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Northland Poster Collective Closing Its Doors |
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More bad news in a bad economy: Northland Poster Collective, an edgy, feisty producer of posters, T-shirts, pins, bumper stickers and note cards for union activists–and a union shop to boot–is closing its doors at the end of the month.
Says founding member and artist Ricardo Levins Morales:
“After 30 years of undermining Wall Street, it finally fell on us.”
The Minneapolis-based company always lived on a shoestring, and a frayed shoestring at that. But somehow, against all the odds, the collective survived for 30 years. The entire stock is now 50 percent off, and you can get some utterly unique items that may never be available again.
Northland folks are the ones who, among other things, coined or spread some of the slogans you’ll find on union members’ pins and bumper stickers, including “The Labor Movement: The Folks that Brought You the Weekend,” “Friends Don’t Let Friends Cross Picket Lines,” and “Unions: The Anti-Theft Device for Working People.”
There’s a good chance you already have something from Northland in your desk, on your wall, or stuck to your car bumper. But even if you don’t, visit the website at www.northlandposter.com, where you’ll find:
* A poster with a line of militant, working-class, obviously unionized rabbits with the caption, “Bosses Beware: When We’re Screwed, We Multiply.”
* A T-shirt depicting a bespectacled Mother Jones in her demure Victorian dress and her famous quote, “I’m Not a Lady, I’m a Hell Raiser.”
* Just in time for Gay Pride Day June 28, a button that reads, “Gay Marriage Doesn’t Scare Me: No Health Care Does!”
All of the good progressive causes Northland championed—unions, feminism, immigrants’ rights, the LGBT movement, small farmers and countless more—will be a little less vivid and witty when Northland shuts down June 30. Over the years, the staff has had lots of fun, using their art to raise consciousness and creating terrific work that almost no one else was doing.
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The doors might close, but the minds were open and active, and the fruit of that will show on people’s backs and bumpers for years to come. Thanks, Northland sisters and brothers, for all the good work.