Beehive Collective's Plan Colombia at USF

The Beehive Collective’s cross-pollination tour is visiting the University of San Francisco to present our graphic campaign on Plan Colombia!

Come to join in this innovative popular education presentation that blends visual, interactive, and narrative elements. Our illustration-based communication strategy is punctuated with opportunities for audience participation… It’s to be understood by anyone, not just the experts and political analysts! Wait!? … You aren’t familiar with Plan Colombia?

The long history of colonialism in the Americas, currently manifested in the Andean Region as "Plan Colombia", is a strong metaphor of the multi-faceted destructive influences of U.S. foreign policy and corporate monoculture on a global scale. This graphic attempts to expose the lie of the drug war as a smokescreen for multinational corporation's interests in extraction of the rich biodiversity and natural resources of the Amazon and her peoples. Our graphic campaign is the product of many intercambios about the issue of colonialism in the Andean Region of South America that took place between our collective and organizers over the spring of 2002 in Ecuador, Colombia and the U.S. These exchanges of information and inspiration were collaboratively sewn together into a quilt of images, that are organized into a circuit of progressions and contrasts that inform and engage the viewer throughout their journey of the graphic.

You can view our graphic campaigns and read their written narratives at http://www.beehivecollective.org

Our featured presentation is a portable-mural “tour” comprised of a 16 foot tall banner version of the Plan Colombia poster that displays the issues in context of the “bigger picture.” The banner is simultaneously accompanied by a six-foot tall fabric storybook that has forty enlargements of scenes from the poster. Presenters take turns narrating through the mural’s details and facts, helping to break down complex issues into smaller, more digestible chunks. All the while, continually explaining how they are connected to the "bigger picture."

Us bees consider it vital to subvert the talking-head-at-the-podium approach to political discussion. We break down the model of the "expert" and the "audience" by relating information across language and learning boundaries. It’s a wicked healthy way to interact about MORE bad news…

Donations to the beehive will support free presentations and distribution in Mexico and Central America, and the production of our next poster, about Plan Puebla Panama, scheduled to hatch this coming April, in time for the Latin American Social Forum in Quito, Ecuador! Funds from the tour will also be used to establish a new permenant hive in the bay area!

gracias y solidaridad!
las abejas de la colmena