Sunday, July 12, 2015

Propaganda and Imagery Contest: Marshall Plan 2.0

Propaganda and symbolism has been in the news lately as the Confederate Flag (AKA: Walmart Snot Rag) finally came down 150 years after the Confederate surrender. Yippie!

But I don't want to talk about that because I promise you that the problems in Central America are so grave that they are going to make the civil rights movement seem like a PTA bake sale debate regarding cup cake prices.

This is a project that should take 20 years so I'm not going to explain myself in one shot. But the first thing I want to deal with is imagery.
Marshall Plan Posters

Here's another one:
Perfect Propaganda
If you can take a few minutes to visit the Marshall Foundation poster page I want you artists to get inspired.

There are 4 countries that are in dire need of a Marshall Plan 2.0 in Central America. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. And to prove how powerful propaganda imagery can be I'm not even going to explain my concerns at this time. All I want from you is a poster of equal quality and conviction, except mobilizing a country's support of a new Marshall Plan for Central America. CA4. I'm pretty good with mottos, but not art. Some motto like "Americas Unified"

Marshall is maybe one of the last American heroes and he didn't do it alone. George Kennan, William Clayton were instrumental as well, but it required the character of Marshall to somehow to deflect all the attention onto the problem and not onto him. This plan worked. And in 1950 they had a contest for a poster and now 65 years later we need a new poster for Central America. I'm telling you that the situation is grave and Americans and Canadians are definitely going to feel the effects soon. This is definitely your problem wherever you live. So, find some graphic artists who studied propaganda art and get them busy. I will actually pay for this poster and maybe a crowdfunding project would collect more money. Let's say $200 from me. I think that the poster is important because it galvanizes support, and cooperation and support is what is required. There really is no time to waste but I'm begging for a paradigm shift.

FYI, they speak Spanish in these 4 countries so you might want to incorporate that into the poster, but the support is going to be for Americans and Canadians to approve of what is probably a $100 Billion dollar effort to educate and modernize Central American countries over the next 15 years. Illiteracy needs to be eradicated...that's 7 years minimum. Sewage treatment plants are required. Geothermal energy. Etc. But none of that will happen without unified support and I'm simply going to copy the Marshall Plan page for page. They got a cool poster, so I want a cool poster. They ended up with 25 posters, but I'd be happy with one good poster.

This is still a moving image. GREAT IMAGE! 1950.
George Marshall may be gone but he left behind the blueprints for how to rescue a continent. The Marshall Plan worked even though Stalin refused to cooperate or allow any Soviet countries to participate. So, since Stalin is not in Central America, it will be even more successful. If the same feet dragging incompetence had existed in 1947 as exists right now in the Senate and House of Reps, I'm certain Europe would've crumbled. The historians say that the Marshall Plan and investment itself was not enough, but it gave other investors confidence in rebuilding. This is what Central America needs. Get busy.

P.S. The Marshall Plan was officially called the E.R.P, European Recovery Programme. So, C.A.R.P would be the Central American Recovery Program. But I also want to add Haiti, and Cuba, so the acronym gets messed up. Work with it.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.