Press

Interview with Voyage MIA

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This was posted on VoyageMIA back in November. Here’s the link to see it on their site: http://voyagemia.com/interview/art-life-stephanie-mcmillan/

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie McMillan.

Stephanie, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
As a teenager in the Reagan era, I awoke to the terrifying threat of nuclear war and wrote my first opinion piece with my first political illustration for my high school paper. I became active in the anti-war movement, as well as around other issues like abortion rights and against police brutality. Much of my artwork over my lifetime has been intertwined with efforts to overcome oppression, exploitation and ecocide, and for a just and sustainable society.

I started drawing cartoons professionally in 1992. My comics, editorial cartoons, and illustrations have appeared worldwide in hundreds of publications since then (including my hometown paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel), and have won awards including the RFK Journalism Award. They’ve been included in exhibits at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (NYC) and other venues, plus a solo show at Cal State/Northridge. I had a comic strip syndicated through United Media and Universal for several years and wrote and illustrated several books including a graphic novel about the Occupy movement. Most recently, I illustrated a children’s book called “Songbird, Fly!” written by my partner Christopher Burns, about a bird who escapes her cage.

Chris and I currently run the Arts and Crafts Social Club, a studio in the Flagler Village neighborhood of downtown Fort Lauderdale, where we offer classes, paint-and-sip parties, and other events. We really enjoy meeting people and creating a fun atmosphere where we can all make art together! We also use it as a place to make our own artwork. During the past year or so I’ve been focusing a lot on acrylic painting, though I’ve also been playing around with all sorts of materials, from gouache to papier-mâché.

I simply love making things. I always have. My mother inspired that in me, by doing all sorts of crafts with me and my brother and our friends around the kitchen table when we were little. I’ll always be grateful to her for awakening and encouraging my creative spirit.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
Three visual and thematic elements run through my work in general (while each piece may not contain all three):

1) Social messages:

While art is fun to make and enjoyable to look at, the primary purpose of my work overall has been to help contribute to social change, by facilitating communication about the state of our world that may lead to action. I love when someone uses one of my drawings or cartoons to illustrate a flyer or on a sign at a demonstration. What thrills me most is when someone tells me it inspired them or helped them feel stronger in their own fight against the system.

2) Comics:

Because of my long stint as a cartoonist, most of my work (no matter what the medium is) contains visual elements of comics: bright, flat colors, bold shapes, humor, exaggerated expressions, words, and messages. I’ve taken to heart the well-known saying: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

3) South Florida:

I’m second-generation born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, FL after my grandmother arrived in 1921 as a school teacher. I love the amazing plants and animals who live in this unique bioregion, and they often appear in my artwork along with bright tropical colors.

What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
There is tension between one of the most important social roles of art — to reveal hidden truths — and the artist’s need to make a living by selling their work in a profit-driven marketplace that operates best when those truths remain obscured. There is so much pressure for artists to create purely decorative or amusing entertainment, rather than follow their own vision and life’s purpose.

Two overarching trends are greatly affecting everyone’s situation, including artists: 1) global warming has advanced to the point that social transformation is now an urgent necessity for the survival of life on Earth; and 2) the political representatives and institutions protecting the interests of those at the top of the capitalist/imperialist system are aggressively trying to hold onto their dominance in an increasingly unstable global economy and in the face of rising popular discontent.

In this challenging context, the development of the internet has made it easier for artists to connect directly with their audiences and more readily participate in efforts to deal with our collective situation (as well as make a living). We no longer need to rely on the old gatekeepers (though new gatekeepers and obstacles keep popping up).

Even with its limitations, the internet has allowed for a flowering and democratization of the arts (and other forms of communication) that couldn’t exist earlier. Our culture has opened up a great deal and is evolving rapidly, and so many important conversations are happening.

At the same time, those currently on top are trying to push all that back in the box. But we can’t back down. We each need to do our part to ensure that open communication wins so that together we can figure out paths for a viable future.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Drop by the Arts and Crafts Social Club during our open studio hours or the monthly Flagler Village ArtWalk (6-10pm on the last Saturday of each month except December) to see recent pieces and whatever we’re currently
working on.

The work that’s displayed there is mostly fun, colorful, and lighthearted, inspired by our tropical South Florida surroundings. I recently started an Etsy shop to sell some of it: https://www.etsy.com/shop/tropicalpop

My more political work is on my website: stephaniemcmillan.org, where I sell paintings, prints, books, and other items. Purchasing my work or joining my Patreon page (patreon.com/stephaniemcmillan) supports my ability to make more of it, which I really appreciate.

If you happen to be in Tallahassee, a few of my paintings will be included in the “Art of Resistance” show at 621 Gallery, Sept. 29-Oct. 27.

Review of "Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming"

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“Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming” by David Klein (and which I edited and illustrated), was reviewed by Michael Gasser.

The review is in the Jan/Feb issue of “Against the Current”:
http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/4548

It also appears on System Change Not Climate Change:
http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/climate-change-radical-primer

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Climate Change: A Radical Primer
by Michael Gasser

Review of Capitalism & Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming

By David Klein, illustrated and edited by Stephanie McMillan
An ebook available for download at Gumroad, a site where people can sell their work directly to their audience: https://gumroad.com/l/climatechange#. You choose your own price.

GWcover2MOST BOOKS ON ecosocialism, while they may be of interest to those who already know something about socialism, especially those who already are socialists, are not particularly useful for those who want to be aware of both what climate change is and what capitalism is.

Naomi Klein’s best-selling book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate, filled part of this gap, but as several reviewers have noted(1), by “capitalism” Naomi Klein seems to mean the variant of it that is usually called “neoliberalism,” the austerity and privatization enforced around the world by international financial institutions since the 1980s. As valuable as her book is, it is not, and does not pretend to be, a Marxist take on the crisis.

With Capitalism & Climate Change ecosocialist David Klein, with considerable help from revolutionary cartoonist Stephanie McMillan, gives us the best available primer, from a radical perspective, on what the ecological crisis is about and what is causing it. Far from challenging Naomi Klein’s similarly titled book, however, David Klein frequently relies on Naomi Klein, and in some ways, the two books complement each other.

Because they appeared within months of one another and because of their similar titles, it is natural to want to compare them. (For simplification, in what follows when I write simply “Klein,” I’ll mean David Klein).

Capitalism & Climate Change is divided into two sections, the first covering the nature of the climate crisis itself, the second capitalism’s role in creating the crisis, its inability to get us out of it, and what we can do about it.
What Science Tells Us

Klein starts Part 1,“What does climate science tell us?” with a look at the climate change denial movement, how it is funded, and how it challenges mainstream climate science. While some of this section will be familiar from Naomi Klein — who also begins with this topic — what will be new is the discussion of the lengths the deniers and their financial backers have gone to to intimidate mainstream climate scientists, up to and including anonymous threats against individual scientists.

In more ways than one, the climate change deniers, or more significantly their financial backers, mean business!

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Book review of "Capitalism Must Die" is in "top ten" for 2015!

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Aaron Leonard’s review of “Capitalism Must Die!” made the top ten list of book reviews on rabble.ca!

See it here:

http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/12/best-book-reviews-2015

Here’s what they said:

“Capitalism must die! Your economic guidebook to revolution,” by Aaron Leonard

coverSmallWhy it’s great: Spoiler alert: capitalism is terrible. How do we know? Because author Stephanie McMillian’s colourful cartoons definitely told us so! Her playful blend of colours and style is inviting and brings us in to the serious message that capitalism is definitely destroying the world.

Why you should read this: Aaron Leonard conducts a very illuminating interview with the author where she candidly discusses why we so urgently need to defeat capitalism. Couldn’t be a better time to read it.

Here’s the review itself:

https://stephaniemcmillan.org/interview-capitalism-must-die-your-economic-guidebook-to-revolution/

Interview: Capitalism must die! Your economic guidebook to revolution

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Originally published at rabble.ca: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/09/capitalism-must-die-your-economic-guidebook-to-revolution

Capitalism is so, so terrible. Here are the tools you need to crush it.

By Aaron Leonard

September 10, 2015

Capitalism Must Die! A basic introduction to capitalism: what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it 2nd edition

by Stephanie McMillan
(INIP, 2015; $27.00)

What is capitalism, how does it work, and why, oh why, is it so terrible? All of these questions, and more, are answered by author Stephanie McMillan in her recent book, Capitalism Must Die! A basic introduction to capitalism: what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it. McMillan uses her 30 years of experience in organizing against capitalism and her clever cartoons to debunk and deconstruct this destructive practice and create a useful tool readers can put into practice.Aaron Leonard recently corresponded with McMillan about her book, capitalism, cartoons and other matters. This interview has been edited.

***

Some of your images are so playful, yet your message is so serious — how did you arrive at a place of undertaking radical politics through comics?

I loved drawing, and reading comics, ever since I was a kid.

By age 10 I had learned to draw Snoopy by tracing Peanuts, and decided I wanted to be a cartoonist someday. I was in high school during the Reagan years, as the U.S./USSR inter-imperialist struggle was heating up [in the form of the Cold War] to what seemed a very dangerous pitch. I wrote my first article for the school paper, with an accompanying illustration, about the dangers of and need to oppose nuclear weapons.

Then I went to college in New York, studying animation while organizing with the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCP) [the youth group of the U.S. Revolutionary Communist Party]. I quickly realized that it was more important to focus on revolutionary change rather than pursue a career for myself, but my father, dying of cancer, asked me to finish school and graduate. After fulfilling my parents’ wishes, I spent the next period of my life organizing, while supporting myself with a succession of temp/clerical, factory and retail jobs.

In the late 1990s, for various reasons, I left the RCP. I still wanted to contribute to the cause of revolution, but now had no organizational framework in which to do that. I thought about how an individual could reach people with ideas and make a social impact. I decided that comics could be an effective vehicle because they are appealing, fast and easy to produce, and can carry a message to a wide audience.

My cartoons evolved through several stages, including traditionally formatted editorial cartoons, gag cartoons, and a sequential narrative comic strip. Recently I was challenged by a comrade to develop a “proletarian conception of cartoons,” and that’s led to a new series of comics that go beyond a critique of capitalism to also assert a working-class alternative. They’re often paired with theoretical and political texts.

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Washington Post ComicRiffs article: Kickstarter of the Day: Stephanie McMillan affirms your anti-capitalism (plus: goats!)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/06/09/kickstarter-of-the-day-stephanie-mcmillan-affirms-your-anti-capitalism-plus-goats/

Comic Riffs
Kickstarter of the Day: Stephanie McMillan affirms your anti-capitalism (plus: goats!)
By Michael Cavna
June 9 at 2:00 PM

IN HER BATTLE against capitalism, cartoonist-activist Stephanie McMillan does need funds to raise awareness of global plights through her art. And one of the reliable ways so far has been turning to the power of the crowd.

“I love the crowdfunding model, because it requires developing a strong relationship with readers, who decide what work they want to help succeed,” the Florida-based illustrator says as she seeks backing for her “365 Affirmations for Revolutionary Militants” desk calendar. “It’s a way to find out quickly if a project is a good idea or not.”

Comic Riffs caught up with McMillan, who has won an RFK Award for her comics journalism on the Occupy movement, to talk about financial models, the modes of profit and production — and which furry animals best embody her cause:

MICHAEL CAVNA: I know you’ve had success with crowdfunding in the past, Stephanie (i.e., “Mischief in the Forest”). What spurred you to turn to Kickstarter for your new project?

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Review of "Capitalism Must Die!" by Paul Buhle

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This appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, May 26, 2015
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/capitalism-sucks-and-must-be-crushed

by Paul Buhle

Capitalism Must Die! A basic introduction to capitalism: what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it

Some 20 years ago, while creating a book of Mike Alewitz’s labour murals, the artist and I faced the inevitable question: what would a revolutionary artist want his book to be called? He insisted on a word that seemed to me long outdated, belonging to another, faraway world: agitprop. As in, the way that the Communist International of the 1920s, before (and, lamentably, also after) Stalin’s seizure of power, described the agitation and propaganda value of art. It seemed to me, notwithstanding my own lifetime of left politics, so very unartistic.

Alewitz was stubborn (and he won): the point of his art had been from the beginning to transform society by visually assaulting capitalism and capitalists, by telling the stories of the working class and the oppressed. Perhaps I should add that most of his revolutionary murals – from St. Paul, Minnesota, to New York, to Nicaragua, to the Connecticut community college where he has taught for decades – have been painted over. The people in power clearly don’t like his artistic message.

Stephanie McMillan is an agitprop artist and no doubt proud of it. The granddaughter of a once-famed German animator, she studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with the political descendants of blacklisted animators in the U.S., and then turned in the 1990s to cartooning. It was in her nature to begin self-syndicating, an ambitious and (for most artists) frustrating – make that heartbreaking – effort to succeed on their own terms. Thanks to skill and temerity, she broke through to big as well as small publications, and, in 2012, won the Robert F. Kennedy award for editor­ial cartoonists. She also set herself on being a political organizer, from anti-poverty groups to Occupy and beyond. In a commercial publishing world with scarce room for left-wing artists, she has brought out two books from Seven Stories Press and other works that could be considered semi-commercial (as in, distributed by herself and her supporters without much commercial publicity or attention). “Undaunted” is her middle name, or should be.

The actual art in Capitalism Must Die! can only be described as utilitarian, serving the purpose of illustrating the ideas in her prose. The prose is straightforward and reminds me of the “basics” in the socialist study classes of my youth (during the early 1960s). We did not get into ecology back then, but the historic rise of capitalism, grinding the faces of the poor, the spread of the system across the planet (true to Marx’s own formula) to newly available resources and oppressed populations – all of this seems familiar. What is new here, in a society of declining literacy, is her skill in mixing images and interpretive paragraphs. Any young person who hates their job, or can’t find one, can understand intuitively her description of exploitation as the source of profits. McMillan excels in using this seemingly obvious point to explain how the system at large is fast murdering the planet.

She writes and draws as a socialist revo­lutionary who knows that working-class folks will not automatically be won over to understanding that something drastic both needs to be done and can be done. If there is a rub, it is in her appeal for a renewed Marxism-Leninism dependent on a vanguard party (“The trouble with Leninism,” an old anarchist postcard of the 1960s read, “is that everyone wants to be Lenin.”). On the positive side, she has plenty of useful suggestions – including points that many of us have tried to live by – on being democratic, patient (even in disagreements with other radicals), and determined to carry through for the long haul.

No one should expect an artist to have all the political answers. Stephanie McMillan prompts the questions and helps her readers along, and that is a lot. Read this book and pass it along to a young person, too.

Paul Buhle co-founded the New Left journal Radical America in 1967 at age 22 and has edited a dozen non-fiction comics and books including Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz.

Review: Cartoonists and Revolution

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This originally appeared in Against the Current
https://solidarity-us.org/node/4430

by David Finkel

In an era of wars and revolutions
American socialist cartoons of the mid-twentieth century
By Carlo and others; edited by Sean Matgamna
London, England: Phoenix Press, 2013, 314 pages, $15 paperback.

Capitalism Must Die!
A basic introduction to capitalism: what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it
By Stephanie McMillan
Fort Lauderdale, FL: Idees Nouvelles, Idees Proletairiennes, 2014, 241 pages, $12 paperback.

HEAVILY MUSCLED, BLACK and white, mostly (although not all) male proletarians confront profit-bloated moneybag (all white male) capitalists, Jim Crow racism, the war industry, and the grim visage of Stalin.

A one-eyed fighting rabbit, “Bunnista,” takes on the greedy bosses (mostly but not all white and male) and their “omnicidal” system destroying the planet in the course of exploiting labor and nature.

The first set of images dominate the collection In an era of wars and revolutions, compiled by Sean Matgamna, a leading member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) in Britain. The second, the creation of Stephanie McMillan, is an illustrated manifesto setting out her Marxist-inspired account of how capitalism operates and the necessity to overthrow it.

 

Both are entertaining as well as educational, and put together certainly throw some light on changes in radical political culture over the past seven or so decades. Matgamna has compiled an assortment of mostly Trotskyist and Third Camp cartoons from the immediately pre-World War II period through the mid-1950s, with a handful of earlier contributions from the 1920s Communist press.

The artists include Carlo (Jesse Cohen) and Laura Gray (Slobe) and several others. For insight into these artists and their world, you can look up articles by Kent Worcester (http://newpol.org/content/sculptor-painter-and-cartoonist-laura-gray) and “Cannonite Bohemians After World War II” by Alan Wald (http://www.solidarity-us.org/pdfs/ATC%20159-Wald.pdf).

The coloration of these cartoons is generally pretty dark, and much of the imagery is likely to strike today’s readers as rather grim and outdated.  It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that these cartoons and the papers where they appeared — The Militant, Daily Worker, Labor Action, Socialist Appeal, etc. — actually addressed a working-class audience engaged in a labor movement that was stronger and substantially more politicized than today’s.

Matgamna acknowledges the masculinist shortcomings of the works:  “The socialists who drew these cartoons were, themselves and their organizations, militant for women’s rights, but little of that is in their work…Even so, the old symbols, the fat capitalist and the big powerful worker, are still intelligible. They depict truths of our times as well as of their own.” (1-2)

Stephanie McMillan brings the same hatred of exploitation and oppression, along with the ecological and feminist priorities of today’s movements. Her Bunnista character, whom I take to be an alter ego of sorts, appears to have evolved in recent years from a mainly environmental activist to a fully-fledged revolutionary fighter.

One feature I especially appreciate —  missing in the period cartoons chronicled by Matgamna — is McMillan’s ability to turn a humorous critical light on the movement itself. Recycling a classic radical joke, one of her characters pronounces that “Being a revolutionary militant requires tremendous sacrifice, resolve, persistence, and hard work. It ends in violent death or prison.” To which Bunnista replies: “Your recruitment pitch could use some work.” (178)

In another case, without quoting Marx, she nicely paraphrases his classic quip about the arm of criticism and the criticism of arms. (241)

In a welcome development, both of these books are “licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution — Non-Commercial” licensing arrangement. That means the art can be used with attribution, for non-commercial purposes and without alteration.

One could discuss the cartoons and text at greater length, but better to look for yourself. Ordering information: Phoenix Press, 20E Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London SE1 3DG, England; Stephanie McMillan, P.O. Box 460673, Fort Lauderdale FL 33346; steph@minimumsecurity.net.

May/June 2015, ATC 176

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Interview in Counterpunch

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/18/feeling-trapped-in-a-dead-end-system/
May 18, 2015

Also appeared in Red Wedge: http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/interviews/feeling-trapped-in-a-dead-end-system-cartoonist-stephanie-mcmillans-affirmations-encourage-resistance

Also appeared in Truthout: https://truthout.org/articles/feeling-trapped-in-a-dead-end-system-cartoonist-stephanie-mcmillan-s-affirmations-encourage-resistance/

Feeling Trapped in a Dead-End System?
Cartoonist Stephanie McMillan’s Affirmations Encourage Resistance

by MARK HAND

Activists and organizers for social change undoubtedly experience periods of burnout. Working long hours — typically without pay and little appreciation — on campaigns, issues and causes where victories are few and far between can be demoralizing. Some activists get so frustrated with the perceived lack of results from their hard work, the divisions within the Left, and the rampant apathy among the general public that they give up entirely and retreat from activism.

2014-10-30-get-seriousCartoonist, writer and organizer Stephanie McMillan saw the depression, feelings of hopelessness and other difficulties faced by her fellow activists. And she wanted to do something to help people overcome these. So she started writing uplifting messages to empower individuals to continue working for a better world. She calls her inspirational messages “Daily Affirmations for the Revolutionary Proletarian Militant.” Similar to the memorable characters in her popular comic strips Minimum Security and Code Green, McMillan’s affirmations are accompanied by cute and colorful animals, plants and insects.

McMillan is almost finished writing 365 affirmations, and when she puts the final touches on the last one, she hopes to gather them all up and offer the entire collection as a 365-day perpetual desk calendar. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., native is holding a campaign that ends June 12 to raise enough money to get the calendars printed.

In mid-May, a few days after McMillan launched her fundraising campaign, I asked her why she decided to write these affirmations. The conversation then moved on to broader questions about living in a world filled with barriers to positive change.

Mark Hand: When did you start writing and drawing the Daily Affirmations for Revolutionary Proletarian Militants?

Stephanie McMillan: I started on January 1, 2014, to provide an alternative for revolutionaries to the same old New Year’s resolutions. I intended to post them every day for a year, but some of them straggled into 2015. I’m finishing up the final 34 this month, daily through June 12, to wind up with 365 on the final day of the Kickstarter campaign.

MH: What inspired you to write them?

SM: Capitalists constantly push us to want things that keep us trapped in the system and obsessed with trivialities that distract us from resistance. All kinds of support is available if we strive to make money, worship a god, lose weight, find romance.

But there is a huge lack of inspirational literature to encourage and uplift people whose lives are dedicated to social transformation. Most writing on the Left is theoretical and political — these are obviously crucial, but there isn’t much that addresses us on the ideological level, on helping us change our ways of thinking so we stay strong, on track, and motivated, that helps us establish standards of behavior that serve our goals. All we hear is the constant barrage of capitalist ideology telling us that we’re wrong, our aspirations are impossible, we’re crazy to try, and “we can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em. No wonder many people feel so hopeless, depressed and overwhelmed.

I started writing the Affirmations to bolster my own resolve and strategic optimism, and when I started sharing them, I saw that they filled a strong need for many others as well. So I decided to draw them regularly.

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"Teaching Capitalism" – a professor reviews "Capitalism Must Die!"

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2012-12-18-our-badOriginal post here: http://uprootingcriminology.org/classroom/teaching-capitalism/

Teaching Capitalism


by Gary Potter,
Professor, School of Justice Studies
Eastern Kentucky University
April 16, 2015

Almost every semester I teach an undergraduate or graduate course in criminological theory. At best I can devote three weeks to radical, critical and feminist criminology because of the plethora of other lesser theories in the discipline. It is almost absurd to suggest that I can, even superficially cover the 1,152 pages of Marx’s Das Kapital and the 912 pages of The Grundrisse (Penguin Books editions) in an hour or two. The truth is that I am in my 30th year of trying to read and understand The Grundrisse myself. Even if I had a full semester devoted to a critique of capitalism trying to make the esoteric concepts and ideas relevant to students, particularly undergraduates, is an insurmountable task. Well, at last help has arrived!

Stephanie McMillan has produced a 244 page book of texts and cartoons titled Capitalism Must Die! What It is, Why It Sucks, and How to Crush It which makes the complex and indecipherable easy to understand. Available here: https://stephaniemcmillan.org/shop/

In Part 1, Ms. McMillan explains in easy to read text and with wonderful illustrations how capitalism works and why it must constantly and rapaciously grow through exploitation. In Part 2 she offers ideas on how we might organize to confront this ruthless system of global exploitation.

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Counterpunch: a very nice review of "Capitalism Must Die!" (and interview)

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Cartoonist and Journalist Stephanie McMillan Provides a User-Friendly Guide
How to Stop Capitalism in its Tracks

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/05/how-to-stop-capitalism-in-its-tracks/

by MARK HAND

If capitalism keeps chugging along, we’re all in big trouble. That’s the prognosis of Stephanie McMillan, an award-winning political cartoonist and author of the new book, Capitalism Must Die! A Basic Introduction to Capitalism: What It Is, Why It Sucks, and How to Crush It.

The most urgent reason to stop capitalism in its tracks, according to McMillan, is its prominent role in harming the planet. Capitalism possesses an inherent growth imperative. This means that the normal functioning of capitalism is causing water shortages, ailing oceans, destroyed forests and ruined topsoil.

But even if an ecological catastrophe weren’t upon us, capitalism would still need to be dismantled because it’s based on exploitation, McMillan said in an interview. “There’s no reason why the social result of production needs to be in private hands and that only a few people should own what everybody produces,” she said.

McMillan uses her book to introduce and popularize basic concepts of revolutionary theory. “I wanted to provide something that was accessible to people, that people wouldn’t be afraid to pick up,” she said. But once they pick it up, readers will find a “doorway into deeper levels of theory because we always need to learn more about the system,” she explained.

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Brief interview: Revolutionary Comics

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[Appears in The Socialist: http://www.thesocialist.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/TS-RADICALART-2014.pdf]

by Jen McClellan

CSUN did a week of lectures in October, titled “Comics v. Capitalism v. Climate.” The first presentation I caught was given by Professor David Klein and Stephanie McMillan, who spoke fearlessly about the incompatibility of capitalism and
…. well … life.

Jen:
Stephanie McMillan, you critiqued capitalism for needing exponential expansion in order to survive. You offer, in response to this destructive system, inspiration via cartoons, and suggest that transformation away from capitalism will be economic, political, and ideological. You also emphasize that the working class are the only ones that are able to offer a solution. My first question then is – if we live in a system that sucks every last ounce of energy out of its workers, (giving them less than enough to live decently as human beings) then where are they going to find the time or strength to study economics, become politicized, or develop an ideology?

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Comics Bulletin: ‘Captalism Must Die!’ doesn’t pull any punches

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http://comicsbulletin.com/review-captalism-must-die-doesnt-pull-any-punches/

by John Yohe
June 4, 2014

The subtitle to Captalism Must Die! doesn’t pull any punches. Artist/writer Stephanie McMillan’s latest book is “A basic introduction to capitalism, what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it.” ‘Nuff said?

This is not, like McMillan’s previous books, a narrative with sequential art, which may disappoint fans (I confess, it did me at first). Instead, it’s a more text-heavy non-fiction book explaining capitalism and class theory, interspersed with one-page cartoons that serve as ‘in other words’ visual explanations of McMillan’s at times jargon-y text. Also as necessary pauses, breaths, and laughs.

Early on, McMillan states that she’s not trying to write an academic-sounding text, but rather something that’s accessible and easily understandable. The problem is that she’s dealing with Theory-with-a-capital-T: that is, what is known in academic/university circles as Marxist theory, but is called by people who actually try to live it as ‘class theory’ and/or ‘proletarian theory,’ and therefore the use of some academic-y terminology is inevitable, and therefore maybe a little intimidating and/or the cause of eye-rolling to casual readers.

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Review of "Capitalism Must Die!" Coloring Book

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Original post (with images): http://funologist.org/2014/05/25/best-kid-present-ever/

Best.Kid.Present.Ever.

by Paxus Calta-Star

Some years back political cartoonist Stephanie McMillian did a visitor period at Twin Oaks and I had fantasies of one of the communities new industries being radical humor. She is a clever, quirky, cartoonist with an impossible message to deliver and just the right tool to do it. Her latest salvo in this on-going public education and activation campaign is on target and at exactly the right price.

Your kids deserve this book

I discovered Stephanie’s work while I was staying at an amazing squat in Barcelona called Can Masdeu. The squats library had a copy of the book she illustrated, As the Word Burns: 50 simple things you can do to stay in denial. Which is a quick read, if it does not cause your brain to explode.

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A review of “Capitalism Must Die!” from Sequential Tart

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http://www.sequentialtart.com/reports.php?ID=9120&issue=2014-05-12

Capitalism Must Die!
by Katie Frank

Reviews may contain information that could be considered ‘spoilers’. Readers should proceed at their own risk.

Grade: 7
With a subtitle like “A basic introduction to capitalism: what it is, why it sucks, and how to crush it,” Capitalism Must Die! is a book with a clear sociopolitical agenda. If you think you will hate it based on the title alone, you probably will. With that said, the book provides an overall well-written, easy to understand introduction to anti-capitalism in the Marxist tradition. It defines terms without using a lot of jargon, and uses short comics and cartoons to introduce and illustrate difficult concepts with real-world examples. The tone of the writing is forceful and impassioned without being overly preachy or antagonistic toward the reader, which can often put people off of explicitly political books. McMillan has clearly spent a lot of time in activism and political education, and it shows in how fluently she translates high theory into everyday language.

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Review of "Resistance to Ecocide" in Comics Bulletin

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Review: ‘The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance To Ecocide’: Don’t let the cute bunny fool you

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/6677/review-the-minimum-security-chronicles-resistance-to-ecocide-dont-let-the-cute-bunny-fool-you/

A comic review article by: John Yohe

Don’t let the cute bunny fool you, The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance To Ecocide is a radical and much needed (comic) book on how to save ourselves, and our world, from capitalism.

Writer/Artist Stephanie McMillan uses each of her cartoon characters, human and non, to represent different aspects of, or different philosophies within, the environmental movement, or within its more radical edges. Mainstream environmental activists, the kind that, say, listen to NPR and recycle their Starbucks cups, do appear, but only to be mocked mercilessly by her main characters—McMillan isn’t wasting time with those basic useless ideas, and she assumes her readers don’t either.

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Interview on Comics Grinder

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http://comicsgrinder.com/2013/09/17/interview-stephanie-mcmillan-and-activism-in-comics/#more-9985

Stephanie McMillan is an important voice. She is doing her part to make this a better world through her activism and her comics. And, fortunately for us, those two passions turn into some very compelling work. Her latest collection of comics, “The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide,” is published by Seven Stories Press. This book is a 160-page trade paperback priced at $12.71 and is set for release on October 8, 2013. Be sure to visit our friends at Seven Stories Press here and visit Stephanie McMillan here.

The following is an extensive email interview that I hope you’ll enjoy and be inspired by. What really motivates our actions? What sort of world do we accept and what sort of world could we aspire to? These are some of the ideas up for discussion in this interview.

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Review: ‘The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide’

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By Henry Chamberlain
Comics Grinder

“The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” is full of whimsy and wisdom as it follows its characters on a journey to save the planet. It’s all up to a group of friends to figure out if they can smash the capitalist system or just give up and go shopping. What makes Stephanie McMillan’s comic strip such a page-turner is her ability to find the right mix of humor and intelligent discourse.
MScover
Stephanie McMillan’s sense of urgency and comedy is irresistible. She has placed a whole new generation with the burden of saving the planet but they’re pretty clueless. There’s Kranti and Bananabelle, who just barely know the struggles from the past. Kranti is quick to join a protest rally and yell, “By any means necessary!” And Bananabelle, intuitively, recognizes that won’t go over well with the “mainstream liberals.”

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New Times: review of "Capitalism Must Die!"

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http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2013-08-22/culture/lt-i-gt-capitalism-must-die-lt-i-gt-stephanie-mcmillan-s-new-comics-journalism/

By Erica K. Landau

If adolescent rebellion is, for most kids, just a developmental phase, for Stephanie McMillan it was more like a political awakening. Even as a middle-schooler, this Broward County native dreamed of joining a commune and resented missing the ’60s.

But as an adult, she had to make a living. She was just a few years out of college when her job at a corporate-owned media outlet collided with her radical beliefs.

It was 1992, and McMillan was writing for the popular Fort Lauderdale alt-weekly XS (later known as City Link). She had just finished an article about the detention and deportation of immigrants. Because, however, she also was directly involved in the issue she was covering — McMillan was an advocate for detainee rights — her boss said her work could not be viewed as objective: It would undermine the paper’s reputation.

Give up participating in the struggles she believed in, she was told, or give up writing and reporting hard news.

So McMillan stepped away from the news side and instead wrote XS’s event listings, a position she held until it was eliminated in 2008. The early and sudden change of office tracks allowed her to remain an activist outside of work but, as it turned out, did not spell the end of her serious journalistic pursuits.

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IWW review: "The Beginning of the American Fall"

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First appeared in IWW Industrial Worker: http://www.scribd.com/doc/127975744/Industrial-Worker-Issue-1753-March-2013

Reprinted at Occupy.com: http://www.occupy.com/article/book-review-beginning-american-fall

by Dr. Zakk Flash

The Beginning of the American Fall: A Comics Journalist Inside the Occupy Wall Street Movement Text and Art by Stephanie McMillan 144 pp. Seven Stories Press. $16.95 Release: 13 November 2012.

Stephanie McMillan, along with her illustrated comrades, recounts the burgeoning influence, successes, and failures of the global justice movement and Occupy Wall Street in particular, from hopeful inception to uncertain future in her latest graphic novel, the Beginning of the American Fall. The novel attempts to encapsulate the early days of the movement (and the artist’s own radical roots) through expertly illustrated comics and connective essays.

Winner of the “poor man’s Pulitzer,” the 2012 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the book’s illustrations and text follow McMillan from her beginnings as an environmentally-conscious college activist to her growing radical awakening. Narrated by McMillan (and placing her firmly in the action), the story weaves together the artist’s own sensitive reflections with sociopolitical context. McMillan herself comes across as a participant of great optimism and enthusiasm, tracing the arc of her own expectations with the movement’s limitations.

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Interview in "Eleftherotypia"

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Here’s an interview I did for the largest Athens (Greece) daily paper, about “The Beginning of the American Fall.”

What I sent them, answering their questions, is below (I’m not sure what, from this, was actually used).

1) How does it feel to be one of the few women in the cartoon world?

It’s hard to make a living as a cartoonist, no matter the gender. In the last decade or so, being female has become much less of a novelty in the cartoon/comics world. I actually don’t think about that very much. In some instances it has probably been one factor (secondary, among others) when I’ve been passed over for jobs or received lower pay, but I can’t control that, so I move on, and keep trying a lot of different things to get my work seen and to find ways of making an income from it. My (far left) political views are actually much more of an obstacle to achieving the traditional view of “success” than anything else. Not to mention the collapse of print media. These have been much more significant factors for me.

2) Politics and cartoons. An uneasy bond?

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Vice: The Revolution will be Illustrated

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The Revolution Will Be Illustrated: Stephanie McMillan’s Occupy Cartoons
by Michael Arria

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-revolution-will-be-illustrated-an-interview-with-stephanie-mcmillan

History decays into images, said Walter Benjamin, but what about comics? Stephanie McMillan has been covering politics through her comics since 1992, but where does the medium fit into the era of Twitter and the 24/7 news crawl? Her new book, The Beginning of the American Fall, tackles that question head-on. It might just be the best account yet of Occupy’s birth, refusing to downplay the divisions or underscore the successes of the movement. The work wraps memoir, political philosophy, and reporting into one succinct illustrated package. The book, and her cartoon “Code Green,” the only consistant comic about the environmental crisis, recently earned her a journalism award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. McMillan was kind enough to answer some questions for Motherboard regarding Occupy, how her approach has changed, and what’s coming next.

Motherboard: Did you know you wanted to cover Occupy through comics, or did the process kind of happen organically after you became involved?

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RFK Journalism Award: article in Washington Post's Comic Riffs

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STEPHANIE McMILLAN wins RFK Journalism Award for social-justice cartoons
By Michael Cavna

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/stephanie-mcmillan-wins-rfk-journalism-award-for-social-justice-cartoons/2012/05/09/gIQAXxTvBU_blog.html

THE VERY REASON Stephanie McMillian is a cartoonist, she says, is because she is motivated by the propulsive goal and hope of social justice. Given that her focus resonates powerfully through her work, it seems a natural outcome that McMillan has now been recognized by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights.

The center officially announced this week that McMillan was its winner in the Cartoon category — one of eight recipients of the RFK Journalism Awards. The RFK Book Award winner was also announced: University of Minnesota political science professor Kathryn Sikkink, who authored “The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics.”

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Der Speigel: review of "The Beginning of the American Fall"

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Politik im Comic Der Geist der Bewegung

Von Ute Friederich

Globale Bewegung: Eine Szene aus Stephanie McMillans „The Beginning of the American Fall“.Bild vergrößernGlobale Bewegung: Eine Szene aus Stephanie McMillans „The Beginning of the American Fall“. – Foto: cartoonmovement.com

Zwischen arabischem Frühling und Occupy: Selten war das Medium Comic so politisch und aktuell wie jetzt. Vorreiter ist die Website cartoonmovement.com, die kürzlich ihren ersten Jahrestag feierte.

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HuffPo: Occupying The Comic Book

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Stephanie McMillan Is Occupying The Comic Book
The Huffington Post | By Arin Greenwood

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/09/stephanie-mcmillan-occupy-comic_n_1137636.html?ref=dc

WASHINGTON — There’s no superhero in cartoonist Stephanie McMillan’s two-part comic detailing the early days of the Occupy movement in the nation’s capital. But there are plenty of idealistic and persnickety revolutionaries in them.

“The Beginning of the American Fall” came out in November. The second part came out on Monday. Both comics are put out by Cartoon Movement, a site that’s been putting out a lot of comics and cartoons about the Occupy movement.

McMillan is from South Florida — she came to D.C. to participate in the protests, not just chronicle them. And her role as an insider comes through. The comics are affectionate if sometimes pointed looks at the people occupying D.C.’s two protest encampments — Occupy DC in McPherson Square and Occupy Washington DC, formerly called “Stop the Machine,” in Freedom Plaza.

McMillan gets into everything from the demonstrators’ hopefulness and radical idealism to the groups’ internal struggles over how to deal with the police and illustrates how annoying the consensus process and camping can be even for radical idealists.

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Interview — WashPo

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Here’s a story in the Washington Post blog “Comic Riffs” — http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/occupy-comics-cartoon-movement-journalists-sketch-a-multi-city-composite/2011/11/15/gIQAxRvtPN_blog.html

Excerpt:

“When I heard about ‘Stop the Machine,’ it seemed to have more potential than traditional protests, because they declared that they weren’t going to leave until their demands were met,” McMillan tells Comic Riffs of one of the D.C. protests. “It promised a higher level of determination and militancy than the usual actions — so I really wanted to go and be a part of it.

“Meanwhile, during the period before ‘Stop the Machine’ was due to begin, Occupy Wall Street emerged, and many other encampments in its wake,” McMillan continues. “It seemed that the American people were waking up and deciding that they were no longer prepared to silently tolerate the many injustices that those in power have been perpetrating on the people and the planet.”

Interview in Transindex

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Here’s an interview in Hungarian in the Transylvanian online newspaper Transindex:

Rácz Tímea

A többszörösen újságírói díjakkal kitüntetett, eléggé extrém környezetvédelmi nézeteket valló lány a TOTB-nek mesélt munkájáról és nézeteiről.

Amellett, hogy környezetvédelmi témákat dolgozol fel, aktivista is vagy? Mióta, és mit csinálsz?

Igen, a One Struggle (Egyetlen harc) nevű csoport szervezője vagyok. Ezt néhány emberrel indítottam el itthon, Dél-Floridában. Egy antikapitalista, antiimperialista kezdeményezés, amely mind az ökológiai problémákra, mind a társadalmi igazságtalanságokra, valamint az ezek közötti kapcsolatra szeretné felhívni a figyelmet.

Már középiskolás korom óta – a ’80-as évek elejétől – aktivista vagyok, foglalkoztam a bevándorlók jogaival, a rendőri brutalitásokkal, a nők reprodukciós szabadságával és harcoltam az imperialista háború ellen. Az elmúlt néhány évben jobban megértettem az ökológiai válság sürgető helyzetét, és az energiám nagyrészét erre összpontosítottam. Ha nem tudjuk megállítani a bolygó tönkretételét, semmi más nem fog számítani.

Melyek a legsürgetőbb környezetvédelmi problémák szerinted?

Az egész természetes világ rohamosan romlik, így nehéz megmondani, melyik a legszörnyűbb aspektusa. Mindegyik hatással van egy másikra. A globális felmelegedés, a fajok tömeges kihalása, a haldokló óceánok, az édesvízkészlet fogyása, az atomerőművek… mindegyikük nagyon fontos, és az összessel foglalkoznunk kell.

Honnan merítesz ihletet a rajzaidhoz?

Bárcsak ne lenne ihletem, de sajnos minden nap újabb bűncselekményeket követnek el a természet ellen. Túl sok témából tudok válogatni. A problémák gyorsan szaporodnak, elég egy pillantást vetni a hírekre.

Ebben a pillanatban több millió ember éhezik Szomáliában, a klímaváltozás okozta szárazság és éhínség miatt; egy amazonasi törzs – akikkel eddig még nem vettük fel a kapcsolatot – már nincs meg, és félő, hogy a drogdílerek kiirtották őket. Az Egyesült Államokban soha nem látott hőhullám sepert végig, és még sok minden egyéb történik… Bárcsak ne lenne, ami Ellen küzdeni vagy amit kritizálni, de mindezekkel a problémákkal szembe kell néznünk,

A rajzaid közül melyek a személyes kedvenceid?

Itt nagyon élveztem megrajzolni a gyászos, apokaliptikus jelenetet, amelyet aztán több helyen felhasználtam:

Aranyos állatokat is szeretek rajzolni, ez a gyerekkönyvem egyik illusztrációja:

Ez pedig egy friss rajz a Minimum Security című napi sorozatomból. Cuki állatok és kemény politika ötvözete – a kedvenc kombinációm:

Mit gondolsz, mit szeretnek legjobban az emberek a rajzaidban, mi az erősségük?

A rajzaim azokhoz szólnak, akik kedvelik a képregényekben ritka, radikális politikai kritikát. A munkám antikapitalista perspektívákra alapoz, és bátorítja mindazokat, akik egyetértenek velem. Emellett igyekszem vicces és szórakoztató lenni, ahogyan Oscar Wilde is javasolta: “Ha el akarod mondani az embereknek az igazságot, akkor nevettesd meg őket, máskülönben megölnek.” Ha a rajzok vizuális szempontból vonzóak, segíthetnek az embereknek eszméket felkarolni. Ezt szeretném elérni.

Interview with "Quill" magazine

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Here’s an interview I did with SPJ’s “Quill” magazine.

* * *
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Ten with Stephanie McMillan

By Scott Leadingham

To call Stephanie McMillan a cartoonist is like calling Paul McCartney a musician. It’s accurate in all meanings of the word. But leaving it at just cartoonist (even adding “editorial” as a descriptor) comes up short. She might rightly be described as a social activist and agitator, one whose pointed commentary and analysis are conveyed most visibly through pictures and their associated dialogue bubbles. Her incisive work caught the attention of the Sigma Delta Chi Awards judges, who recognized her excellence for the recurring syndicated cartoon “Code Green,” about environmental issues. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., native studied film animation at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Next year will mark her 20th drawing regular cartoons for newspapers.

What was your first reaction to winning a Sigma Delta Chi Award?

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In These Times interview: Abortion Rights comic

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Can’t Make a Decision, Ladies? Call Bill Napoli.

by Mikhaela B. Reid

If anti-abortion politicians are so sure they can tell women what to do with their bodies, why not make them deal with the rest of women’s decisions? That was the premise of political cartoonist Stephanie McMillan’s response to South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli’s comments that he could see an exception to the state’s near-total abortion ban for a raped and “brutalized” religious virgin, but not for “simple rape.”

In McMillan’s cartoon, a young man asks his sister Kranti which salad dressing she would like, to which she responds that as a woman, she can’t make a decision without calling Bill Napoli at home or at work. The cartoon contains the relevant phone numbers.

According to the Rapid City Journal, Napoli received a “flood” of calls, which he claimed were mostly “intolerable filth.”

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Raw Story: article on Bill Napoli cartoon

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My Dinner with Napoli

by Nancy Goldstein – Raw Story columnist
Published: Wednesday March 29, 2006

I wasn’t sure whether to use chorizo or bacon in my paella last weekend, so I called South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli and asked him to make my decision for me.

Stephanie McMillan inspired me to contact Bill — one of the most vocal supporters of the new state ban on virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. McMillan’s brilliant cartoon, which has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, lampoons Napoli’s conviction that women can’t be trusted to make decisions about our own bodies — and conveniently provides his work and home numbers.

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