The poster illustrates a multitude of faceless people with their arms raised, hands filled with weapons, protesting with a sign that reads:

“THE PEOPLE WILL FREE THE PANTHER 21”

These faceless people allude to the commonality found within the protesters and that there was no one particular type of person who was on the front lines of freeing those imprisoned. The Panther 21 was a group of twenty-one members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (originally founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966) who were arrested and charged with 156 counts of pre-meditated bombing and rifle attacks on two police stations, six railroads, in New York City. In relation to using the people as a means to freeing the people of Panther 21, a parallel can be seen in Angela Davis: An Autobiography when Davis is describing the countless people who would protest for her release and others part of the Black Panther group outside of the jail she was in.

By Any Means Necessary. The four words that were printed four times seemed to defy what seemed to be the mainstream mission of black activism – nonviolence. The vibrant red in the image paints the utter urgency of the gravity of the need for liberation, and the spears and knives in the protesters’ hands further denounces the ideology of nonviolence and demands that anti-colonialists arm themselves, as it is the only way to truly achieve freedom from the oppressive, institutional and colonist system. This is similar to the principles outlined in both Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother. Fanon states that a violence uprising is inevitable in seeking freedom, while Jackson substantiates this point by acknowledging that said colonialist society relies on the subjugation and enslavement of its most disadvantaged groups of people. An armed revolution is the only way to reverse this – by any means necessary!