Multiple Voices and Messages

CED student posters reveal a variety of oppositional stances to the Vietnam War. Exhortations to “speak out” echoed the lessons of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement. Depictions of global inequity questioned the postwar capitalist order. Caricatures of Nixon and appropriations of the Stars and Stripes cast doubt on U.S. political leadership. Symbols of faith and of militant resistance advanced a pacifist agenda. Other CED posters protested racism and sexism, police violence, and called for broadened youth activism.

 

Many posters created by Gorilla Graphics include the number 4973. Students mistakenly believed that local police would not remove posters bearing this coded stamp of approval: an urban myth that held sway during Wurster Hall’s use as a propaganda workshop.