da­men­tal. Lav­ished on large-scale, cost­ly, inef­fi­cient, mono-cul­tur­al, cor­po­rate agribusi­ness­es. Squan­dered on, den­i­grat­ed by fos­sil fuel extrac­tions. Poi­soned by care­less indus­tri­al prac­tices. Sent into hid­ing, dis­ap­peared by the rough treat­ment of frag­ile ecolo­gies. Siphoned off for pref­er­en­tial liv­ing arrange­ments. Hoard­ed by pri­vate busi­ness­es for prof­it. Water. Clean water. 1.7 bil­lion with­out access to clean water. 2.3 bil­lion peo­ple suf­fer from water-borne ill­ness­es each year. How we han­dle water is a demo­c­ra­t­ic, human rights issue.

Support Not Punishment

SupportNotPunishment

There has been a stag­ger­ing increase in the num­bers of women in prison in the last few decades, large­ly due to the “War on Drugs”  Many of these women began their jour­ney as bat­tered women seek­ing solace in an envi­ron­ment devoid of sup­port ser­vices. They turned to drugs or alco­hol to numb pain and then to pet­ty crimes to pay for the numb­ing. Do they real­ly need prison? Or do we need stronger economies, com­mu­ni­ties and sup­port­ive social institutions?

Share Seeds

ShareSeeds

For thou­sands of years farmers/peasants have worked the soil with nature’s gift. Seeds. Every har­vest peo­ple of the land gath­ered the seed of pre­vi­ous crops to con­tin­ue this vital cycle. Now, cor­po­ra­tions, with a mind-bog­gling bun­dle of tricks, claim to hold a more fun­da­men­tal right —the patent! This  forces strug­gling farmers/peasants to buy expen­sive and trou­ble­some ter­mi­na­tor seeds — seeds which can­not bring on the next gen­er­a­tion of crop. Mas­sive farmer sui­cides around the world attest to the dam­age done by this pri­vate, self­ish own­er­ship of seed. To see work aim­ing to put seeds back into peo­ple’s hands, check out  NAVDANYA, a project of Van­dana Shi­va and oth­ers in India.

Sisterhood is Refusing

sisterhood, feminism, anti-war, peace

A few decades ago, one of my favorite posters was “Sis­ter­hood is Bloom­ing Spring­time Will Nev­er Be The Same” by the Chica­go Wom­en’s Lib­er­a­tion Union. It cap­tured the excite­ment and opti­mism of the wom­en’s move­ment at that time. I still smile when I think of it. Yet, I am dis­tressed to see so many women who call them­selves fem­i­nist ignore, sup­port — and in cas­es of women in pow­er, wage — war against oth­er women all over the world. So I decid­ed to bor­row from this ear­li­er poster to make a new state­ment on sisterhood.

Protect

PROTECT

Tar sands. Pipelines. Vio­lent­ly extract­ed fos­sil fuels. Their per­ilous trans­port through frag­ile envi­ron­ments. Banks filled. Pock­ets lined. Habi­tats destroyed. Air scummed. Water spent. Is this real­ly the way to go?

Agribusiness Kills Farmers

 

AgribusinessKillsFarmers

Every 30 min­utes a farmer in India com­mits sui­cide. That means in the 2 decades since large seed cor­po­ra­tions have plant­ed them­selves in India, almost a quar­ter mil­lion farm­ers have killed them­selves, leav­ing behind fam­i­lies in impos­si­ble debt, loss and despair. Export focused, non-food mono-cul­tur­al crops, forced use of ter­mi­na­tor seeds, pes­ti­cides and fer­til­iz­ers requir­ing recur­ring loans cre­ate stag­ger­ing finan­cial bur­dens, rob peo­ple of their capac­i­ty to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies. But don’t think this is Indi­a’s prob­lem alone. The rate of farmer sui­cide in the U.S. is more than dou­ble that of any oth­er occupation.

Women Are Not Targets

WomenNotTargets

Here’s anoth­er image I bor­rowed from the Chica­go Wom­en’s Lib­er­a­tion Union’s great poster “Women Are Not Chicks.” Their orig­i­nal mes­sage still needs shout­ing out as the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women is still around (although “babe” is the more con­tem­po­rary word). Again, though, I am bring­ing up the anti-war mes­sage. The mas­sacre of women and girls by our weapon­ry has got to be opposed. I real­ly believe that a “fem­i­nist” agen­da that is not anti-war is not tru­ly a fem­i­nist agen­da at all.

Don’t Let Feminists…

FeministsDontLet

It seems I feel moved to come out with dif­fer­ent ways of say­ing the same thing. Women! We must be anti-war. That means being very sus­pi­cious of those women in pow­er, who call them­selves fem­i­nists, yet sug­ar coat their unjust wars with claims of being the moral leader of the uni­verse. It ain’t so.