Brown Bag Project

June 17th, 2006

Military recruiting is becoming harder for Western countries as people don’t find wars justified and don’t want to end their days in one of them. In the USA, in the city of New York, military recruiters have begun offering free brown paper bags to delis and food stores located in some of the city poorest neighborhoods; places with high recruitment potential for young people. These bags promote military enlistment, focussing on promises of money for college, job skills, adventures, bonuses… that are either false or highly unlikely. For that reason, the art collective “The Friends of William Blake” made a little guide called “The New Yorkers’ Guide to Military Recruitment” (www.counterrecruitmentguide.org) explaining what the reality is behind all those myths and promises the military services promote. In response to the military brown bag campaign, they created the “Brown Bag Project”, with an initial print run of 1,000 paper bags to be given free-of-charge to the same bodegas and delis that received the military bags campaign. These bags feature an illustrated comic from Philadelphia artist Sabrina Jones, called “Mixed Signals”. It explains with images what the guide explained with words. The entire comic can be seen at www.nextleftnotes.net/current/sabrina.html or by visiting NY and collecting the different bags directly from delis.

Patricia Yagüe

Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous