Fashionably Fashy

“Not a single Roman work of art — sculpture, coinage, or painting — displays a salute of the kind that is found in Fascism, Nazism, and related ideologies… It is also unknown to Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of either republican or imperial Rome. The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that is attested in surviving art and literature had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.”
— Martin Winkler, in “The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology”

…just in case you run into any fashy apologists or Musk symps trying to explain it away by saying it’s a “Roman Salute”.

So just cut the crap already, ‘cos all the wide-open fash are wide-open loving it and — like the original — the Early 21st sequel also features craven-ass collaborators, in the form of the Democratic Party.

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Congratulations, Mr. President

You know the thing... but first, the Democrats are going to take one more crack at impeaching Trump for a cheap-ass little crime which they themselves weren't complicit in, and give themselves a chance to bitch and moan on TV about the Chud Army "impeding democracy" n'shit — because even when they "win", the Democrats are a bunch of cryin' loser bitches.

You know the thing.

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J20 Defendants' Solidarity Posters

Crimethinc writes in their Call For An International Week Of Solidarity, July 20-17, 2017:

We are calling for a Week of Solidarity with the J20 defendants from July 20 to 27, 2017. July 20 marks six months from the initial actions and arrests during Donald Trump’s inauguration, and on July 27, a motion to dismiss the charges will be argued in court. The case has finally begun to receive the media attention it warrants; with this court date approaching and the cases underway, this is a crucial time for a second Week of Solidarity.

On January 20, 2017, thousands of people came to Washington, DC to protest the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. In the early morning, blockades shut down security checkpoints and discouraged people from attending the inauguration itself, while impromptu marches and direct actions occurred throughout the day. There was a spirit of defiance in the air.

Midmorning, an “anticapitalist and antifascist” march of several hundred people made clear its opposition not just to Trump but also the system that made Trump possible... After about half an hour, the march was brutally attacked by police, who used chemical and crowd control weapons along with physical force, then boxed in (“kettled”) and mass-arrested people. Everyone on an entire city block was arrested and given the same charge of felony rioting. Approximately 214 arrestees now face a total of eight felony charges, including conspiracy and destruction of property. All of the J20 defendants are now facing up to 75 years in prison.

These 11x17 posters are 300dpi jpg images, approximately 1.7mb each:

• Women's March
• Black Lives Matter
• Black Bloc
  
• Standing Rock Water Defense
• Cannabis Legalization
• Anti-Islamophobia

DCMJ sez "We Won't Go Back!" on Inauguration Day

"We Won't Go Back" #Trump420 Wash DC 01.20.17 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

In what had to be the epicenter of chillaxin' that morning, over 8000 joints were given away legally under DC law by my good buds and comrades at DCMJ at their #Trump420 counterinaugural shindig at Dupont Circle, highlighting the strides made in state drug policy and legalization, and to welcome President The Donald to Washington, DC by declaring that "we won't go back" on the legalization of recreational and medical cannabis.

DCMJ Says "Welcome to Washington, DC!"

DCMJ says "Welcome to Washington, 115th Congress", 01.03.17 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

Yesterday, January 3, the DCMJ Welcoming Committee was on hand at Union Station to greet new and returning staffers to the incoming 115th Congress with leaflets and a little education on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Trump's nominee for US Attorney General. This was followed by yet another jaunt up to Capitol Hill to Senators' offices to pass out a letter containing questions for Sessions' confirmation hearings, after which we adjourned to the DCMJ World Headquarters for a good old-fashioned rolling party in preparation for January 20.



Photographed and edited by Mike Flugennock,
TRT 06:36

I Have A Drone

Seen above here is the famous Ben Ali’s Chili Bowl on U Street, a landmark of historic black DC, as spotted on the morning of Inauguration Day. Sadly, the window display is presented entirely without irony.

A little later, though, at Malcolm X Park… what better way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday than with an anti-drone warfare protest? Who would King bomb?

Hey, Liberals! Ready for Inauguration Day?

Well, there’s another Inauguration Day coming up soon, and that means upwards of a million of you poor, deluded clowns will be infesting my home town for two or three days.

I just hope that the latest deal Obama’s floating to keep us from going over the phony “fiscal cliff” doesn’t throw any cold water on your festivities. You know which deal I’m talking about here: the one that keeps the tax cuts for the rich in place, and cuts Social Security benefits.

Yeah, that’s right, your glorious hero has sold you all out again, but if I know you, you’ll be bound and determined to not let it keep you from enjoying your big moment — though it might be a good idea to start right away acquiring a taste for cat food:

“While some people have tried to foster a myth of the elderly as a high living population, the facts don’t fit this story. The median income of people over age 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of the elderly rely on Social Security benefits for more than half of their income and nearly 40 percent rely on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income. These benefits average less than $15,000 a year.”
–Dean Baker, “Is Obama About To Cut Social Security?”, Institute for Public Accuracy, December 18, 2012

Still, I know this is an important day coming up for you, Liberal America, so by all means, have yourselves a time. Enjoy my home town. Enjoy the historic monuments. Enjoy the parties and balls. Enjoy celebrating four more years of Hope And Change.™

Choke on it.

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Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan for DC

So far as most of us can tell, the "economic stimulus" plan issuing from The Office Of The President-Elect (snicker) includes the most staggeringly pants-pissing amounts of cash to prop up failing corporations, banks and executives, and jack for the rest of us, unless we're prepared to summon up some cajones and engage in a little good old-fashioned shop-floor smackdown, like those laid-off screen-door plant workers in Michigan.



On the local level, here in DC, as Inauguration Day – or, as now known to some, Barack Obama Day – approaches, The One's economic stimulus program for DC has finally begun to jell; according to The Office Of The President-Elect (smirk), this plan will take a two-pronged approach: one prong for the quite well-off, and another big prong for the rest of us...

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Turn Your Back on Bush

Another personal favorite, this was commissioned by The Progressive magazine for a Counterinaugural event they were sponsoring as part of the weekend of protests coinciding with the Second Chimp Coronation.



Truthfully, though, I have to confess to not having been in DC during the Chimp's Second Coronation as my wife and I decided we weren't into hanging around here in the miserable depths of January, freezing our asses off in some fenced-off "free speech zone", and chose instead to spend the week in relatively balmy New Orleans, watching our comrades shivering in bone-cold Washington on TV. Let's face it, it was a helluva lot more fun hanging out in little jazz dives drinking beer until closing time, then stumbling down to Cafè duMonde for black coffee and beignets at 3am. Happily, though, we managed to find ourselves in a big, healthy, counterinaugural protest anyway -- the Jazz Funeral For Democracy, held on a sunny, dry, 70-degree day, featuring a couple of real live New Orleans marching jazz bands in a traditional funeral parade that started at Congo Square and marched through downtown to a rally at Jackson Square, followed by a "second line" that marched through the French Quarter, finishing off at a gig at this cool little joint with a mean-assed blues band and the all-important cheap beer. God damn, they really do know how to throw a protest down there in the Big Easy.

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Four More Years, no.2

So, here we are: four more years of George W. Chimp. Of course, predictably, all the Democrats and Liberals were howling about how they lost because of all those terrible people who voted for Ralph Nader. Never mind that the Democrats chose to nominate the most bland, uninspiring ticket ever; never mind that the Democratic nominee supported pretty much everything Bush did (except, of course when he opposed it). Never mind that John Kerry just sat there like a goddamn' lump while the Bush campaign slapped him around, kicked him in the nuts and accused him of falsifying his war record -- not that it didn't serve Kerry right for bragging about his goddamn' war record, and assuming for just a moment that a willingness to follow orders to kill and die unquestioningly somehow qualifies one to hold public office. Naahh, it was those mean old Nader supporters that cost 'em the election; the Democrats remain convinced of that. Of course, the Democrats also remain convinced that things would've been different under a Kerry Administration, so there you are.

This series of posters promoted the Counterinaugural activities scheduled to coincide with the Second Coronation of George W. Chimp; they illustrate what we were in for four more years of Bush. To be honest, despite these being some of the best pieces I've done, I felt rather awkward doing them, as I worried they'd convey the impression that I believed things would've been substantially different had Kerry been "elected" when in fact, given Kerry's record, they wouldn't have -- except, perhaps, for the delicious irony of hearing protesting crowds in the streets chanting "Hey, Hey, JFK! How many kids did you kill today?"

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Inaugurauction!

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".

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