Protest Posters for Rise and Resist
I made a series of protest posters and flyers for Rise and Resist, a grassroots direct action group. Our goal was to get our messages out in the press. We’re an all-volunteer group and funded by our members, not grants, so we are light, nimble and spend our money wisely. Here are some of our campaigns.
President’s Day Protest: No Wall No Way/Trump Is the Emergency
Anticipating that the news would want to cover the President’s Day 2019 protests, we created a slogan and several signs. About 200 activists showed up at 4pm on Friday to protest and do civil disobedience in front of Trump Tower on Columbus Circle. We got great press coverage, and MSNBC used our images as part of their lead graphic that night. The images outlasted that one newscycle. Photos of those posters at various protests were used to illustrate Trump-related stories in the news for several months.
Summer 2018: Abolish ICE and Return the Children
Late in 2017, our immigration working group stood up at one of our meetings and asked us for ideas about how to push back against the new, tighter immigration policies that were happening around the country. Another member piped up that we should Abolish ICE and ask our government to return to the pre-9/11 systems and laws that had worked well for decades. It was a radical call, so a bunch of us tumbled the idea around. We debuted this logo at as a poster in spring of 2018, just in time for it to catch fire in the media. We added “Return the Children/Devuelven los Niños” for the Families Belong Together march in June 2018.
Like many of my protest posters, these logos are meant to be seen as a tiny thumbnail in a larger photo or read from a block away.
This is an earlier immigration flyer that we’d used.
Madonna: Rise Up
One of our early banners was featured in Madonna’s Rise Up music video. We carried this in the 2017 Women’s March
Expel DeVos
We were thrilled to partner with several local educational unions to annoy Betsy Devos when she arrived for a fundraiser at Cipriani. I used the Cipriani brand colors just to give these a little kick. I wanted their staff to know that we were specifically making these posters for this event.
Climate Emergency
Our environmental group wanted a poster and tee shirt to bring to a variety of events, and we came up with a simple slogan: Climate Emergency.
Impeach/Arrest/Indict Trump
We’ve made a series of banners and flyers to protest at Trump events and properties. Among the odder things we’ve done with it, we launched a 30′ long one into Grand Central with balloons before the 2019 State of the Union. It hung out there, delighting commuters and tourists alike.
My Congresswoman, Carolyn Maloney, announced her support for impeachment and on-going investigations in front of a banner that I designed.