Fall 2001 IMF/World Bank Series

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

Monkeywrench Grrl

What's especially ironic about this piece was that it was a piece with a World War II patriotic retro-kitsch motif based on the loud, kitschy, big-time phony WWII-era posters on the bus shelters and subway billboards being used to advertise a recent Disney special-effex blockbuster, the infamous Ben Affleck masterwork Pearl Harbor that came out early that summer... a good three months before the real, live, non-ironic, mindless patriotic kitsch seizure following 9/11.



On the purely non-issue-oriented side, a design and technical epic Win. The layout, pose and color came out a perfect match -- I was able to find a high-res scan of the original WWII piece to point-sample my colors from -- and it was also the first time I made serious use of top-highlight and middletone shadow hatching effects, drawn on a sheet of tracing paper with a dark graphite stick, scanned as a separate layer and dropped over the main drawing in Illustrator. I'd been kicking the idea around for a while, playing with it just a bit, but decided to try it whole hog after seeing Van Gogh's La Meridienne at the Musèe d'Orsay a few months before.

High-res jpg image, 1.8mb

Show Us Where It Hurts

When you're a K Street big shot, you like your local politicians to stay bought and keep their campaign promises, and that's why around the turn of the century, Anthony Williams would've been your man. Among his top priorities as Mayor was closing down DC General Hospital, the city's only public hospital and, in spite of constant alarmist rumors in the Washington Times, not a hell hole.



Among the other jewels of the Williams Legacy was his keeping of campaign promises to close homeless family shelters, to close and sell a fistful of public schools for redevelopment as condominiums or health clubs, and to run poor and working-class people out of DC and replace them with people who can afford to shop downtown and who are most likely to vote for Anthony Williams (or someone like him... like, say, Adrian Fenty).

Medium-res jpg image, 710k