Dear Friends,

This September, the Republicans are meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota , September 1-4, 2008, to nominate candidates for president and vice president of the United States and to create their political platform.

The Republicans, as you may remember, are the ones that brought the citizens of the United States (and the citizens of the world) such delights as the war in Iraq, the current economic recession, flagrantly increased national debt, and a lack of timely response to global warming. They are also creators of the current impasse with national healthcare, the current stalemate with NAFTA reform, decreasing immigrant rights, tax cuts for the rich, and blatant far reaching government corruption.

So how do you feel about all that? Want to express yourselves? Well, we want to help you.

Grupo Soap del Corazon is a latino artists’ group based out of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We have a nine year history of cultural and social activism here in Minnesota and in Latin America. We are organizing an international poster project, to take place on the streets of your town (wherever you are) and on the streets of our town. As you may know, political posters have a long and varied international history (www.politicalgraphics.org) and have been an effective way for artists and people of all kinds to make change. We are hoping to inspire posters and postering throughout the world…in Spain, Chile, Ireland, Norway, India, Mexico, Germany, etc – and also throughout the U.S.

Here’s how you can be a part of our efforts:

• Make a poster. Anything expressing your view point on the coming U.S. election, the Republican convention, the state of the United States, it’s role in the world, and the state of that world.
• You can create the poster any way you want.
• Minimum size for the poster is 11”x17”.
• You must print a minimum run of 8 posters. A minimum of 5 must be placed out in your community.
• A minimum of 3 must be sent to grupo soap del Corazon and arrive by August 25th. 1 poster will be in an exhibit and later, our archive. 1 poster will be sent to the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. The rest will be used to poster the streets of the Twin Cities.
• To be part of this effort you must also send us digital images of your posters on walls, telephone poles, etc in YOUR community. Send them to artjones at bitstream.net.
• There will be a exhibition of ALL the posters, time and place to be announced. The announcement will be on our website: www.myspace.com/gruposoapdelcorazon.
• Digital of all the posters will be put up on our website: myspace.com/gruposoapdelcorazon.
• Please spread this email around to others, world wide.

Double extra-credit for anyone who organizes a group of artists and sends in digital and posters as a group. Any groups will get extra acknowledgement in the exhibition. Please send your posters, rolled up in a tube, to:
“Grafica Politica 2008”
Grupo Soap del Corazon
304 2nd Street NE
Minneapolis, MN 55418

So, poster your town – and we’ll help you poster ours
Douglas Padilla
Xavier Tavera
Grupo Soap del Corazon
www.myspace.com/gruposoapdelcorazon