Tag Archives: Political Art

Three New Poster Designs


I’m now calling these #FemalePowerProject Positive Protest Principles Posters. [Later changed to “perSISTERS”] With these three, the total number of designs will be ten. (Click here to see the first seven designs.) They are: DISSENT honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg; be marvelous TOGETHER honoring Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and FIGHT honoring Hillary Clinton.

DISSENT for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. You can purchase this print design online at this link. DISSENT designs also available in tote bag, t-shirt, bomber jacket, and many scarf options.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (updated in 2024)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (born Joan Ruth Bader; March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S.. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice to be confirmed to the Court (after Sandra Day O’Connor) and one of four female justices to be confirmed (with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who are still serving). Following Justice O’Connor’s retirement and prior to Justice Sotomayor joining the Court, Ginsburg was the only female Supreme Court justice. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with, and famous for, her dissents. 

Ginsburg spent most of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court. Through her efforts the Supreme Court agreed that the highest level of scrutiny should be applied to any law that discriminates on the basis of sex. She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, founding its Women’s Rights Project, and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where she served until her elevation to the Supreme Court.

Ginsburg has become a pop culture icon. Her profile began to rise after Justice O’Connor’s retirement in 2005 left Ginsburg as the only serving female justice. Ginsburg’s increasingly fiery dissents, particularly in Shelby County v. Holder, led to the creation of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr and meme comparing the justice to rapper The Notorious B.I.G. The creator of the Notorious R.B.G Tumblr, then-law student Shana Knizhnik, teamed up with MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon to turn the blog into a book titled Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Released in October 2015, the book became a New York Times bestseller. Ginsburg herself admitted to having a “large supply” of Notorious R.B.G T-shirts which she distributed as gifts. Her family and close friends claim that Ginsburg herself did not have a pop culture personality and they find the whole thing bemusing.

Sources: Wikipedia and Notorious RBG

About the Dissent Jabot

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a fabulous jabot, or decorative collar, collection to wear with her black robe. During an extensive interview with Yahoo News’ Katie Couric, Ginsburg showed off her assortment of collars. She had a “dissenting collar,” which she explained to Couric “looks fitting for dissents.” She also had a collar for when she writes the majority opinion, which was a gift from her law clerks. Ginsburg was seen wearing her dissent collar on November 9, 2016

Partly based on http://talkingpointsmemo. com/livewire/ruth-bader-ginsburg- dissenting-collar

I recommend everyone see the documentary, “RBG.”
See: rbgmovie.com

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Read about this design on this page.

Be Marvelous Together, for Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. You can purchase this design online at this link.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony “worked marvelously together”
Stanton and Anthony are “foremothers” of the struggle for women’s equality. In 1851, Stanton started working with Susan B. Anthony, a well-known abolitionist. The two women made a great team. Anthony managed the business affairs of the women’s rights movement while Stanton did most of the writing. Together they edited and published a woman’s newspaper, the Revolution, from 1868 to 1870. In 1869, Anthony and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. They traveled all over the country and abroad, promoting woman’s rights.
Anna Howard Shaw, another suffragist, wrote a description of the relationship between Stanton and Anthony in The Story of a Pioneer: “She [Miss Anthony] often said that Mrs. Stanton was the brains of the new association, while she herself was merely its hands and feet; but in truth the two women worked marvelously together, for Mrs. Stanton was a master of words and could write and speak to perfection of the things Susan B. Anthony saw and felt but could not herself express.”
From: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/stanton/aa_stanton_friends_1.html
HISTORY
In 1851, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton embarked on a collaboration that evolved into one of the most productive working partnerships in U.S. history. As uncompromising women’s rights leaders, they revolutionized the political and social condition of women in American society. Stanton was the leading voice and philosopher of the women’s rights and suffrage movements while Anthony was the powerhouse who commandeered the legions of women who struggled to win the ballot for American women.
During the early 1850s, Anthony also longed for involvement in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. In the months following her first meeting with Stanton in March 1851, the two women not only developed a deep friendship but also helped each other prepare themselves to change women’s lives. Anthony thrived under Stanton’s tutelage—soaking up her knowledge of politics, the law, philosophy, and rhetoric. Stanton, confined to her home by motherhood (she gave birth to her seventh and last child in 1859), was stimulated by Anthony’s thoughtful critiques of her ideas. Anthony became the propulsive force behind all their activism. She did not permit Stanton to be idle, always pushing her to write one more speech, one more manifesto.
As would become customary, Anthony, who was unmarried and free of family demands, organized and ran the campaign. She traveled statewide, speaking throughout 54 New York counties. Stanton did the legal research, drafted the literature Anthony distributed, and wrote the speeches for them both. Finally, in 1860, following Stanton’s eloquent speech before the New York state legislature, the Married Women’s Property Law of 1860 became law. Married women gained the right to own property, engage in business, manage their wages and other income, sue and be sued, and be joint guardian of their children.
In 1856, the American Anti-Slavery Society hired Anthony to be its general agent in the state of New York. Until 1861, she and her troupe of antislavery orators (including Stanton) crisscrossed the state, confronting hostile mobs wherever they spoke.
In May 1869, Anthony and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, a woman-led organization devoted to obtaining a federal woman suffrage amendment.
From 1868-1870 Anthony and Stanton published the radical women’s rights newspaper The Revolution. Stanton was the principal writer and editor, Anthony the publisher and business manager. Although the paper was a financial failure, it provided a much-needed forum for Stanton and Anthony to broadcast their views to their allies and the public.
During the early 1870s, Anthony and Stanton pursued a strategy that they believed would enfranchise women. The “New Departure” was founded on the premise that the 14th and 15th Amendments guaranteed all citizens the right to vote regardless of gender. Anthony and at least 150 other women tested its constitutionality by casting ballots in the 1872 presidential election. Several weeks later, Anthony was arrested. She was indicted by a grand jury in January 1873 and in June went on trial in Canandaigua, New York. The judge ordered the all-male jury to render a guilty verdict. In her comments to the court, Anthony exposed the trial for the travesty it was. (See excerpt from comments below)
Anthony and Stanton abandoned the New Departure in 1875 when the Supreme Court delivered the Minor v. Happersett verdict. Anthony then focused NWSA suffragists on the campaign for a woman suffrage amendment. In 1878, Stanton wrote and submitted NWSA’s proposed amendment to the U.S. Senate. For the next 40 years, it would be brought before each session of Congress.
In 1891, Anthony made a home with her sister Mary at the family household in Rochester, New York. She hoped that Stanton would come live with them, but her old friend declined, deciding to live with two of her children in New York City. In the 1890s, Stanton was writing to her heart’s content—submitting articles and essays to leading national newspapers and magazines. Her celebrity was at its peak.
In 1895, Stanton published the first volume of the Woman’s Bible, the culmination of her life-long interest in correcting biblical passages that are demeaning to women. It became an immediate bestseller and aroused widespread controversy. Within NAWSA, it ignited a firestorm. Despite Anthony’s protests, the conservative leadership rejected Stanton’s book and voted to censure her.
Two weeks before her 87th birthday, Stanton died of heart failure on October 26, 1902. Anthony was inconsolable. “I am too crushed to speak,” she told a reporter. Anthony’s health was failing, too. In 1900, at age 80, she had suffered a stroke. Though her doctor had warned her to take better care of herself, she decided it would be better to “die in the harness” than to abandon her work. She was no longer president of NAWSA but still supervised most of its management.
In February 1906, the 86-year-old Anthony, ill and weary, delivered her final speech at the annual NAWSA convention in Baltimore. She reminded NAWSA suffragists that the day of women’s enfranchisement was at hand—that “Failure is Impossible.” Weeks later, Anthony succumbed to double pneumonia and heart failure. She died on March 13th. Fourteen more years of ceaseless agitation would be necessary before the 19th Amendment enfranchised women on August 26, 1920.
About the Author: Judith E. Harper, author of Susan B. Anthony: A Biographical Companion (ABC-CLIO, 1998). A graduate of Wellesley College and Boston University, Judith E. Harper specializes in the history of nineteenth-century American women. She is the author of Susan B. Anthony: A Biographical Companion (ABC-CLIO, 1998). She is currently writing The Encyclopedia of Women During the American Civil War. She lives in the Boston area.
Excerpted from:
http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/resources/index.html?body=biography.html

Susan B. Anthony, from comments to the Court, 19 June 1873:
“I shall not sit down. I will not lose my only chance to speak.”
Court—”You have been tried, Miss Anthony, by the forms of law, and my decision has been rendered by law.”
Miss Anthony—”Yes, but laws made by men, under a government of men, interpreted by men and for the benefit of men. The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do,” and she struck her hand heavily on the table in emphasis of what she said. “Does your honor suppose that we obeyed the infamous fugitive slave law which forbade to give a cup of cold water to a slave fleeing from his master? I tell you we did not obey it; we fed him and clothed him, and sent him on his way to Canada. So shall we trample all unjust laws under foot. I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law.”

Nevertheless, Ruby Persisted

Nevertheless She Persisted for Ruby Bridges, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. You can purchase objects based on this design in my online store at this link.

As a six-year-old, Ruby Bridges famously became the first African American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. When the 1st grader walked to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960 surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals, she was met by a vicious mob shouting and throwing objects at her.

One of the federal marshals, Charles Burks, who was on her escort team, recalls Bridges’ courage in the face of such hatred: “For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. We were all very proud of her.”

Once Ruby entered the school she discovered that there were no other children because they had all been removed by their parents. The only teacher willing to teach Ruby was Barbara Henry, who had recently moved from Boston. Ruby was taught by herself for her first year at the school due to the white parents’ refusal to have their children share a school with a black child.

Despite daily harassment, which required the federal marshals to continue escorting her to school for months; threats towards her family; and her father’s job loss due to his family’s role in school integration, Ruby persisted in attending school. The following year, when she returned for second grade, the mobs were gone and more African American students joined her at the school. The pioneering school integration effort was a success due to Ruby Bridges’ inspiring courage, perseverance, and resilience.

Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, still lives in New Orleans with her husband, Malcolm Hall, and their four sons. After graduating from a desegregated high school, she worked as a travel agent for 15 years and later became a full-time parent. She is now chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she formed in 1999 to promote “the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences”. Describing the mission of the group, she says, “racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it.”

From “A Mighty Girl” Facebook page and Wikipedia. Image based on a photo by an unnamed Department of Justice employee.

Ruby Bridges at William Franz Elementary School in 1960
The Creatrix at William Franz Elementary School in 2017

Be Brave for Danuta Danielsson

A woman Hitting a neo-Nazi with her handbag is a famous photograph taken in Växjö, Sweden on 13 April 1985 by Hans Runesson. It depicts a 38-year-old woman hitting a marching Nazi-skinhead with a handbag. The photograph was taken during a demonstration of the Nordic Reich Party supporters. The angle of the photo, her posture, facial expression, and what she’s wearing makes her look a lot older than she really is. The picture was published in the next day’s Dagens Nyheter and a day later in some British newspapers. It sparked a huge discussion in Sweden, and the woman—who suffered from anxiety and hated the sudden media spotlight—ended up committing suicide two years later.

The woman in the photograph is Danuta Danielsson. She was of Polish-Jewish origin, her mother had been in a concentration camp and she got very angry when she saw the young Nazis in her quiet town. When the incident happened she had only lived in Sweden for a few years. Dunata met her future Swedish husband at a jazz festival in Poland and shortly after that they were married. Her acquaintances described her as energetic and positive during their first years in the new country. But she had a darker side, sometimes she was mentally fragile. Very often she screamed menacingly to people on the streets, sometimes she muttered to herself. She was also treated at a psych ward and eventually threw herself from a water tower in 1988.

The neo-Nazi’s name was Seppo Seluska. He was a militant Nazi from the Nordic Reich Party, later convicted for murder. He tortured and murdered a Jewish homosexual later the same year.

rarehistoricalphotos.com

Addendum (2024)

This design from 2017 was one of three whose purpose was to explore iconic images of women protesting. For that purpose I chose images that had gone viral. These also include BE PRESENT and SHOW UP. Next I wanted to work with other historic images and that’s when I chose the image of Ruby Bridges. After I made that print I noticed how viewers couldn’t remember the details of the event, even though they recognized the image. For example, no one remembered that Ruby was in New Orleans. Everyone assumed it was Arkansas. So that was when I started writing the short blurbs to package with the prints. Over time the blurbs got longer, and now one could call them essays.

Photo by Hans Runesson