Municipal Adhesives

The earliest version of this design appeared on a banner for May Day 2012 in Durham, NC.

This banner was captured in December of 2014, and taken into police custody for 6 months for its participation in a demonstration against the non-indictment of disgraced former police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the strangling death of Eric Garner.

A red version appeared January 20th, 2017 at the riots that inaugurated disgraced former pres Donald Trump, at the front of the Antifascist Anticapitalist March (as seen in @subMedia ‘s videos “Black Bloc Smashes Inauguration” and “Call for a Week of Solidarity”).

Unbeknownst to the painter, the black banner had returned to public events after its time in police custody, and like a sitcom episode the back of the march sported the black version & neither knew the other was present.

Unfortunately, the red banner was taken into custody (the 235th J20 arrestee!) and sat marinating in pepper spray in an evidence locker for 18 months before being recovered.

The black banner, however, remained free and flew 10 days later at a demonstration of over a thousand against Trump’s Executive Order 13769 at RDU airport.

The black banner went on to defend UNC Chapel Hill’s campus from neoconfederates incensed about the toppling of their white supremacist participation trophy ten days prior. A night-time rally called for by the neoconfederates was outnumbered 10 to 1 by local antiracists and fearless students whose Petey Pablo dance party and antifascist ice cream cart drowned out the neoconfederates’ mournful crocodile tears.

In December of 2018, shortly after Red Banner emerged from a DC evidence locker, UNC announced it would re-erect & build a shrine around the confederate monument, staffed w/ preposterously invasive & expensive police guards. Demonstrations that featured Black Banner and hundreds of accomplices ensured it never happened. Neoconfederates, university, nor the state could undo what students & local antiracists did. But police seized Black Banner at one of these demonstrations and it hasn’t been heard from since.

In June of 2021, the banner design was rearranged slightly into sticker form to honor its service. In this iteration, we sold 1225 and gave away 525 more over the course of four years.

Red Banner is still out there fighting for total liberation. You might find it flapping in the breeze at the monthly Carrboro NC Really Really Free Market, where it was given to the ongoing event by the painter.

You might have seen it strung between trees defending Weelaunee forest from the encroachment of police invasion in 2022:

Or as the backdrop of a successful anarchist video essayist‘s work “How to Defend the Ecology”

Ultimately, this specific design works better as a banner than as a sticker, so in September of 2025, we revamped it. Its current design emphasizes legibility, and the redesign made possible a stencil design as well: