A lot of virtual ink has been spilled as to whether any official demands should be put out by Occupy Wall Street (and/or any of the satellite occupations).

I'm pretty firmly in the "no demands" camp. We should think of the Occupations as fora for conversation, exchanging ideas, and also as base camps for launching actions - e.g. a day or week of actions/marches/workshops around demanding for a free and democratic education. For radicals to influence the debate of the reformers, that's the kind of pressure we want.

Let individuals and groups associated with Occupations issue demands, but there's very, very little benefit to listing official demands of the movement. You'll just piss off and alienate people who don't agree with your specifics. Most liberals will think they're too radical, and most radicals will think they're too liberal. The people who want numerical detail will scoff at them being too utopian, and the utopians will scoff at them being too detailed.

Of course, with groups from MoveOn to the Obama campaign trying to co-opt, er, I mean "support" the occupation movement (including darling of the electoral left, Van Jones), both liberals and mainstream media types are clamoring for demands. Liberal demands of course - prescriptions from the CBO, Paul Krugman, bills already before congress, etc. But without official demands, it'll be much, much harder for them to corral us into the veal pen of Democratic Party politics.

In that spirit, I whipped up a poster (11 x 17 format, get PDF here):

Mitt Romney just released an anti-union video about "Right to Work" laws. Big surprise, it's full of lies and exaggerations.

But what caught my eye in particular was the final graphic at the end, which is the design for this series of videos, using the slogan "Obama Isn't Working."

Those familiar with political campaign history, particularly in Great Britain, will find that strikingly familiar:

Yep. Lock, stock, and barrel, swiped from the 1979 United Kingdom Parliamentary election. Whoever the design firm is should be ashamed of themselves (on top of the shame of working for Romney). The cleverness of the original ad was in the pun on "Labour" -- which naturally is lost when replaced with "Obama."

A bit of Googling shows that Romney's been using the slogan since at least June -- in what campaign staff call a "tribute."

1979 was the historic year that swept Margaret Thatcher into office, and heralded more than a decade of Conservative dominance. I'm sure Romney's hoping for similar fortune, but recycling '70s era marketing materials doesn't seem like the way to do it. (Neither is recycling '80s era political ideas.)

Why AIGA, an association so whipped up with energy in encouraging socially- and ecologically-responsible design, would pick Phoenix, Arizona as the site of its next national conference is beyond me.

Arizona, thanks to the state's passage of SB 1070 and other anti-immigrant laws, is a hostile place for anyone not very clearly white. (While courts have put temporary injunctions on some of SB 1070's particulars, the rest of the act is still in effect.)

I've recently come upon a fair amount of free time on my hands, and one of the advantages of that is the ability to actually implement any random idea I have. Hence:

Click for large JPG version (1024 x 768)

Click for printable 8.5" x 11" version (150dpi)

Click for crazy hi-res printable 8.5" x 11" version (300dpi)*

And by popular demand, a t-shirt version

*Suitable for framing.