This spring the Northland poster Collective will turn thirty years old. Northland began at a graphic arts workshop at the Northland Cultural Workers Conference in April of 1979. Seems like a lot has happened since then. The above poster was designed by Richard Kees who was a founding member and is now back on staff after spending a couple of decades in other pursuits…

The financial earthquake (or shakedown, if you will) that is causing such hardship for those of us who are not the culprits is impacting the organization who traditionally fight against the inequalities that underlie the crash. Our email and mailboxes are filled with urgent appeals for funds from political institutions and arts groups whose sources of financial sustenance have dried up or shrunk or frozen.[…]

The stream of time always brings new vistas, new struggles and newborns to take their part in history’s unfolding. It also carries away those whose bodies can sustain them no longer. Some of the cultural warriors whose journeys ended this year are the singers Odetta and Miriam Makeba and the story-gatherer Studs Terkel. We are better for having marched beside them. We managed to produce tribute posters for Miriam and Studs (pictured).