Mutual Aid is Fading

I’ve known about this Shepard Fairey-like poster for a while, and It’s interesting how it is slowly disintegrating. Its located a Sherman Avenue and V Street. The Obama Hope image inspired a number of knock-offs, this being one of them.

To see what it looked like back when all the parts were still intact, Michael Loadenthal was kind enough to let me use his image below, which was photographed in January of 2009. You can see how ephemeral this art can be.

The image is actually more straight forward than most people probably realize. The portrait is of Peter Kropotkin (1842 – 1921), and it references his most famous book, Mutual Aid, which maintains that cooperation within a species has been a historical factor in the development of social institutions and in fact, that the avoidance of competition greatly increases the chances of survival and raises the quality of life. You can read more about him and his work here>>