Recycle Nixon. Stop Kissing Pig Ass.

April 7, 2016 1:27 PM

The University of British Columbia hosts an online collection of 250 anti-war and other posters from the Berkeley student movement, dating between 1968 and 1970.

The interface is a little slow and old-school but the content is excellent. Some favourites: Bring the War Home. America is Devouring its Children. Don't Mourn, Organize. Radicalize the Cops. Security is a Silent Majority. Related 1, 2, 3, 4.

posted by Rumple (17 comments total)

This is great. Thank you!
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:19 PM on April 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is so cool. I LOVE these old posters.

Related: About two months ago, I saw the Hippie Modernism exhibit at the Walker Art Center, which had a ton of political and counterculture posters, probably a lot of the same ones featured here. And a lot of the books/magazines/zines (if you can call them that) I recognized from when I was younger and I used to go through my all of my mom's boxes of stuff she saved - she was at the perfect age to be a part of that late 60's - early 70's counterculture.

So I called her to ask if she still has all that stuff (the Whole Earth Catalog, etc.) and when she said she did I informed her that her teenage mementos are actual museum pieces now and then made her promise that she'd pull out her boxes next time I'm at her house and let me take anything I want.

Anyway, it was a brilliant exhibit.
posted by triggerfinger at 2:24 PM on April 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Wow, this takes me back to my college years; it thrills me and makes me melancholy.

The law requires that you inform your draft board of all changes in status.
Obey the law to the letter. Jam your board May 1970.

Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 3:02 PM on April 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

One thing you realize, looking at these, is how hard it was at the time to do anything with actual typography. Cold type (phototypesetting) was still in its infancy — it was used by some newspapers and magazines, but required very expensive equipment to which the activists had no access. Hot type (Linotype machines and letterpress printing) was still how most newspapers and magazines were printed, but it was equally hard to access for short-run jobs like this. So most of this stuff was done by hand-cutting letters into a silkscreen stencil (serigraphy). That process entailed various solvents that are probably banned today but made the process fairly enjoyable.
posted by beagle at 3:08 PM on April 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ad for Senator (soon to be Mayor of San Francisco) Moscone's speech about guns and hunger.

https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/berkpost/items/1.0001606#p0z-6r0f:
posted by merelyglib at 3:48 PM on April 7, 2016

I like to point to stuff like this when someone tells me how peaceful and nice things used to be back in the day.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:51 PM on April 7, 2016

We just acquired a collection of Berkeley protest posters at Houghton, and I am irrationally excited about the fact that they are on tractor-feed paper with ca. 1970 computer printing on the back.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:43 PM on April 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh, I love archives and political posters and I love university archives for the eclectic stuff they can collect. This is awesome! Thanks!

This seems like an opportunity to sneak in a tangentially related item (with archives with activist interests at BC university) ... Just across the water from UBC my university also has an awesome new archive ... the Transgender Archives!. You can download the PDF book of the collection and read another amazing history of activism.
posted by chapps at 5:04 PM on April 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

This also reminds me of my fave crazy student peace activism from the next era (1985) ... the much misunderstood and maligned cyanide pill referendum held by student associations due to initiatives by student peace groups-- including UBC and UVIC --- across North America.
posted by chapps at 5:07 PM on April 7, 2016

I work just down the hall from the folks at UBC Library Digital Initiatives who've put this collection online. They've done tons of other neat stuff, too.
posted by e-man at 8:30 PM on April 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thanks e-man... Had a peek at "ubc's first 100 theses" collection... In the first year (1920) nearly half are by women! How interesting.
posted by chapps at 10:21 PM on April 7, 2016

Re the Berkeley posters
.. The security is a silent majority one is pretty interesting. Linus-nixon is pretty chillng and kind of a brilliant blend of Americana. Would love to know the context.
posted by chapps at 10:24 PM on April 7, 2016

chapps -- pretty sure the reference is Richard Nixon's "silent majority" speech.

"Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.

And so tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans-I ask for your support."

I suppose the allusion is Nixon was comforted by or relied on the (imaginary?) silent majority in the same futile way Linus is comforted/protected by his blanket.

You should post the transgender archives as a FPP -- I know Aaron Devor so I can't do it myself, I don't think.
posted by Rumple at 9:10 AM on April 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, chapps, I was recently struck by the preponderance of women graduates with MA and PhD from Columbia U. in Anthropology during the early days, or at least from WWI on for a few decades. Many or most of those early women PhDs from that most elite Anthropology program did not have substantial careers in Anthropology, though a few did. Easier to get into grad school than to get hired, one suspects.
posted by Rumple at 9:14 AM on April 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

You should post the transgender archives as a FPP -- I know Aaron Devor so I can't do it myself, I don't think.

Ah there's the rub! I also know Aaron Devor! I've been wanting to see it as an FPP because I knoooooow many folks on the blue would like to explore it. Halp me and Rumple, someone!
posted by chapps at 6:27 PM on April 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

And thanks for the background on the Nixon poster, Rumple, much appreciated.
posted by chapps at 6:29 PM on April 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Weren't many in that 68-73 class part of the majority howling for Iraqi blood or standing by in silence 35 years later before Operation Iraqi Freedom?

What happened to take them from "peace now" to "support our troops" ribbons? Is peace really that situational, and if it's that easy to dispel, does it really exist at all?
posted by lon_star at 11:24 PM on April 9, 2016