Since October 1, hundreds of protesters have occupied the lawn in front of Los Angeles City Hall. Capturing the attention of the public and the news media, these protesters have joined a long, yet sometimes seemingly hidden, tradition of activists who have advocated publicly in Los Angeles for their vision of social justice.
When it eventually decamps from the City Hall lawn, Occupy L.A. will become a part of Los Angeles history--its record living on in archives, libraries, and museums. Already theSmithsonian has begun collecting some of the protest's creative posters, placards, and handbills for preservation at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Here in Los Angeles, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics recently welcomed its first Occupy L.A. placard into its collection of more than 75,000 political posters from Southern California, the nation, and around the world.
L.A. as Subject recently honored the center's founder and executive director, Carol Wells, with the Avery Clayton Spirit Award in recognition of her "spirit of dedication, enthusiasm, energy, curiosity and generosity in working to identify, preserve, and make accessible the sources for the history of the Los Angeles region."
Selected posters from the center's collections, along with images from the photographic archives of the Los Angeles Public Library and UCLA's Young Research Library, tell the story of three seminal public protests that captured Southern California's attention.
Keep reading L.A. as Subject's most recent contribution to KCET's SoCal Focus blog at KCET.org.