Since the early1990's. radical DC artist Mike Flugennock has produced over a hundred political cartoon posters for resistance movements ranging from groups opposed to the war in Iraq to American foreign policy to local politics. Whether used in protests against George W. Bush's "Inauguraction" or annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, Flugennock's posters have inspired countless people to fill the streets and demand justice. As the posters have grown in popularity, they have provided motivation for a variety of grass roots social justice movements.

Besides defining a distinctive look and tone for resistance movements Flugennock's art has also inspired a method of radical postering on the street, a form of public cultural intervention that has taken on a life of its own. Over the last five years, his collaboration with the Mintwood Media Collective has helped put up thousands of posters on lampposts and electric utility boxes in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. In defiance of routine police harassment, the Collective's Lamppost Liberation Front has promoted a culture of radical advertising. Flugennock has attracted a loyal folllowing of people who "flypaste" his art with the help of wheatpaste in cities throughout the USA, Canada and Europe. In turn, this expands public access to his inspired creations through his website.

The current climate of rampant mass media consolidation has led to a trend in which many formerly indpendent media outlets now operate under corporate managemnet and federal regulations, which are by nature adverse to alternative and controversial points of view. Public postering has emerbed as a decidedly low-techbut effective means of redirecting public opinion and galvanizing social movements.

In Mike's words,

"...After four or five years' recovering from a severe radical cartoon burnout induced by the first term of Ronald Reagan, the threat of US genocide in Irag re-radicalized me. In the winter of 1990-91, I did my first hardcore political cartoons since dropping out if the Yipster Times and, inspired by the 'delivery system' used by Robbie Conal to expose Los Angeles to his work, chose to mass-copy and plaster them to as many flat public surfaces as possible with wheat paste and paint rollers instead of waiting for any newspapers or magazine editors to expose their readers to flagrantly anti-war and anti-imperialist opinions. Much to our surprise, this actually went fairly well, enough that we decided that posting political cartoons such as these -on their own, not advertising any particular event- was a really fine way to 'disturb the cofortable.' It wasn't until a while later that I found out that what we were doing was part of actually part of a real live dissident cultural trend, that of public postering or 'flypasting'. These days, ironically, it seems that the Internet has actually facilitated the spread of wheat-pasted paper posters around the world; I've gotten email on a fairly regular basis from artist/activists from places as far apart as Christchurch, Sydney, Montreal, New York City and Barcelona annoouncing how much they appreciate my work and that several thousand copies each are now adorning the streets of their cities."

"Views from the Street" presents Mike Flugennock's favorite posters, that until now have only been seen on the lampposts of DC and his website.