Author: springtidepress@me.com

Devotional Labor

"Devotional Labor" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

We’ve all been inundated these last months with news headlines about inflation, “quiet quitting,” and an absolutely religious devotion to the economy. Meanwhile, reality contradicts the sensationalism. Oil companies and grocery monopolies see record profits while we pay dearly for the essentials. Employees push back on the idea that they must sacrifice all to employers that see them as replaceable cogs, and some turn to an age-old organized labor tactic called “work to rule.” And the pandemic inspired our leaders to prioritize the stock market over the very lives of workers, families, the vulnerable, and the marginalized. Billionaires became even richer during the pandemic, fattening up on the fruits of our labor while the rest of us fight over the crumbs. Fed up with it all, we turned to the patron saint of American laborers, Frances Perkins, and found a fitting quote that doesn’t mention labor at all:

Feminism means revolution and I am a revolutionist.

Before we committed it to paper, we sat with that quote for a while. After all, in fourteen years of producing our Dead Feminists series, we have intentionally steered clear of using the term feminism, letting the words and deeds of our historical women mark them as feminists instead. But given the current obsession with gender displayed by politicians, the courts, the media, and society at large—overturning Roe v. Wade, a slew of anti-trans legislation and violence, and vast numbers of women and caregivers of all genders leaving the workforce during the pandemic—it felt like now was the time to drop the F-bomb. After all, if the powerful feel such a need to exert control over us, then feminism must be an incendiary force. And just like society itself, the feminist revolution is built, brick by brick, on a foundation of work.

Frances Perkins might seem an unlikely icon of the revolution—she wasn’t a celebrity, or a sex symbol, or a martyr. But it’s impossible to understate how much we owe to her work, her many years sitting at a desk and drafting documents. We have Perkins to thank for the minimum wage, Social Security, work-hour limitations, workplace safety regulations, employee injury compensation, unemployment benefits, anti-child-labor laws, disability income, and more.  It was her pen that sketched out our social safety net, her papers that formed the pillars of our labor laws, her cornerstone that supports our firewall of financial protections. And it was labor—and labor tragedies—that inspired her deeds.

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a garment sweatshop located on the top three floors of a ten-story building near Washington Park in Manhattan, caught fire. Using a then-common practice to prevent theft and unauthorized employee breaks, the exit doors leading to two of the stairwells were locked. (Some historians have asserted that the doors were also locked to prevent union organizers from entering the factory floor.) The foreman, who had the key, escaped as soon as the fire broke out and left the workers behind. Within three minutes, the only unlocked stairwell was inaccessible. Fire ladders only reached the seventh floor, and the two working freight elevators couldn’t keep up with the elevator operators’ brave rescue attempts. The fire killed 146 garment workers—including 123 women and girls, most of whom were recent immigrants of Italian or Jewish heritage. Sixty-two of those killed died by jumping out of a window or falling from the single flimsy fire escape, which collapsed.

Since it was a Saturday, there were many eyewitnesses on the street below, including a young Frances Perkins, who at the time ran the New York office of the National Consumers League. City officials formed the Committee on Public Safety in the aftermath, and appointed Perkins its head. She conducted investigations and enlisted the help of powerful lobby groups like Tammany Hall to pressure the state legislature to enact reforms. Their joint efforts led to the creation of a commission to investigate factory conditions, and by 1913 the legislature had passed 60 new labor laws, making New York State the most progressive in the union for worker’s rights. These laws shortened the work week, mandated building fireproofing, alarm systems and emergency exits, guaranteed better access to food and toilet facilities for workers, and limited work hours for women and children.

Just over 20 years after the disaster, newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Perkins to his cabinet as Secretary of Labor. When she accepted the position, she presented FDR with a long list of social programs that she wanted to fight for—when he agreed to back her agenda, she replied, “Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before. You know that, don’t you?” What followed, starting in the first hundred days of FDR’s presidency, was the establishment of approximately 69 New Deal agencies and programs that the press labeled with the derogatory nickname of “Alphabet Soup.” These initiatives, known by their acronyms, became FDR’s biggest accomplishment and his legacy—yet few know of the women’s work behind them. Perkins did the groundwork and legislative legwork, and many of the programs were inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts before she became First Lady. In 1927 she co-founded Val-Kill Industries, an artisan factory and collective to support traditional craftspeople, in upstate New York. The program became a prototype for the New Deal program as a whole, and provided the framework for some of Perkins’ initiatives.

Each one of the New Deal programs was downright revolutionary, and even now they remain some of the few barriers between prosperity and poverty for many Americans. Yet today we take them for granted, even as conservative politicians try their hardest to dismantle them. Many voters are still more worried about the economy than democracy or even bodily autonomy, while sitting GOP Senator Mike Lee was caught on camera saying it would be his “objective to phase out Social Security” and that he’ll “pull it up by its roots.” These shenanigans are not a new deal: in her time, Frances Perkins was accused of being a communist, and in 1939 she was the first Cabinet member Congress ever attempted to impeach. Though the proceedings were dropped due to lack of evidence, and Perkins went on to serve for the full 12 years of his presidential term, FDR never spoke in her defense. (This is an excellent reminder that we need to speak up for ourselves: your vote on November 8 is essential to push back against the efforts—in Congress and in the courts—to take away our rights.)

Being left high and dry by FDR couldn’t have surprised Perkins, whose professional persona was constructed around neutralizing men’s hostility toward her. She took notes on her male colleagues and filed them in a red envelope labeled “Notes on the Male Mind.” She wore a daily uniform of plain dark suits, zero makeup and smart hats. (She especially liked tricornered ones—a bit of subtle revolutionary flair?) This matronly look had a purpose: she believed that men, particularly in politics, only accepted women colleagues who reminded them of their mothers. She said, “I tried to have as much of a mask as possible. I wanted to give the impression of being a quiet, orderly woman who didn’t buzz-buzz all the time… I knew that a lady interposing an idea into men’s conversation is very unwelcome. I just proceeded on the theory that this was a gentleman’s conversation on the porch of a golf club perhaps. You didn’t butt in with bright ideas.” Instead, she saved those bright ideas and wrote them into federal policy.

Historic WPA posters

In our latest broadside, Devotional Labor, we reference both the social scaffolding Perkins built—with a nod to her family’s brickyard business—and the revolutionary nature of her work. We used metallic inks throughout for an industrial feel and to enhance the print’s bold, graphic shapes. The design and 1930s color scheme is an homage to the famous posters of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which, like Val-Kill Industries before it, put unemployed artists back to work during the Depression.

"Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge," by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1924

Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge, by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1924

Many of those WPA poster artists were in turn influenced by revolutionary posters and other political propaganda from around the world (including, a bit ironically, the Soviet communists).

Historic propaganda posters

Often these historic propaganda posters have a whiff of religion about them, particularly those that feature a central feminine figure. Though some are depicted for their attractiveness, many of these are presented as saints, selfless mother archetypes, or even goddesses.

Historic propaganda posters

Posters from before 1950 with this theme all center white women, but later propaganda from around the world often followed the same playbook: women as warrior-mothers, farmer-goddesses, standard-bearers. Notably, many of these displayed anti-American sentiment (see some of the Vietnamese posters above). And many were created by sympathetic artists in allied countries—like the Angola piece made by a Cuban artist, or the Chinese poster in the lower right that says “American imperialism, get out of Africa.”

Historic propaganda posters

Some of the most interesting of these depict women who aren’t sexy or divine, but sturdy, strong, common, “everywoman” laborers. Everyone has seen Rosie the Riveter, but these posters also celebrated careworn farm matrons and burly industrial mavens. By alluding to this pantheon of heroines in our broadside, we also wanted to reference the other meanings of the word “labor.” There’s the labor of childbirth and rearing—the work of literally creating the next generation of workers—and the labor pains of birthing a movement, of course. But we also acknowledge the unpaid, heavily-gendered work that also underpins our society: caregiving, household economics, and even emotional labor.

Perkins herself was devoutly religious: raised Congregationalist (the modern church that evolved from the Puritans who settled New England) by a conservative family who was horrified by her early suffragist leanings, she joined an Anglo-Catholic church at age 25 and adopted the name of Frances upon her confirmation. Later she brought her Anglo-Catholic sensibilities to her membership in the Episcopal church. So we’ve added a dash of religious iconography to our letterpress devotional. Perkins’ portrait is adorned with a “halo” of alphabet agency acronyms on a blue ground that references religious icons and early-church mosaics. She stands on a silver layer of mighty pens, which form the foundation for the pattern of hammers that support the brick-and-mortar design above.

Frances Perkins Homestead, Newcastle, Maine

To help bolster women and feminist workers in every kind of labor, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to 9to5, a non-profit that fights for workers on many fronts: equal pay, affordable housing, paid sick and family leave, workplace sexual harassment, raising the minimum wage, and more. We are making a second donation to the Frances Perkins Center to help support the historic Perkins Homestead and preserve Perkins’ legacy. We are supporting both organizations via Action Grants from the Dead Feminists Fund.

Purchase your copy in the shop!

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Devotional Labor: No. 33 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 169
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Frances Perkins (1880 – 1965) was born Fannie Coralie Perkins in Boston, but spent time throughout her life at the family’s homestead in Newcastle, Maine. The saltwater farm was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014, and includes remnants from the Perkins’ 19th century brickworks business. Frances graduated from Mt. Holyoke, and became active in the suffrage movement while attending graduate school at Wharton and Columbia. She led the New York office of the National Consumers League, and witnessed the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. As a primary investigator, Perkins’ efforts led to the enactment of some of the first national workplace health and safety laws.

In 1933 Perkins became the first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet, serving as Labor Secretary for Franklin Delano Roosevelt until 1945. She played a key role writing New Deal legislation, enacting an alphabet soup of agencies and programs known by their acronyms: CCC, WPA, NLRB, FLSA, etc. As chairwoman of the President’s Committee on Economic Security, she led the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, to ensure old-age benefits for workers, unemployment insurance, and aid for mothers, children and disabled people. Perkins declared: “I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.” Perkins continued fighting for social and economic justice, serving under the Truman administration on the Civil Service Commission, then teaching until her death. President Carter renamed the US Department of Labor headquarters the Frances Perkins Building in 1980.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in honor of the foundation of labor upon which our society is built. 169 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Knowledge Trust

"Knowledge Trust" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

It’s been awhile, we know. In fact, we haven’t released a new Dead Feminists broadside in over a year—that’s the longest we’ve ever gone between releases, and International Women’s Day felt like the right time to come back. Despite our radio silence, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes. We’ve pivoted several times, embarking on several broadside ideas and then changing our minds (or postponing those ideas for later) as current events seemed to flash before our eyes. Before long there were more issues at hand than we could possibly touch upon with one broadside: the January 6 insurrection, a constant flow of pandemic mis- and disinformation, new voter suppression laws around the country, secretive court dockets, a resurgence in banned books, and the suppression of teaching our true history under the specter of “critical race theory” (a legal subject that has nothing to do with K-12 curricula). And then it dawned on us: we could touch upon all of these things with one broadside, if we found the right quote. Enter educator, activist and suffragist Nannie Helen Burroughs:

Education and justice are democracy’s only life insurance.

Nannie Helen Burroughs, courtesy of Library of Congress

And then, while we were literally on press, Russia invaded Ukraine, and President Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court. That’s when Nannie Helen Burroughs’ words truly hit home with us: without those two pillars of our society, our democracy and freedom will crumble.

Nannie Helen Burroughs (left) with Women's National Baptist Convention, courtesy of Library of Congress

Burroughs was one of many Black suffragists working in the late 19th century, often overshadowed in suffrage history by white women. She contributed to the movement through the circles of education and religion with grassroots efforts: writing for a Baptist newspaper in Philadelphia, founding the Women’s Industrial Club to teach vocational skills in Louisville, and working as secretary for the Women’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention (NBC).

Nannie Helen Burroughs (center) in front of the National Training School for Women and Girls, courtesy of Library of Congress

The NBC gave her the platform and traction she needed, and in 1909 she created an industrial school in Washington, DC, under NBC auspices. The school was funded almost entirely from small, individual donations from women and girls.

Students in front of the National Training School for Women and Girls, courtesy of Library of Congress

At the National Training School for Women and Girls, Burroughs created a curriculum focused on teaching vocational skills.

Students taking a cooking class at the National Training School for Women and Girls, courtesy of Library of Congress

To Burroughs it was crucial for women to be self-sufficient wage earners, so classes included cooking, millinery, domestic science, and more. There was even a print shop on campus. And every student had to pass an African-American history course taught by Burroughs herself, who was determined to teach them the truth about their country.

Students taking a vocational class at the National Training School for Women and Girls, courtesy of Library of Congress

By 1928 she had expanded the campus to include several buildings, and the school welcomed students from all over the US, as well as the Caribbean and even Africa.

 

Burroughs devoted the rest of her life to the National Training School, while still supporting the NBC and Black women’s clubs (who have been a major force in voting rights activism for the past century and a half). Other prominent figures took note of her work, including National Association of Colored Women president Mary McLeod Bethune and Black history scholar Dr. Carter G. Woodson. In the above photo, taken c. 1958, she’s pictured with a young Thurgood Marshall. Just a few years later, he would become the first Black justice to sit on the US Supreme Court.

Detail of "Knowledge Trust" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Spencerian penmanship practice manual

For our latest broadside, Knowledge Trust, we wanted to honor Burroughs by highlighting education as the foundation of our democracy. Our design is chock full of vocational underpinnings, with grid lines and pen strokes that reference the penmanship workbooks common in 19th century curricula.

Detail of "Knowledge Trust" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

It’s also festooned with democratic symbols, from a calligraphic eagle, to signatures that resemble the Declaration of Independence. The lavender ink honors traditional suffrage purple, while the deep green (also a suffrage color) evokes the muted color scheme of American currency. In the background is a coin marked with E  Pluribus Unum, representing grassroots activism and the coin-by-coin donations that built the National Training School. On the coin is a Black woman standing in a pose reminiscent of both the goddess Columbia (an allegorial figure frequently referenced in early American politics and propaganda) and the Statue of Freedom—a bronze female figure that stands atop the cupola of the United States Capitol building. An enslaved man, Philip Reid, was integral to its construction, and, by the time the statue was completed in 1863, was himself finally a free man. Our freedom figure wears a liberty cap, another 19th century symbol modeled on the Phrygian caps that the ancient Romans granted to enslaved people upon their emancipation. (The Statue of Freedom was also designed with one, but the man who oversaw the construction of the Capitol— Jefferson Davis—objected to the liberty cap and had it stricken from the design).

Detail of "Knowledge Trust" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Pen-stroke portraits from a penmanship manual, London, 1705

Even Burroughs’ portrait acknowledges the power of the pen, with her likeness rendered as a single-stroke copperplate doodle.

Detail of "Knowledge Trust" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map labels

There’s one more design reference in there: a nod to the 19th century engravers and typographers who turned something so prosaic as insurance company documents into ornate works of art.

To help insure the next generation of students and voters, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to She the People, a non-profit focused on reaching and enfranchising women voters of color. In light of the situation in Ukraine, we will be making a second donation to Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights to aid the people fighting to save their own democracy there. The UAF Urgent Response Fund for Ukraine supports women, trans, and nonbinary activists on the ground by providing flexible funding and security support. We are supporting both organizations via Action Grants from the Dead Feminists Fund.

Purchase your copy in the shop!

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Knowledge Trust: No. 32 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 190
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Nannie Helen Burroughs (c. 1879 – 1961) was born in Orange, Virginia and moved with her mother to Washington, DC after her father’s death. As a student at M Street High School, she met activists Mary Church Terrell and Anna J. Cooper. After graduating with honors, she moved to Kentucky to work for the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention (NBC). At NBC’s annual meeting in 1900, Burroughs’ speech “How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping” gained national attention and inspired her to co-found the NBC auxiliary Woman’s Convention (WC), the largest Black women’s organization in the United States. Here Black women could exercise their labor and organizing power independent of male membership and white women suffragists. Burroughs served the WC for over 40 years, first as corresponding secretary, then as president.

In 1907, funded by donations from women and children, Burroughs opened the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC, adopting the motto “We specialize in the wholly impossible.” To develop “the fiber of a sturdy moral, industrious and intellectual woman,” students learned vocational skills to become self-­sufficient wage earners. Burroughs’ African-American history class was a graduation requirement. She served as school president until her death. The former Trades Hall, now a National Historic Landmark, today houses the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in gratitude to the Black women who have insured our democracy’s future beneficiaries. 190 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Weave the People

"Weave the People" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

We are less than a week from Election Day, and just six weeks following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We are still in shock, mourning her loss. The grief is compounded and exacerbated by the continuing twin pandemics of COVID-19 and flagrant racism enflamed by the current administration. We started the Dead Feminists series in 2008 as an urgent response to an ugly, divisive election—as artists with access to the power of a printing press, we had something to say. Upon RBG’s death, many women reached out in search of our reaction—after all, we had all been hoping against hope for months that she could hold on—a stitch in time to save nine (justices). Still, we hesitated, stunned and overwhelmed. Many of the women we feature are relatively unknown, with quotes that we joyfully amplify in print to tie to issues of social justice. We just weren’t sure we could add anything to the conversation by putting yet another RBG-themed illustration in the world.

But the Republican push to nominate and confirm Amy Coney Barrett was the tipping point. This third nominee of the current administration has been rammed through despite the overwhelming disapproval of the populace, and zero support from Democrats. It deliberately upsets any balance in the Supreme Court and threatens Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, marriage equality, immigrant rights, and many other long-since settled laws and norms supported by the majority of voters. The notion that Barrett, who has RBG to thank for the career doors opened for her, will take her place specifically to shut those doors again on her fellow Americans, is disgusting and disturbing. Her complete evasion of confirmation questions and the rushed nature of the hearings—all while the public was in the midst of voting—gives us much to fear, especially if (when?) the outcome of the election will be determined by the Supreme Court.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, “We the people.”
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Our 31st broadside honors Justice Ginsburg and especially her work on behalf of women. She spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors (and one of its general counsel) in the 1970s. Ginsburg was hired as the first director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972. 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 appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993. Between Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement in 2006 and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, Ginsburg was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her dissents, notably in 2007’s Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion was credited with inspiring the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed into law in 2009, making it easier for employees to win pay discrimination claims. “To turn in a new direction, the court first had to gain an understanding that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could have the opposite effect.” 

Justice Ginsburg took pains to make clear that the Constitution did not require ignoring all differences between the sexes. “Inherent differences between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration,” she wrote, “but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” Any differential treatment, she emphasized, must not “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”

 

American pop culture latched on to Ginsburg’s passionate dissents and sense of style, dubbing her “The Notorious R.B.G.” Most recognizable were the iconic collars she wore over her robes (although Justice O’Connor was known for wearing them, too). “You know, the standard robe is made for a man because it has a place for the shirt to show, and the tie,” Ginsburg said. “So Sandra Day O’Connor and I thought it would be appropriate if we included as part of our robe something typical of a woman.” Her first court portrait features a rather plain white collar worn by French justices, but in later years they became more elaborate. The favorite in her vast collection was a delicate French jabot made in South Africa (which she wore to Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 2005). She wore different collars to reflect different legal opinions, including her famous “Dissent Collar,” black and studded with sharp-edged rhinestones. “When a justice is of the firm view that the majority got it wrong, she is free to say so in dissent. I take advantage of that prerogative, when I think it important, as do my colleagues.”

RBG’s collars are the most obvious point of entry for depicting her life and work visually—as evidenced by the veritable mountain of recent art made about her in recent years. But though much has been said and done along these lines already, we were deeply interested in the symbolic nature of each of her collars, and that is what most inspired our broadside. Handmade textiles (garments, gifts, tapestries, heirlooms, religious vestments, etc.) historically come imbued with symbolism anyway, with stories and significance worked into every stitch—and RBG obviously understood this. Her collars got more ornate and symbolic over time, and her use of them spoke volumes, even when she remained silent herself (she even wore her Dissent Collar the day after the 2016 election!). These collars became shorthand for “Notorious R.B.G.”, and a rallying symbol for the people who loved her. They became the thing we all latched onto to say farewell to her when she passed. The fact that Ginsburg died on Erev Rosh Hashanah (the eve of the Jewish new year) only heightened her cult appeal, catapulting her into legendary status. Jewish tradition holds that those who die on that day “are the ones God has held back until the last moment [because] they were needed most and were the most righteous,” wrote Nina Totenberg of NPR, just after RBG’s death. Such a righteous person is called a “tzaddik,” a Hebrew word that shares a root with the “tzedek,” the word for justice. May her memory be a revolution.

Our 31st broadside is both simple and complex—just like the underpinnings of our democracy. For the first time ever, we’ve printed the piece in just one color, an intentional choice to underline the solemnity of our collective loss. And right now, as we see it, the choices for our nation are laid out in stark black-and-white. We are holding our collective breath for an election that will resoundingly confirm the country’s desire to darn, repair, and salvage (selvedge!) our nation into a democracy that isn’t moth-eaten and full of gaping holes.

Within the simplicity of our color scheme, our design is incredibly intricate, inspired by historic lacemaking methods and other “women’s work:” knitting, tatting, and bobbin lace. (Not to mention the endless possibilities to reveal our bias for textile puns.) The words of RBG’s quote are connected by one long, fraying thread, looping and weaving itself into a collar in the shape of a delicate safety net below the linked hands of little tatted thread people. This represents our democracy—which was also hand-wrought and stitched together over the course of centuries, whose weft has become warped of late, and which could easily unravel with continued assaults. The lettering of the final words of the quote mirrors the original handwritten script of the preamble of the Constitution.

And more, our collar evokes RBG’s “Tzedek Collar,” one she debuted in 2019. This collar was designed by Michigan artist Marcy Epstein and gifted to Ginsburg in recognition of her human rights work. Inspired by historic Belgian lace, the collar includes beading that references sacred Judaic geometry, and three Hebrew letters: tsade, dalet, and kuf, (צדק) which form the word “tzedek.”  This represents the Jewish tenet of “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” (Justice, justice you shall pursue)—the phrase that Ginsburg had on display in her judge’s chambers. Those same three Hebrew characters are woven into our broadside, below the scalloped hem and above Ginsburg’s name.

Much like the impetus to create this print, our choice of the title was the result of community input. We had several options, but we remained undecided on Selvedge Our Democracy and Weave the People. So we decided to thread the needle and put it to a vote on social media—one vote per person, no Electoral-College or shadow-docket SCOTUS shenanigans. Weave the People won by a landslide.

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Weave the People: No. 31 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 220
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed from hand-drawn lettering and illustrations on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

In honor of Justice Ginsburg’s contributions to the rule of law, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the National Women’s Law Center, via an Action Grant from the Dead Feminists Fund. The NWLC fights for gender justice—in the courts, in public policy, and in our society—working across the issues that are central to the lives of women and girls.

UPDATE, 11/30/2020: We are now completely sold out. Reproduction postcards of the original black design are available in the shop. Thank you for your support!

UPDATE, 11/16/2020: We now have a one-print-per-person limit for what remains in the gold edition (see below), in order to make what remains in the edition available to as many people as possible. Thank you for your understanding!

UPDATE, 11/11/20: The edition sold out almost instantaneously—in twelve years of doing this series, this has never happened before! We are floored, and SO thankful for your support. Because this print has had such an overwhelming response, we have made an unusual decision. For the first time ever, we have printed a second, alternate edition, called Re-Weave the People. We normally never reprint our editions, and have very strong opinions about the practice and the risk of devaluing prints for our collectors. Because of this, we’ve set up some ground rules about this new edition:

• The broadsides are printed in gold ink, instead of black—both to differentiate them and to symbolize the preciousness of our democracy
• Still letterpress-printed by hand, still limited-edition, same paper, same price
• Gold prints are signed, but not numbered
• Gold prints are instead labeled with “APG” (“artist proof – gold”)
• There won’t be a third edition of this broadside (though postcards will be available in late-November)
• We will not be doing reprints for any of our older broadside designs

We released the first 150 prints in the gold edition, along with a few remaining APs (artist proofs) of the black edition left from cancelled orders, on Wednesday, November 11. The remaining gold prints will become available on Monday, November 16.

The best part, for us, about doing this second edition is that we get to celebrate the Biden/Harris victory and make more donations! We watched in awe as Stacey Abrams and her fellow Georgia organizers turned their state blue for the first time in decades—despite some of the worst voter suppression in the country (which cost Abrams the governorship two years ago). So in honor of their work, and in hopes that they might have success in the January run-offs, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the New Georgia Project—a nonpartisan effort to register voters in the state of Georgia, particularly women voters of color, who are disproportionately disenfranchised there. But Abrams is far from alone in this work, and our democracy needs defending on the national front, too. So we will also be donating to the Brennan Center for Justice, a bipartisan nonprofit that fights on many fronts: defending our elections, strengthening the courts, battling gerrymandering, ending mass incarceration, enfranchising every American, and more. Both donations will come in the form of Action Grants from the Dead Feminists Fund.

Colophon reads:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) was born Joan Ruth Bader in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and married Martin D. Ginsburg. She became a mother before starting law school, first at Harvard and then at Columbia, graduating co-first in her class. President Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1980, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993. Later in her tenure, she became more forceful with her opinions. Her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. was credited with inspiring the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for employees to win pay discrimination claims. Ginsburg spent much of her career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights. She made clear that the Constitution did not require ignoring differences between men and women, but that any differential treatment, must not “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”

Ginsburg’s judicial dissents received attention in American popular culture, which earned her the moniker “The Notorious R.B.G.” Her trademark of wearing feminine lace collars over her robes enhanced this persona—which became more elaborate and symbolic over the years. A yellow jabot marked her approval, while her famous dissent collar (which she wore the day after the 2016 election) was black and spiked with rhinestones. In 2019 she debuted a collar that combined Belgian-style lace with the word “Tzedek” woven in Hebrew, signifying the Jewish tenet of “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” (“Justice, justice you shall pursue”). Despite her heroic efforts to hold on through terminal cancer, she died before a progressive President could appoint her successor. RBG’s death in this tumultuous year may unravel the progress made during her tenure. Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, as we attempt to reknit the fragile safety net that supports our democracy—and which now hangs by a thread. 220 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Detail of "Re-weave the People" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Truth or Consequences

"Truth or Consequences" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Today, August 26, 2020, is Women’s Equality Day — and also the 100th anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, when it became the law. We chose this anniversary to release our 30th Dead Feminists broadside: our series began with suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, after all. Yet we knew back in 2008 that Stanton was a problematic choice. She, and most white suffragists, deliberately excluded their Black peers, and resorted to racist rhetoric in their campaigns to further distance themselves from civil rights efforts of the day. When the vote was won — supposedly for “all” women — racist legislation and loopholes effectively disenfranchised many women of color for decades to come. Even today, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on the books, women everywhere, particularly Black women, face breathtaking voter suppression and barriers to enfranchisement.

Graphics for "Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting" exhibition at the Washington State History Museum, designed by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

We keep returning to this historical and contemporary inequality through our work on the Votes for Women exhibition at the Washington State History Museum (WSHM). Again and again we are reminded that the victory of the women’s suffrage movement was incomplete, and will remain so until the day that voter suppression and disenfranchisement are ended. We also wanted to tell a more complete story of the Black women behind the suffrage movement — so our research (and output) for both the museum and our broadside overlap in many places.

The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
– Ida. B. Wells

For our 30th broadside, we feature the words and work of a Black suffragist, to tell the story of the marginalized women who fought for the rights of every woman, regardless of race or class. As we spent nearly a year developing the design, the meaning behind our print changed and evolved.

Our broadside was initially intended to mark the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States, and simply tell the story of Black suffragists and how their work resonates today. As 2020 unfolds, however, our print has also come to represent the twin crises of the pandemic and worldwide protests in response to police brutality and extrajudicial murders perpetrated against Black people. These crises have highlighted and exacerbated the systemic racial inequality already present in American society — as well as the responsibility of white women to use our rights and privileges against this injustice.

Civil rights activist, investigative journalist, suffragist, and community organizer Ida B. Wells is heralded as one of the mothers of intersectional feminism — referring to a term coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how race, gender, and class often overlap to complicate issues of inequality. Wells devoted her entire life’s work to this intersection, fighting for women’s rights and racial justice along multiple fronts.

As a suffragist, Wells was active in the women’s club movement, particularly after she relocated to Chicago from the South. In 1893 she founded the Women’s Era Club (later renamed the Ida B. Wells Club in her honor), and in 1913, in response to an Illinois law that allowed women to vote in certain elections (though not for all), she co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago with Belle Squire. The club focused on expanding voting rights for all women, encouraging civic engagement among Black women, and electing Black Chicagoans to city offices. Two years later, the Alpha Suffrage Club played a major role in electing Oscar DePriest as Chicago’s first Black alderman.

In 1913 the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)—the famous suffrage group whose early leaders included Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Carrie Chapman Catt—planned a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. The event drew suffragists from around the country to demand universal voting rights. A delegation from the Alpha Suffrage Club, including Ida B. Wells, also attended the march. The day of the march, the head of the Illinois NAWSA delegation told the Alpha Suffrage Club members that they wanted “to keep the delegation entirely white” and instructed all Black suffragists to walk at the end of the parade in a “colored delegation.” Wells waited with spectators until the parade was underway, and then stepped into the white Chicago delegation as they passed by.

Above: NAACP map published in 1922, showing lynchings in the U.S. between 1889 and 1921.

Perhaps best-known among Wells’s work was the decades of investigative journalism work she devoted to researching and exposing lynchings. In 1909 she addressed the National Negro Conference, a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which she co-founded with W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, and Moorfield Storey. In defining lynching, Wells said to the group, “First: lynching is color-line murder. Second: Crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third: It is a national crime and requires a national remedy.” Between 1883 (the start of Wells’s data collecting) and 1950, more than 4,400 people had been lynched, with incidents in nearly every state of the Union.  More than 4,000 of these were men, and 3,000 victims were Black (most lynchings of white and non-Black people of color occurred in the West and Southwest)—99 victims were women. Furthermore, as much of the data modern historians and sociologists use on lynching was uncovered by Wells herself, her statement was nothing short of revolutionary at the time. For decades, apologists for lynching and other extrajudicial murders held up rape and the “protection of women” as a justification. Yet according to a 2019 academic paper, a 1913 analysis of Wells’s data showed that while about a quarter of lynchings to date were supposedly in response to rape, only about two percent of Black men convicted of “major offenses” and imprisoned were sentenced for rape. Meanwhile, imprisoned whites at the time had much higher levels of rape convictions, suggesting that white offenders benefited from the legal system, while Black people accused of a crime were simply executed without arrest or trial. Furthermore, lynching was a key form of voter suppression and intimidation in the South: a 2017 study found that lynchings there reduced Black voter turnout by 2.5 points.

Judging by the news of late, we are still very far from finding a “national remedy” for this ongoing miscarriage of justice. In June of this year, four Black men were found hanging from trees in three different states—each death was ruled a suicide, despite the protests of the men’s families and national media attention. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, first introduced in Congress in 1918, still hasn’t managed to be passed into law—nor have subsequent bills based on the original. The most recent version of the bill (the 2020 Emmett Till Antilynching Act which passed the House by a 410-4 vote) has been held up in the Senate by one man: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He refused to honor his fellow senators’ wish to pass the bill by unanimous consent. As a result, lynching is still not a federal crime (or federal hate crime, as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act would classify it) in our country.

On top of that, extrajudicial murder by authorities continues unabated. So far in 2020, there have been just twelve days in which nobody in America was killed by a police officer. By the end of July, already 558 civilians had been fatally shot by police—111 of whom were Black. In 2019 the National Academy of Sciences noted that being killed by police was one of the leading causes of death for young Black men in America. One in 1,000 Black men and boys can expect to die at the hands of the police—that’s about 2.5 times more than white men and boys. (For comparison, the CDC states approximately 1 in 8,000 Americans die in car accidents each year.)

All of this is in addition to the “everyday” inequalities and injustice Black Americans face, whether they are “illegal” or not: persistent segregation in schools and neighborhoods; pay disparity based on both sex and race; lack of generational wealth; unfair housing practices; worse outcomes for Black mothers in childbirth; targeted voter suppression; the list goes on. And 2020 has heaped even more onto the pile, with COVID-19 disproportionately hospitalizing and killing Black patients. Wells was right to tie racial violence and inequality to universal suffrage: the problems are intersectional, and so must be the solutions.

Process image of "Truth or Consequences" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Our 30th broadside, Truth or Consequences, is designed in red, white, and blue, symbolizing the rights of all Americans. Wells’s portrait sits in a ring of light while celestial symbols (stars, moons, wings) represent the light of truth. Her quote is presented in purple, the traditional color of the women’s suffrage movement — yet our broadside is only printed in red and blue. The text emerges where the two colors overlap to create purple: without this intersection of colors, the words are unreadable.

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Truth or Consequences: No. 30 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 193
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed from hand-drawn lettering and illustrations on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

To help continue Ida B. Wells’s legacy, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, via an Action Grant from the Dead Feminists Fund. The Society is focused on increasing the ranks, retention, and profile of reporters and editors of color in the field of journalism and investigative reporting.

Purchase your copy in the shop

Colophon reads:
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1862 – 1931) was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her parents and infant brother died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, leaving her to care for five siblings. At 21 she moved to Memphis, commuting by train to teach at a rural school. After refusing to give up her purchased seat in a first class car, she was forced off the train. Wells filed and won a lawsuit in 1884, but the state Supreme Court reversed the decision. The experience launched her writing career, and she bought into a small newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight. She began investigating the practice of lynching, calling it “a national crime [requiring] a national remedy.” By 1950 more than 4,400 people — most of them Black men, most in the South — were murdered, sometimes witnessed by crowds for entertainment. Wells published pamphlets filled with firsthand accounts and statistics, revealing a relentless regime of terror and oppression. In response, white mobs sent death threats and destroyed her printing press, forcing her to flee Memphis.

Moving north to Chicago, she also became a tireless worker for civil rights and women’s suffrage. In 1893 she founded the Women’s Era Club, a first-of-its-kind civic club for Black women in Chicago. She also co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club to focus on expanding voting rights for all women, and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, she and other Black suffragists refused to march in the rear, instead joining white marchers up front. Wells spent the rest of her life advocating for civil rights, equality, and universal suffrage for people of every race, class, and sex. She was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020, in recognition of her “outstanding and courageous” investigative journalism on lynching.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in honor of women who stand at the intersection of feminism and racial justice, interrogating inequality. 193 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, prints and photographs division.

It feels weird to start a blog post in any sort of “normal” way right now. Thanks to the pandemic, it’s hard to know what to say. It also feels weird to open this like the thousands of Covid-era emails we’ve all received this year, like so many parallel-universe pandemic Hallmark cards: “Hope you’re safe and well in these difficult times…”

But the terrible truth is, odds are that at least some of you reading this are not at all safe or well. Some of you may have been ill or hospitalized, or lost loved ones to the virus. Others of you may have lost a job (or your own small business) or you may be scrambling to make ends meet on reduced hours or a furloughed position. Still others of you are front-line essential workers: tending to patients, or serving customers in person, or dreading the start of a school year where parents and teachers have to make impossible choices and perform advanced risk-calculus daily. And at the same time, many of you may be members of a marginalized population—enduring the added risk and indignation and danger of being Black, Indigenous, trans, a person of color, or an immigrant in a nation careening full-tilt toward fascism, even more entrenched white supremacy and police brutality, and economic ruin. All while the global pandemic and rampant voter suppression target our marginalized friends and family in disproportionate numbers. Oh, and by the way, the administration is trying to kill the U.S. Postal Service while everyone’s just trying to send our rent check or a ballot by the deadline, or receive our benefits check or prescription medication in the mail, or run our thanks-to-Covid-mail-order-only businesses.

In other words… yeah. It’s a lot.

So where do any of us go from here? For Jessica and me, our work fuels us, and our collaboration sustains us. Working on the Dead Feminists series has kept us focused—and given us plenty to do. (Heaven knows there’s no shortage of issues to make broadsides about, right?)

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, prints and photographs division.

Above: Alice Paul unfurls the suffrage flag she sewed to celebrate the ratification of the 19th Amendment. She sewed each star onto the flag as each new state ratified the amendment, until the necessary total of 36 was reached. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Despite every curve ball the world (and specifically America) has thrown at us, we still have reason to celebrate today. On this day 100 years ago, Tennessee became the 36th and final state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the right to vote to women in the United States. The Amendment didn’t officially become law until August 26th, but we wanted to mark today’s milestone, as well. It took almost eighty years for the women’s suffrage movement to win the vote, but their cause excluded many, and their victory was incomplete. Today we are thinking about women all over America—many of whom, despite constitutional “equality,” still don’t have fully equal access to the ballot box. Voter suppression and other barriers to suffrage still threaten our democracy, and disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and other women of color—denying them the vote that the Constitution is specifically supposed to protect.

Graphics for "Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting" exhibition at the Washington State History Museum, designed by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

This historical and contemporary inequality has been on our minds for many months. Since last year we have been designing, writing, and curatingVotes for Women: 100 Years and Counting, the women’s suffrage centennial exhibition with the team at the Washington State History Museum (WSHM). Votes for Women traces the history of the women’s suffrage movement and the ongoing struggle for voting equality for all Americans—all in an interactive voting game for visitors. As events have unfolded in real time—from voter suppression to the possibility of the first woman serving as Vice President—we’re updating content accordingly.

Thanks to the COVID-19 global pandemic, WSHM has been closed to visitors since March, and the Votes for Women exhibit is postponed with run dates unknown. (As soon as the museum is safe to open again and we can confirm the dates, we’ll let you know. Even if reopening is a long time off, WSHM is committed to running the exhibit in full, one day, no matter what.)

In the meantime, we still have another important anniversary to commemorate. Next Wednesday, August 26, is Women’s Equality Day, and the 100th anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment. This is the day that women’s suffrage became officially legal in the United States, and we wanted to celebrate by giving you a taste of the museum show!

Graphics for "Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting" exhibition at the Washington State History Museum, designed by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Join us for a conversation with WSHM staff on the development of the Votes for Women exhibition. You’ll get a look at the design of the exhibition (including the overall look we developed, based on Jessica’s collection of 19th-century metal cuts and ornaments), the premiere of our 30th Dead Feminists broadside, and a behind-the scenes look at the interactive game we created at the heart of the show.

Graphics for "Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting" exhibition at the Washington State History Museum, designed by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

In Conversation: Dead Feminists and the Creation of
Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting

Wednesday, August 26, 7-8:30 pm
Talk broadcast through Facebook Live
You can follow the Facebook Event at this link,
or access the video on the WSHM Facebook Videos Page once it goes live.
(Please note, the video won’t appear in the list of videos until the event actually starts, so you may have to refresh the page to see it, if you get there first!)

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Wherever this finds you, in whatever state of anger or worry or dread or even calm, please know that you are in our thoughts. We hope you are safe, and that the things you need are at your fingertips. And we hope that we can provide you with a small bit of entertainment and food for thought online in the coming week—even if we can’t see you in person right now. Many thanks for all your support.

Trees of Life

"Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

This season we are celebrating the efforts of young, live feminists like Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier,  India Logan-Riley, Isra Hirsi, Winnie Asiti, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, and many others. These young women are leading people of all ages and nationalities into the streets to demand decisive climate action from our world leaders. In solidarity with their efforts, our newest Dead Feminists broadside highlights the words of Africa’s “Mother of Trees,” Wangari Maathai:

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.

Detail of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Maathai dedicated her life’s work to restoring the environment in her home country of Kenya. Along with a tireless group of women followers, she planted millions of trees, disrupting and enraging a corrupt, authoritarian regime in the process. While her government was bent on resource extraction, the theft of public lands, and a kleptocratic program of personal enrichment (stop us if any of this sounds familiar), Maathai kept planting seeds—and held her ground.

Process photo of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

I wanted my illustrations to be really graphic and bold, with strong, simple silhouettes—I ended up thinking a lot about Crockett Johnson’s illustrations in the midcentury children’s classic, The Carrot Seed. While the book wasn’t a direct or obvious reference, there’s definitely a link there (at least in my head!). Printing was the real challenge here, though. Jessica had some seriously tight registration to contend with, as well as the tricky business of printing delicate text and large flood areas in the same print run (without overinking or underinking either one!).

Process photo of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Color ended up being our other big challenge here. We mocked up many different color schemes, never quite happy with any of them. We wanted to avoid too-obvious tree colors like brown or leafy green, but going too far in the other direction just seemed…weird. Then it dawned on us to look at East African textiles for inspiration, and that made us approach the inking station with new eyes. We took those naturalistic tree colors and cranked the saturation up to eleven—and suddenly it all clicked.

Detail of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Our 29th broadside is printed in the bold, joyful colors of kitenge fabric, which Wangari Maathai wore as her personal signature. Central to the design is an African baobab tree, also known in folklore as the tree of life. The baobab’s iconic stout trunk anchors the composition, with its roots forming Maathai’s name and a white baobab blossom framing her portrait. Elsewhere in the design are a baobab sapling and even a baobab seed (hint: look for a certain comma).

Detail of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

To symbolize the interconnected nature of the world’s biomes and climates, the tree is adorned with “fruit” (drawn to resemble the baobab’s pendulous hanging fruit) portraying a number of vulnerable and endangered Kenyan species, including the African wild dog, Grévy’s zebra, black rhinoceros, hirola (Hunter’s antelope), lesser kudu, and tree pangolin.

Detail of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

To help continue Wangari Maathai’s efforts, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to two tree-planting organizations. First up is Maathai’s own Green Belt Movement, which is continuing her legacy in East Africa. Closer to home, we are also contributing to One Tree Planted, an American nonprofit that plants a tree for every dollar donated (and also follows up over time to make sure the planted trees actually survive). We are supporting both organizations via Action Grants from the Dead Feminists Fund.

Purchase your copy in the shop!

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Trees of Life: No. 29 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 176
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed from hand-drawn lettering and illustrations on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Wangari Muta Maathai (1940 – 2011) was born in the central highlands of Kenya, in a rural village. Unlike many girls her age she attended school, and was awarded a scholarship to attend college in the United States, focusing on biology. She returned to Kenya to earn a PhD — the first East African woman to do so. She joined the National Council of Women in 1976, working with women to plant trees. Through Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, more than 51 million trees have been planted throughout Kenya, reforesting the environment and improving the quality of life. Tree planting gave Maathai an opportunity to teach communities to protect their own interests, pursue self-government and regain a cultural foundation stripped away by colonial rule and government corruption. The Green Belt Movement grew with Maathai on the front line, fighting authoritarian abuses of power, land-grabbing, and illegal detention of political opponents. Kenya returned to a multi-party democracy in 2002 and Maathai was overwhelmingly elected to Parliament, also serving in the Ministry for Environmental and Natural Resources. In 2004 Maathai was the first African woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, honoring her lifelong commitment to democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. Her example inspires us to action: “It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.”

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, with hope that our collective climate action will bear fruit for the planet. 176 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Detail of "Trees of Life" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Liberté, Egalité, Sororité

This year we have been following current events with increasing dismay—lately it seems like women are embattled on every front. At the heart of every struggle are women telling their stories, testifying en masse to uncover and combat abuse, inequality, and the erosion of our civil rights. What is shocking is just how many women coming forward it takes for our testimonies to be taken seriously. Women have learned time and time again that we must band together, seeking justice in numbers. So for our newest Dead Feminists broadside, we turned to Simone de Beauvoir, who shepherded hundreds of women together to speak up for the rights of all:

Ne pariez pas sur l’avenir, agissez maintenant, sans plus attendre. (Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.)

Simone de Beauvoir was a complex, controversial, even problematic figure all her life. Hesitant to call herself a philosopher, she nevertheless was an influential member of the French existentialist movement. Her many essays and books examined the very idea of self, particularly that of women in light of society’s expectations and constraints. She contended that women are as capable of choice as men, and that when women take responsibility for themselves and the world, they can choose their own freedom. Her tumultuous personal life, which made her as infamous as her writings, embodied this staunch belief in freedom of choice.  Unwilling ever to marry or even set up a joint household with anyone, de Beauvoir maintained a 51-year partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre as well as numerous affairs with both men and women. Her insistence on intrapersonal, educational and economic independence flew in the face of what she called society’s “othering” of women through stereotypes and the myth of the feminine mystique.

 

In the 1970s, de Beauvoir finally “came out” publicly as a feminist, and used her platform to advocate for reproductive rights for French women. In 1971 she wrote a manifesto calling for the legalization of abortion, and published it in a prominent magazine. She knew that simply calling for change wouldn’t be enough to tip the scales—nor would simply sharing her own story in the process. So she gathered together hundreds of other women who were willing to come forward and testify that they, too, had undergone illegal abortions. These women signed the Manifeste des 343, in full knowledge that they might risk persecution (or even prosecution) for speaking up. American women soon followed, when 53 others — including Billie Jean King, Gloria Steinem and Judy Collins—told their own abortion stories in Ms. magazine. Today there are projects like Lindy West’s Shout Your Abortion, where contemporary women of all ages speak the hard truths that society is often unwilling to hear. Beyond their personal choices, what these women have in common is the knowledge that it takes reaching critical mass before societal change will come.

This has all happened before in other public spheres, and unfortunately, it will all happen again. And that’s because almost all of us know on an instinctual level that as far as society is concerned, one woman’s testimony is garbage. When we come forward to report assault or abuse, we are at best patronized or disbelieved—at worst vilified, doxxed, threatened, sued, attacked, even murdered. When we remain silent, we are criticized for not reporting, for not protecting future victims. There is no winning this terrible game, so we seek safety—and credibility—in numbers. In 1991 a group of 1600 Black women took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, lending their names and support for Anita Hill as she testified against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. This year 1600 men did the same for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, as she gave sworn testimony against Brett Kavanaugh. Both Thomas and Kavanaugh were confirmed to lifetime Court appointments—Dr. Blasey Ford is still living in hiding to protect her family from the constant threats she receives. As of November 2018, 499 gymnasts have come forward to accuse sports doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse—it took more than 20 years of reporting to the authorities by at least 100 of these victims (several of them pictured above) before the case finally went to trial. Sixty accusers and one male comedian speaking out were required to bring Bill Cosby to justice. At least as many women have come forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein; it is yet to be determined whether he’ll stand trial for the allegations against him. (Even Simone de Beauvoir found herself on the other side of the witness stand, when several of her former female students came forward and accused her of seducing them while they were still minors.) And when it comes to legislation for women’s rights, it takes much more than a village—it takes all of us speaking with one voice.

Detail of "Liberté, Egalité, Sororité" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

In light of these and countless other stories, our 28th broadside, Liberté, Egalité, Sororité, is layered with meaning. To symbolize the sheer number of women it takes to speak out before our testimonies are taken seriously, every name from the Manifeste des 343 shines through Simone de Beauvoir’s translucent quote. These names are cut off by the edges of the paper, signifying the disbelief and contempt women face when they come forward. In the center of the design is a trio of red tulips, as a nod to Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale, which teems with floral metaphors of femininity, fertility, death and control.

Detail of "Liberté, Egalité, Sororité" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

To help fight the erosion of reproductive rights and protect Roe, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to Center for Reproductive Rights, via an Action Grant from the Dead Feminists Fund. The Center for Reproductive Rights uses the power of law to advance reproductive rights as fundamental human rights around the world.

Purchase your copy in the shop!

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Liberté, Egalité, Sororité: No. 28 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 173
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed from hand-drawn lettering and illustrations on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was born to a bourgeois Parisian family who lost their fortune just after World War I. With upward mobility via marriage no longer an option, de Beauvoir focused on her education in order to earn an independent living. In 1928 she became the ninth woman to earn a degree from the Sorbonne, completing a thesis in philosophy. After an early teaching career (which ended once her relationships with underage female students came to light), de Beauvoir devoted her time to writing. Her numerous affairs with other writers also influenced her (and their) work, most notably her 51-year partnership with fellow existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. In her landmark 1949 book Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), she declared, “One is not born but becomes a woman,” defining arbitrary societal gender constructs as the source of women’s oppression.

In 1971 de Beauvoir wrote and signed the Manifeste des 343, published in the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. This petition of prominent women who underwent illegal abortions called for free access to contraception and the legalization of abortion. Despite attacks by the media—who dubbed the signers 343 salopes (sluts)—the document inspired 331 American doctors to publish a similar manifesto ahead of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. In 1975 France followed suit with the passage of the “Veil Law” which legalized abortion.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, honoring the brave women who come forward despite personal threats, testifying to secure and protect the rights of all. 173 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

Detail of "Liberté, Egalité, Sororité" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Special thanks to our friends Rebecca Wilkin and Gilles Brocard for their French translation assistance!

Seeding the Vote

Midterm elections are looming, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. We knew right away that with this being an election year, we wanted to feature voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer for our next Dead Feminists broadside.  But before long we realized that Hamer could carry us down the rabbit hole, with seemingly endless social issues to investigate through the lens of her life and work. Which should be the focus for our broadside? Where would we even start? We could have chosen any number of things, just based on Hamer’s story. Her Congressional bid evoked the contemporary groundswell of women newly running for office. Her forced sterilization in 1961 brought up reproductive rights and the Pro-Choice movement’s shadow history of racist eugenics. Her survival of a beating in a county jail underscored this country’s persistent police brutality against Black citizens. Her work with community agriculture reminded us of America’s continued lack of food security and equal access to nutrition for the working poor. And taken together, all of these myriad issues and problems are distilled and rarefied by Hamer’s simple truism:

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

It was that simplicity that swayed us in the end: Hamer started with focusing on the vote, and so did we. As the midterms approach, it is increasingly obvious to us that turning out the vote is the only way to turn the rising tide of state-sanctioned inequality and violence. It is more important than ever to help continue Hamer’s work, to combat racism and make sure that all Americans have the same access to their constitutionally-protected rights of suffrage. That task is as difficult as it’s been in decades, thanks to the Supreme Court overturning key portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. And Black voters—those voters who most reliably stand for progressive causes and candidates, and who are already disproportionally targeted for disenfranchisement—are feeling the effects of that ruling. If progressives want their help in November, we need to help them first.

Fannie Lou Townsend was one of 20 children born to a family of sharecroppers in Mississippi; by the time she was a teenager, she was picking up to 300 pounds of Mississippi Delta cotton per day, despite a permanent leg injury from having polio as a child. Though she was only able to attend school through age 12, she loved learning and was an avid reader—years of Bible study forged for her a personal connection between scriptural stories of liberation and the modern Civil Rights movement.  In 1945 she married Perry “Pap” Hamer, a fellow sharecropper, and the couple later adopted two daughters. In 1962 she attended her first mass meeting—it was there that she learned for the first time, at the age of 44, that Black people had the right to vote. A few days later she and sixteen others boarded a bus to Indianola, MS to register as voters (her attempt was unsuccessful, thanks to literacy tests and poll taxes)—and the following day, she was fired from her plantation job. Pap was fired shortly afterward.

 

Hamer continued to try to register to vote, and started helping others attempt to overcome the racist literacy tests, poll taxes and transportation challenges that stood in the way. As her interest in direct action for civil rights increased, so did the attempts to silence her. Days after she lost her plantation job, she survived a drive-by shooting attempt by white supremacists. In 1963, while on a bus trip with fellow activisits from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Hamer and several others were arrested after being refused service at a cafe in Winona, MS. After being taken to the county jail, a state trooper took Hamer into a cell and ordered two inmates to beat her with blackjacks while the police held her down and groped her. The state trooper then joined in on the near-fatal beating, leaving Hamer with permanent damage to her legs, eyes and kidneys. She kept up her activism anyway: “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared — but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”

After the police beating, Hamer traveled widely on a public speaking tour—sharing her story, singing gospel hymns, gaining followers and raising money for civil rights groups. In 1964, after co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (which helped expand Black voter registration and challenged the state’s all-white hold on the party), she ran for Congress. Her bid against a white incumbent was unsuccessful, but in an interview with The Nation she said, “I’m showing the people that a Negro can run for office.”

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party continued to grow, agitating for change to the system of seating only white Mississippi Democrats at the Democratic National Convention. Hamer and her fellow MFDP members traveled to the 1964 Convention to stand as the state’s official delegates, with Hamer was chosen as the party’s speaker—prompting the white delegates to walk out in protest. President Lyndon Johnson—who generally supported the Civil Rights movement and signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965—feared he’d lose his bid for reelection without the support of white Southern Democrats. To appease them and bolster his own campaign, he preempted the broadcast of Hamer’s convention speech by holding a nationally-televised press conference at the same time. Finally, in 1968 the national Democratic Party changed its rules to require equal representation from its states’ delegates, and the MFDP was seated at that year’s National Convention alongside the white Southern Democrats. In 1972, the same year that Shirley Chisholm ran for President, Hamer was elected as a national party delegate.

Hamer’s voice continued to inspire her national following, even as she narrowed her focus back to her native Sunflower County, Mississippi. In the late 1960s she lent her time, money and energy to a number of grassroots efforts there, including a communal farm and livestock share program to increase food security and nutrition equality among the sharecroppers and rural Black residents. She argued that self-sufficiency was the best path to full citizenship for Black Mississippians, and promoted land ownership and crop control as essential civil rights. She enlisted the help of a Wisconsin nonprofit called Measure for Measure, and secured a large celebrity donation from Harry Belafonte, to found the Freedom Farm Corporation and begin buying up Mississippi Delta farmland. By 1971, despite threats by white supremacists, Hamer had acquired over 600 acres for use in communal agriculture:  “If we have that land, can’t anybody starve us out.”

Detail of "Seeding the Vote" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Our 27th broadside, Seeding the Vote, honors Sunflower County, where Hamer planted so many seeds for freedom, suffrage and full citizenship for all. The first half of the quote sits “behind bars,” obscured by the stalks of wilted sunflowers, while the second half is festooned with vibrant yellow blossoms. Hamer’s portrait hovers above a trio of her iconic yellow voter registration buses—which are also designed to be reminiscent of other Civil Rights Movement buses in the American South, including Rosa Parks’ famous bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Detail of "Seeding the Vote" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

To help combat the same racist disenfranchisement that Fannie devoted her life to fighting, we are donating, via a grant from the Dead Feminists Fund, a portion of our proceeds to Spread the Vote, a nonprofit that obtains government-issued photo IDs to help eligible voters meet the requirements of voter ID laws. Currently 34 states have some form of voter ID law as a requirement for enfranchisement; many of the strictest laws exist in states with a large percentage of Black or other minority voters. With their IDs obtained with the help of Spread the Vote, these same people can also secure housing, jobs and other essentials more easily—helping them participate more fully in society and exercise their rights as Americans.

UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!

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Seeding the Vote: No. 27 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 165
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 – 1977) was the youngest of 20 children born to Mississippi sharecroppers, and was picking cotton by age six. At 13, since she was literate, she became the plantation’s record keeper. Married in 1944, she continued plantation work with her husband. In 1961, Hamer was subjected by a white doctor to a hysterectomy without her consent, while undergoing surgery for a uterine tumor. Forced sterilization of Black women was so widespread it was dubbed a “Mississippi appendectomy.”

Starting in 1962, Hamer organized buses to register thousands of Black voters in Sunflower County, Mississippi. They faced continued voter suppression, a $100 fine for a bus that was too yellow, extortion, threats and assaults — and Hamer was fired from the plantation. In 1963, after she ran a literacy workshop to help Black voters overcome racist poll tests, police arrested her and beat her nearly to death. Nevertheless, she ran for Congress in 1964 and helped organize the Freedom Summer voter registration drive in Sunflower County. At the Democratic National Convention later that year, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an integrated group of activists who openly challenged the legality of Mississippi’s all-white, segregated delegation. Through it all, Hamer kept campaigning, while signing hyms and traditional spirituals to keep up morale among her followers. Today she is heralded as a civil rights icon, yet the refrain of her famous words is still familiar to the choir: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in honor of the tireless work of women who plant the seeds and tend the crop of budding voters.

Detail of "Seeding the Vote" Dead Feminist broadside by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

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Who is your historic heroine?

"Collaborate" process shot from Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring's PNW Book Award commemorative broadside

Early this month we heard our book had moved from the shortlist to join the winners of the 2018 Pacific Northwest Book Awards. The awards, produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, recognize “excellence in writing, publishing, and illustration in the PNBA region.” The first requirement of winning is to, well, write some more. So we wrote an essay about one of our favorite feminist topics: collaboration. PNBA also asked us to suggest our favorite local independent bookstore so celebrations could ensue. Of course we chose King’s Bookstore. Owned by sweet pea flaherty, supported by an awesome staff, beloved by Tacoma, and home of two store cats, the choice was obvious. They have been incredible partners in getting the word out about Dead Feminists well before there was a book to sell.

A Gal-entine for Cipe Pineles. Illustrated by Chandler O'Leary.

The celebration takes place February 13 at 7 p.m. This proximity to Valentine’s Day was no mistake. We want to share some love, cookies and keepsakes with our readers, and ask you to share your favorite dead feminist with us. Choose an important woman in your life—a relative or an historic heroine—and create your own Gal-entine to tell us more about her. We’ll create a display of these Gal-entines at King’s, which will stay up through International Women’s Day (March 8), and share these lovely ladies and their stories through social media for folks too far away to attend. Our printer pal Mary Bruno will join us in the festivities, and show some of her work, too.

We are working on a new broadside, to be unveiled at the party, to commemorate the PNBA award. Not quite a Dead Feminist broadside, this will feature hand lettering and hand set type using action words from the book that have helped guide us through a very challenging year.

Many thanks to PNBA and Pacific Northwest independent bookstores and readers. We are truly honored!

Heading East
For folks on the eastern side of our large state, we’ll be in Spokane this February to share our work. We’d love to meet you.

Auntie’s Bookstore
Book signing — print your own letterpress keepsake!
Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 4:00pm
402 W. Main Ave
Spokane, WA 99201

Re-Sisters: Dead Feminists broadsides, steamroller prints and
our individual books and prints
February 6 through March 23, 2018
Bryan Oliver Gallery, Whitworth University
300 W. Hawthorne Rd., Spokane, WA
Opening: February 6, 5-6 p.m., Lied Center
Lecture: February 6, 6 p.m., Lied 102

 

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A Chorus of Readers

Autostraddle's round-up of feminist books coming fall 2016

It has been more than a year since Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color  was published. We are still surprised and delighted when new readers find the book and get inspired, especially when the world right now feels incredibly challenging. And while we continue to make new broadsides, we assume the book will quietly fade away as new feminist voices — thankfully — jump in to say, even shout, our shared and urgent message of action. What we are reminded of, though, is we all need to get real loud together, a chorus of #metoo that cannot be ignored.

Costumed historical feminists at the Dead Feminists book launch at King's Books in Tacoma, WA. Photo by Eli Gandour-Rood.

Thanks to independent bookstores, our book has connected with more readers than we thought possible. Booksellers—like sweet pea at King’s Books–shared the book with local customers, and they sent copies to friends around the country, adding to the chorus. Our regional publisher, Sasquatch Books, affectionately calls Dead Feminists  “the little book that could” as it steadily chugs along.

It is with great delight (and major surprise) that we learned that Dead Feminists  made the 2018 Pacific Northwest Book Awards Shortlist. The awards, produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, recognize “excellence in writing, publishing, and illustration in the PNBA region.” They’re also a reminder of the importance of regional publishers, in this world of mega-retailers and corporate publishing mergers. To be included on this list with Ursula K. Le Guin, Sherman Alexie and other amazing regional authors is a huge honor—unexpected by two artists, newish to the region, just adding to the chorus.

Detail of "The Write Path" mini print by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring

Many thanks to the PNBA, Sasquatch Books, indie bookstores, and to our readers.

 

 

 

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