Danger
Anti Racist Group of Rethymno Students
Offset, 2003
Rethymno, Crete (Greece)
26350
Poster text: [English:] danger antiracist festival [Greek:] Third Anti-Racist Festival of Rethymno Municipal Garden of Rethymno Danger No Human Being is Illegal [literal: No Life is Illegal] 27-28 September 2003 Home of Immigrants Anti-Racist Group of Rethymno Students
Nearly 700 people are missing or presumed dead after a large fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this month. The passengers on board the Adriana included migrants and refugees from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Palestine who were attempting to cross from Libya to Italy – up to 100 children were below deck. To date, there are 104 survivors, 82 deaths, and hundreds still missing.
Adriana is one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in the past decade but the scant news coverage would suggest otherwise. During the search for survivors of the Adriana, media coverage was focused on the search for the Titan, a 21-foot submersible, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a private research and tourism company that conducted underwater trips to the wreck site of the Titanic.
Migrants, like those on the Adriana, make the perilous journey out of desperation–fleeing economic crises and political instability–largely exacerbated by generations of colonization and environmental exploitation, U.S. foreign policy, and climate change. The infuriating reality is that these deaths were preventable. European immigration policies (or lack thereof) force hundreds of thousands of migrants each year into treacherous waters. Since 2014, 27,629 migrants have been recorded as missing during their journey across the Mediterranean Sea. The route from North Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean to Europe, is most often used by migrants without documentation.
The disparity between the international efforts made to locate the five Titan passengers versus the 700+ plus refugees is stunning. The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, the French and Canadian government all combined efforts to locate Titan. Meanwhile, most of the Adriana’s survivors were aided by private yacht owners who responded to distress calls from the ship. Few were aided by the Greek Coast Guard.
CSPG’s Poster of the Week was made in Greece, but uses the immigrant crossing "Caution" sign first created by Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) in San Diego in 1990. It has now become an internationally recognized icon for immigrant rights.
Progressive immigration policies now!
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