Imperialism: The Common Enemy takes its name from one of the oldest lessons of the anticolonial movement. When the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa gathered at Bandung in 1955, and the liberation movements of three continents met in Havana for the Tricontinental Conference in 1966, they came from different languages, religions, and political traditions. What united them was a shared enemy. Malcolm X pointed to Bandung as the moment the colonized peoples of the world set aside their differences to face the system that oppressed them all. Speaking in Algiers in 1965, Che Guevara argued that if there were no other uniting factor, the common enemy should be enough.

Imperialism is the system through which a handful of powerful states and corporations dominate the land, labor, and resources of the world. It operates through invasions and coups, debt and sanctions, and military bases and corporate extraction. In the United States its wars and its budgets are backed by both major parties, whatever their differences at home: the red and the blue chains in this print are two links in a single system. Its victims include the peoples of the Global South and the working people of the imperial nations themselves, who are sent to fight its wars and pay for its weapons while their own communities are left without housing, health care, and dignity.

The flock of birds breaking through chains is the strength of the many acting together. No single bird can break a chain, but a flock moving as one becomes a force no empire can hold. This print is a call to recognize our common enemy across every border, to refuse the divisions it plants among us, and to build the international solidarity that has always been the oppressed peoples' greatest weapon.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium matte-photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*