We are using the language of visual icons and products in order to reach the widest possible audience with universal messages in support of peace, justice, and freedom of conscience. We do this without respect for the distinctions between art, propaganda, and commerce, and with full knowledge that we fly into the unforgiving maw of "commodification" and its brain-bending contradictions.

As a company, we are politically non-sectarian and embrace the broadest possible front of all sane and fair-minded people in resistance to the rising tide of war, terror, and oppression.


How we operate

Our mission is to create products that allow people to show and circulate anti-war and pro-peace and justice images and words while generating funds in support of peace and justice advocates. We want to build a "good works" company in our manufacturing, marketing, employee, and community relations, while achieving a successful, sustainable business.

ProtestWorks.com is donating a majority of profits to the Rosette and Robert W. White Sr. Fund for Peace & Justice, which we have nicknamed "The Rosey Fund," to make grants directly to peace and justice activists and activist organizations. The Rosey Fund is a private philanthropic fund administered entirely by the staff of ProtestWorks.com and operates with no overhead. All moneys passed to the Fund go entirely into donations.

All our t-shirts are printed by Ashbury Images ("Rebuilding lives one shirt at a time"), a nonprofit that has been providing job training and counseling to the homeless and recovering substance abusers in San Francisco since 1991. Check out their good works at www.ashburyimages.org




Robert Anbian
Founder & Head Refugee

In the fall of 1968, in a burst of enthusiasm, fledgling sophomore Anbian joined antiwar protestors illegally occupying the ROTC building at the University of Virginia, only slightly confused by the fact that he was a member of ROTC. He soon went over to RATC (the "Revolutionary Army Training Corps," which dedicated itself to disrupting ROTC training drills) and joined the campus Virginia Progressives, becoming the first candidate for student office at UVA to run without wearing a necktie (he wore a black turtleneck; he lost). In his junior year, he read William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and was inspired to give up law school for poetry.

On graduating, Anbian continued anti-war activities while resisting and ultimately eluding the draft. "In the end, Nixon saved my ass [when he ended the draft] but I wasn't exactly grateful," he says. "I resisted to protest the war but supported the draft in principle. That's the way it was supposed to work. We wouldn't be in Iraq today if we had a draft."

Anbian went on to serve in the Peace Corps in Niger, West Africa. In San Francisco in the 1980s, he joined demonstrations and civil disobedience actions at Port Chicago, the U.S. military's primary facility at the time for funneling arms and ammunition to right-wing militaries and paramilitaries in Central America. He also worked with groups producing cultural events, translations, and publications in solidarity with popular struggles in Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti. His professional experience as a journalist, editor and publicist includes writing and fundraising for progressive political campaigns in California.

Anbian edited the literary journal, OBOE, from 1978-82 and is one of the founders of Night Horn Books. He is the author of three collections of poetry. WE 1 & 2 (Night Horn Books 1999) and Antinostalgia (Ruddy Duck Press 1992) are available from the Night Horn Books page on this site. Bohemian Airs & Other Kefs (1982) is currently out of print.

Of today's war-torn planet, Anbian says: "Blame the powerful."

Lynn Anbian
Art Director & Top Survivor

A child of Southern California by way of her family's World War II migration from the plains of Kansas, Lynn Anbian attended her first antiwar protest while in high school, at President Nixon's San Clemente compound. The demonstrators had just managed a difficult descent to the rocky beach below Nixon's seaside manse, when a helicopter flew up, taking the President away, over the protestors' heads. "It was eerie," Lynn remembers, "as if we were storming the castle and the emperor had flown the coup. And years later, when the last helicopter took off from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon, I had an uncanny sensation of deja vu."

Also while in high school, Lynn joined a church group traveling to Mexico in the summers to help repair schools there. At Humboldt State University, she trained to be a social worker and teacher. After graduating, Lynn served as a VISTA Volunteer in Arizona directing and teaching in an Adult Learning Center in Phoenix for recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Settling in San Francisco, she joined the Department of Agriculture as a Food Program Specialist overseeing School Breakfast & Lunch Programs in California, Alaska and Hawaii - a task that became increasingly difficult under the Reagan Administration, which infamously tried to pass off catsup as a vegetable for poor kids.

With Reaganism in full swing, Lynn returned to school to fulfill a childhood dream of being a commercial designer and artist. She has since developed a successful freelance career as a designer of three-dimensional toy and gift items.

Sidelined by life-threatening illness for much of the 1990s, Lynn never stopped working or doing what she could to help others in similar circumstances. Today, against the odds, she is well and ready to give back in new ways.

"First, we get rid of Bush" she says. "Then we de-militarize foreign policy. War only brings death and destruction for ordinary folks, here and abroad, while the rich and powerful profit."

Eric Smith
Webmaster & Angry Black Man

Part of the coming of age ritual for geeky 8th grader Eric Smith, who grew up in Washington, D.C., was the dual pursuit of the smartest girls and the best excuses to skip school. This initially led Eric, Earth-shoed and Afro freak-flag flying, to the mall, then later to the mother of all protest locations...the Mall. His first D.C. demos were against the Vietnam War, his last were to end the shamefully colonial status of D.C. residents who suffer taxation without representation. In between, one of his most memorable marching moments was, when alongside his gay and lesbian buds visiting from Montana in the Gay Pride parade, he inadvertently gave hope to some poor soul who yelled out, "I knew there were queer brothas in Montana!"

Known in musical circles as E. "Doctor" Smith, Eric lived and worked in New York, LA, New England, and Seattle as a professional drummer and sound engineer until moving San Francisco in 2002. He has worked with many pop stars including Madonna, Brian Eno, Gladys Knight, Jimmy, Cliff, Warren Zevon, Mickey Hart and John Mayall. Having met many of his heroes and seen several musical mountaintops-some for real, some in quotes-his desire now is simply to make spirits dance with original music performed on the digital percussion instrument he designed and made, the Drummstick.

Eric, who won the Rhode Island amateur chess championship in 1983, also teaches chess to kids in S.F. schools, where he has recently started a very successful citywide tournament attended by increasing numbers of what he lovingly refers to as "his critters." Eric is involved in community work as a board member of his neighborhood association. He is webmaster and co-producer of the group's annual flea market.

Eric has seen more than he cares to tell about the revolving lot of politicians hosted by his beloved Chocolate City. Of the folks currently in power, Eric bellows, "Those lying liars have really got to go!"