The Fall 2001 IMF/World Bank mobilization was to be our blockbuster sequel to A16, rumored by many to be the biggest mass mobe in town since Vietnam — Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, barring any sudden freakish turn of events — such as, say, a large airliner or two or three diving into a few really large buildings.

Needless to say, the wheels pretty much came off The Movement’s™ wagon very soon after 9/11; the Mobilization for Global Justice and Ruckus Society practically tripped over each other while backing out, citing (as I recall) “respect for the victims” — even as the neocons and other right-wing freaks at the time were preparing for endless war overseas and endless abuse of the Constitution at home, also out of consideration for “the victims”. Luckily, there was ANSWER, which went on with its events, shifting to a pro-civil liberties, anti-war focus for what was previously an anti-globalization mobe, so at least the Left hadn’t been totally bullied off the streets by the Neocons and their brownshirt pals in Free Republic and Gathering Of Eagles.

Liberate Labor, high-res jpg image, 1.1mb
Demand Justice, high-res jpg image, 645k
Take Back Your Dignity, high-res jpg image, 1mb
Defend Democracy, high-res jpg image, 1mb
Restore Your Planet, high-res jpg image, 839k

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At the time I was doing posters for the Counterinaugural, the Florida freak show was still playing out in the courts and in the streets. Besides, our message didn’t really depend on the results; the message for the Counterinaugural protests was that people need to organize and take action on their own behalf and look among themselves for “leadership” instead of depending on “elected” politicians and the results of an “election” rotten to the core with hypocrisy and corruption, and so mobbed up with corporate cash that its results couldn’t possibly be legitimate no matter who “won”.

Ironically but happily, the scene depicted here came quite close to being what actually happened at one of the feeder-march rallies headed up by a group including the Rev. Al Sharpton. I’d gotten used to having huge historic events right here in the same city, so when several thousand folks gathered just half a block from my house, within sight of my front stoop, at Staunton Square on Capitol Hill, that was some treat. The climax of the whole rally, just before marching past the Supreme Court and on downtown, was a “mass swearing-in” of all the folks present, a mass affirmation that the People are supposed to be the real “leaders”.

Medium-res jpg image, 839k

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The week that the Reagan Mob won the MX Missile appropriation vote, Time Magazine had Reagan on the cover, at his desk in the Oval Office, smiling that nasty, crooked, lipless smile (how is it that our last three Repuglican Presidents: Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, all had nasty, crooked, lipless smiles?) holding the tally slip recording the roll-call vote on the MX system. I first caught sight of that cover one night in the check-out rack while waiting to pay for some beers down at the drug store and thinking jeezus, why don’t they just run a foto of him with his dick in his hand?

medium-res jpg image, 194k; high-res tiff image, 387k

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These days, our gentle punditocracy would call the mom and dad shown below “values voters”, but back then we just called them “right-wing religious-freak nutjobs” — not quite as elegant, but more truthfully desciptive. Another better-known Yipster Times/Overthrow piece, a back-cover subscription ad poster from the summer of ’81 which asked its readers the question, “Weighted Down By The ’80s?” That’s right, not a year into the new decade, and every aspect of life — workers’ rights, reproductive rights, civil liberties, education, popular culture — was hammer-down on the highway to hell.

You know when an outfit calls itself “Focus On The Family”, all of our families are in huge-ass trouble.

medium-res jpg image, 194k; high-res tiff image, 645k

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