EarthLiberationStudio

Orca Uprising Stickers

2.5"x3" Orca Uprising Stickers. The cost just pays for the shipping expenses.

They glitter, too. Very hard.

Here's the link:

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/orca-uprising-sticker/ 

Customizable Hammer & Sickle Posters

Ya'll, designing this poster was tough. It started off as a straightforward idea — a visual catalogue of regional variations on the hammer and sickle. It started getting complicated when I decided to leave off the hammer and sickle for Cambodia, which was appropriated by the fascist Khmer Rogue party. And because I edited that one out, where do I stop? To some degree, many of these symbols have been misappropriated and misused over the course of their long history, and several of today's parties have become reactionary, particularly in the settler colonial states.

I asked many of you for your thoughts, and boy that was wild. I learned a lot. I tried my best to make the right choices.

So here's the deal: you, lovely patron comrades, can request changes to this poster! Swap out a symbol, remove symbols, show all the historical iterations of a party, and so on. Just don't ask me to do something problematic because I will have to refuse.

Either leave a comment below or send a DM with what you'd like to see, and I'll send you the customized poster as a high quality printable PDF. (I can also mail them to you, but you'll have to purchase the physical print from earthliberationstudio.com) Make sure to let me know if you want US 11"x17 or International A3 paper.

Also included is the non-customized poster, sized at US Tabloid and International A3.

Here's a higher res image for reference:

Moss, Spark, Sun; Digital Posters and Phone Wallpapers

There's a bonus later this week that's mostly for the commies, so here's a bonus for the anarchists, the an-coms, and all other comrades. 

Downloadable posters for DIY printing, formatted to US Letter and A4 International paper sizes. 

Oh, and phone backgrounds too.

Thanks again for your support 🥲

Orca Uprising Digital Print and Phone Wallpaper

Orcas are rising up against the yachts of the rich. You can download this design to DIY print (Size international A4 and US 11"x17").

Also a phone wallpaper of this design.

ALL POWER TO THE ORCA REVOLUTION.

Hammer and Mushroom stickers

Vinyl stickers, 2"x2".

Just pay for shipping ($2.00 within U.S., $7.50 international).

Here's the link:

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/hammer-and-mushroom-stickers/ 

Abolish the 40 Hour Work Week Stickers

Limited run of these 3"x3" stickers; the $3 is just to cover shipping. Get one here:

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/abolish-the-40-hour-work-week-sticker/

New phone wallpapers + sticker drop announcement

Hey all - here are some phone backgrounds of recent work. Some of you might call bullshit on the 3rd one (enough for everyone) as one I posted a few months ago, but I made some slight changes that made the design better!

Enjoy, and thanks for your support!

P.S. There will be a sticker drop tomorrow (Thursday) at 10am PST.

Hammer and Antler Notebooks

Limited run of 10 custom notebooks with laser engraved design on the cover. Just cover the shipping cost and have one random notebook mailed to you.

If there's a specific color you really want, write it in the additional comments field of the order page, and I'll do my best to get that one to you.

Here's the link:

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/custom-notebook/

New Zine in the works

The first edition will be available to you all when it's ready, but in the meantime I thought I'd give ya'll a look at a few sections of the (very rough) first draft.

———

Why I’m writing this zine

It’s mostly advice to myself as a maker of anti-capitalist propaganda, in an attempt to wrap my head around what makes effective modern propaganda, and why.

I also wrote it because I want to see more artists making effective anti-capitalist propaganda. Because capitalism needs to end.

(here will be a rant about capitalism — I won't get into it here)

A better world would allow us to do work that gives us life rather than grinds us down. A better world would allow us to work less, and be more human. This is the world propagandists need to bring to life.

The role of propaganda is to contextualize the current cultural moment, synthesizing it with the experiences and sentiments of the people.

A growing number of us are feeling the oppression of capitalism, and seeing the cracks in the system widen. Many of us are suffering, toiling endlessly just to be able to survive and pay rent. What’s causing this suffering?

This is the question propaganda must answer. A propagandist gives a reason for the conditions we face, providing us a why for the suffering and the unrest. A propagandist tells the hurting population who is responsible for our pain, and what is to be done.

We are already awash in propaganda. There is a propagandist in every workplace and community, contextualizing their struggle, telling the people why this world is not working for them. Looking at some studies, a few of the most influential propagandists include: Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro. Right-wing propagandists, who according to views, ratings, and discourse, are much more effective at contextualizing the current cultural moment than any propagandists from the left. (It’s worth pointing out at this time that prominent ‘left propaganda’ under capitalism is also subservient to capitalism and therefore also right wing). These dominant propagandists insist that no, it is not capitalism that’s making you suffer. It’s the opposing political party, it’s Antifa, it’s transgender people (or whatever new culture war item they’ve moved on to at the time of reading). It’s not capitalism or your job or your boss, they assure us, it’s actually socialism. It’s cultural marxism that’s taking away your freedom.

And they’re very good at persuading people. They’re good propagandists. They have the money, the platform, the audience research, and the institutional backing that can allow them to be good propagandists.

But also, their message is garbage, and while they may be the most influential propagandists, they are not necessarily the most effective. The most effective propagandist is someone people know directly. Someone at their job, at their church, or in their neighborhood, further contextualizing the conditions and making them even more relatable.

We need a propagandist in every community and workplace.

A bit of firsthand anecdotal experience: I live and work in Los Angeles, a big liberal city. A lot of people are organized by generic milquetoast liberal propaganda. During the Trump years, the narrative was: things are bad because Trump is president. Then during the Biden years, the dominant narrative became: things are bad because Trump was president, and was able to appoint judges, etc. Here’s where our message must come in: Things are bad because of capitalism, a system designed to exploit the workers and enrich the rulers, regardless of who the rulers are; and the only way to make things better is to struggle together as a working class.

I started making propaganda with this messaging in 2020, posting it publicly on social media. And here’s the wild thing that happened: my coworkers, my friends, and my acquaintances met me there. People in my life wanted to talk about what I was making, and wanted to talk about class struggle more than the Trump indictment or whatever other spectacle was going on. The political conversations I was having shifted from being centered on electoral politics to being centered on class struggle - the workers against the capitalists. But there’s a wilder part to the story: that narrative manifested itself in an actual workplace struggle that resulted in us organizing a work stoppage, and winning a 12% pay raise.

I’m not for a second suggesting that my propaganda was in any way responsible for our growing class consciousness or for urging us into action – but it did provide a jumping off point for conversation to develop. Hey, B.Y., you posted about striking; do you think we should organize one?

People trust people they know. People want to relate to people they know. When the most charismatic coworkers are getting their talking points from Tucker Carlson, many of their coworkers will want to relate. When the interesting coworkers are getting their analysis from Marxist Theory and sharing about it openly, you’ll find that the other coworkers want to engage in the conversation (in some cases, to debate, but in many cases, to relate). And this can help create a foundation for organizing.

———

That's the draft for part of the first section, the framework for the zine. From there, we'll dig into the goals of propaganda, the various target audiences, how to reach them, and dive into dissecting what makes it effective from experience. I'm aiming to make this a living, communal document, with experiences from artists in different areas of the struggle. So, more to come!

Digital Prints for Earth Week

Hi comrades. Here are 3 eco-defense themed prints that you can download for free and print on your own. If you want to print them out in full color, I'd recommend searching for a local print shop; or a large office supply store will usually have a print center. I'd recommend heavy matte paper for best results. The prints are formatted to standard size paper, and the paper size is included in the filename.

New Phone Backgrounds

3 New backgrounds for smartphones. Download them here :)

Hammer and Mushroom keychains

I made these for All Power Books to send out to their subscribers, but thought ya'll might like them tool, so I made an extra 10 to give away only to you subscribers! only asking $3 for shipping.

If they go too quickly, I can make some more :) The first 10 will ship out this week, and any backorders will go out next week.

You are all seriously amazing. Here's the link for these guys:

https://earthliberationstudio.com/shop/hammer-and-mushroom-keychains/ 

A work in progress.

Here's a work in progress on a topic that always gets people stirred up —

Religion 😱 !

Gonna pour my heart out a little bit here. But first- the work in progress:

I grew up in a religious home in a very conservative Christian part of the world. What I was taught about Christianity from a handful of old white guys informed everything about the way I understood the world. Mostly I just didn’t want to go to hell, and all of my experiences filtered through that foundational fear. As you could imagine, this was a cause of a fair amount of psychological trauma that I’d have to spend years healing.

After 9/11, the church my family attended became loudly pro-Iraq war, contradicting the supposed core pillar of mennonite denomination of the faith — pacifism. Over the years most of the people I knew in that church have transformed into right wing fundamentalists, outspoken MAGA conservatives, QAnon fanatics, and loud homophobes/transphobes/xenophobes/you-name-it-phobes.

It’s so bizarre to see the christian faith gobbled up by a right wing, pro-capitalist, pro-empire message, because Jesus… kind of the main guy in christianity… he didn’t have many good things to say about wealth or empire.

I mean, take the verse in the poster. Jesus is saying, if you’re a rich man, you CAN’T GET IN. Nope. I remember hearing conservative pastors try to cope with this verse, saying things like, “well actually the eye of the needle was a small passageway in the temple, where a camel would have to get down on its knees and crawl through it. So it’s not impossible for a rich man to get to heaven… it’s just a little hard!”

Come on, a camel’s not doing that. Jesus called it 1800 years before Marx - the bourgeois are doomed. Doomed in the proletarian revolution.

But, despite the actual message of Jesus and many other religious texts, religious communities have been consumed by the right wing, and by capital. My childhood church certainly has.

It’s heartbreaking to see, because for better or worse, these people were my childhood community. Churches, mosques, and temples serve as the backbone for a lot of people’s communities, especially under late stage capitalism, where most of our other forms of community are gutted and scattered by the forces of capital and development. Through the grinding of capitalism, faith spaces remain one of the only places where community can flourish.

I’ve heard a handful of people on the left saying things like ‘abolish religion,’ ‘make religion illegal again’, etc. I understand this sentiment, as someone who’s been harmed by religion. It’s a bad strategy, and a sentiment that, if realized, would harm a lot of working class people.

Communists from history wrote about religion as a part of the material conditions of the working class; religion was something for the exploited populations to turn to as a cure for our alienation, a salve for our oppression. “The heart of a heartless word,” as Marx wrote. The theory was that when material conditions improve, there will be less need for religion. When a classless society is achieved, the church will no longer be needed or desired and will wither away, along with the state.

Maybe the early communists were right… but we’re nowhere close to finding out, because material conditions are not improving for the working class in any part of the world. Material conditions are diminishing, and working people are suffering and growing more alienated. Faith communities are one of the only places where that alienation can be healed a little. We’re in no place to be tearing down anyone’s respite from the grinding maw of capital. We ought to accept the inevitability of religion (as long as there is oppression), and organize within it. The right has certainly been doing it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with religion. Go off in the comments — this is a much safer place to voice an opinion than Instagram or Twitter.

(Also, what do you think- Red or black, which version do you like better?)

Preorder Socialist Playing Cards

A lot of people have asked about these over the past couple months since the last batch sold out, and they're finally back!  I have them printed at a small mom-and-pop shop in upstate New York. They do great work but they also take several months to print your cards.

Anyway, you fine people get first access before everyone else! 

Click here to go a patron-only item on the online store.

Those of you in the Pipeline Demolisher tier will have your orders shipped out first. Hey, the cops will try to hit you with that t**ror*sm charge, but I got your back.

Make Art At Your Day Job Zine

A 32 page zine about making art while getting paid at your day job; tactics, mindsets, and real world experiences to help artists break a little more free from the confines of capitalist reality.

You can read the digital version or download the printable version to print, fold, and bind yourself!

Making Art As An Anti-Capitalist Zine

A 32 page zine about navigating the contradictions of being an anti-capitalist artist in a capitalist world.

You can download the digital version, or a version to print, fold, and bind yourself.

Phone Wallpapers are available here!

For all patrons, here are 6 Earth Liberation Studio designs formatted to fit any smartphone background. Download them in the attachments. More phone backgrounds will be released periodically :)