Nicola Gavigan

Senior Graphic Designer
Horizontal poster with black background. Text: "CATS AGAINST M'ICE" in a distressed, all-caps typeface. Text is in yellow except "ICE," in white.

Recent protest signs and posters

Vertical format poster with light blue background. Text at top in fanciful, flowery type: "All Cats "R" Beautiful." Illustrations across lower third: three stylized sitting cats. Left is white cat, center is ginger tabby, right is brown tabby. All are smiling, with eyes closed.

The acronym from “All Cats Are Beautiful,” ACAB, is commonly used to stand for “All Cops Are Bastards.” I designed this sign as a fun way to amuse my friends and troll law enforcement at protests.

I love these smiling kitties! I bought the illustration from stock content site Shutterstock, by artist Meranna.

I saw this phrase in kitty photos and illustrations on the “Cat Ladies For America” Discord server—I think they had a call for submissions. I missed that but I did my own anyway!

If you’re not on Discord, go to https://www.instagram.com/catladiesforamerica/ to see what they’re up to.

Horizontal poster with black background. Text: "CATS AGAINST M'ICE" in a distressed, all-caps typeface. Text is in yellow except "ICE," in white.
Horizontal protest sign. Black background with text: "ICE learned terror tactics from the NAZIS. The Nazis learned them from America’s JIM CROW SOUTH." "ICE," the first occurrence of the word "NAZIS" and "JIM CROW SOUTH" are in large white caps in a distressed typeface; the rest is in smaller and yellow.

In the 1930s, the Nazis sent agents to the American South to study the anti-Black Jim Crow laws, to form their own, targeting Jews. We invented this race-based kind of terror tactics (see below). This should be more well-known. My text and design.

From “How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow” on History.com:

“In 1935, Nazi Germany passed two radically discriminatory pieces of legislation inspired by American laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together, these were known as the Nuremberg Laws, and they laid the legal groundwork for the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren’t just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, that country was the United States.

‘America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.’”

Vertical protest sign with bright yellow background. Text in red, in a distressed, all-caps typeface: "CHINGA LA MIGRA." Below that, in black, is a whimsical illustration of a cat knocking a container labeled "ICE" off a table.

Good kitty! “Chinga la Migra” is Spanish for “Fuck ICE,” and this cat is showing us the way to knock the Vases of Oppression off the Mantelpieces of Life.

I bought the cat illustration from DesignStoreEmily on Etsy. She already had the headline; I changed the typeface and format and added color.

Two vertical posters with text on white backgrounds against a gray field. All text is centered, in a quirky typeface. Left poster large text: "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble." Text is dark blue except "good" and "necessary" in bright red. Small black text below that: "John Lewis, June 2018." Right poster large text: "Help redeem the soul of America." Text is dark blue except "redeem," "soul" and "America" in bright red. Small black text below that: "John Lewis, June 2018."

I made these designs for my sister Denise, a lifelong activist, for her to print out and take to a protest for civil rights. They honor the late Congressman John Lewis, a Civil Rights Movement titan, whose “good trouble” message is at the heart of so much of our current political activism.

One Response