Button 157: United Cartoon Workers of America: Local 7, Twin Cities

157. United Cartoon Workers of America: Local 7, Twin Cities. (1991).

In the early '70s underground cartoonists actually considered the formation of a labor union. Artists like Spain Rodriguez and Robert Crumb attended meetings of the venerable but tiny International Workers of the World (I.W.W.) in San Francisco. Some artists thought a union would help them get better deals with publishers. The affiliation with the old left "Wobblies" never went anywhere but the idea of artist solidarity had wide appeal. Denis Kitchen, then in the midwest, was publisher and owner of Krupp Comic Works/Kitchen Sink, but he was also a cartoonist and at the time was a card-carrying socialist. He created U.C.W.A. buttons as the first visible symbol of cartoonist solidarity.

There were only two significant clusters of underground cartoonists in 1973: San Francisco, where undergrounds originated and flourished, so it was designated Local No. 1 and Milwaukee, then home to Krupp/Kitchen Sink and half a dozen or so underground cartoonists, became Local No. 2 and these two cities claimed the only official U.C.W.A. buttons for seventeen years. By 1990 the growing number of young and activist cartoonists led Kitchen to expand the number of official locals.

The cumbersome two and a quarter inch buttons were replaced by more practical (wearable) one and a quarter inch designs for new Locals No. 3 (Chicago), No. 4 (Princeton WI), No. 5 (San Diego) and No. 6 (New York). In 1991, under pressure from Minneapolis and St. Paul creators Reed Waller, Kate Worley, Ken Fletcher, Rich Larsen, Jim Schumeister, Steve Fastner, Blue Petal, David Mruz and others, Kitchen designated the Twin Cities as the final U.C.W.A. Local, No. 7. Designed by Peter Poplaski and Kitchen. (See also U.C.W.A. buttons #2-A, 7-A, 67 and 136-141)

Diameter: 1.25 inches. $5.00

One note, for serious button collectors, you may want to read the KSP BUTTON TEXT which explains the numbering systems for identifying the various buttons produced over the last 30 years, or see the COMPLETE KSP BUTTON LIST. The list is VERY long, so be patient while it loads.