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Eric Drooker (born 1958), a talented poster and graphic artist, is a positive thinker who is dissatisfied with--but not disillusioned by--the status quo of his nation and the world. He is a participant in grassroots movements and organizations, and encourages others to become informed and active as well. Drooker uses his art as visual communication, as opposed to verbal language, because his message reaches people of all ages, languages, and educational backgrounds. By refusing to conform to communicating only through words, he has already challenged people to think differently. Despite his grave subject matter, there is resounding optimism in his art.
Eric Drooker is greatly influenced by the community of the Lower East Side, where he grew up. Being a third generation New Yorker, his family was directly influenced by the history of the city. He was very close to his maternal grandparents, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, who were progressive thinkers: "...of course back in the '30s, if you were Jewish or Italian, in New York City and you weren't in the Communist Party, and you weren't an anarchist, you were at least in the Socialist Party." (1) Drooker was also close to his parents, who exposed him to adult subject matter in a mature way. From his grandfather and father, he read graphic novels by Frans Masereel and the underground comix of R. Crumb.
This early exposure to artistic creativity as well as progressive ideas led him to realize his artistic side. Drooker earned a scholarship to an art school in the city of New York, where he was able to live for 20 years in the Lower East Side, in a tenement by Tompkins Square Park. Although he majored in sculpture in college, his social sensitivity stirred him to self-publish politically critical illustrations after he graduated. His sense of neighborhood activism enabled him to organize reluctant tenants who were exploited by their landlords and were able to demand basic utilities such as water heaters. In the early 1980s, he was arrested at age 22 for posting up fliers and thrown in lock up for several days. However, that did not stop him from distributing his own artwork in the streets. At one time, he was able to pay rent with profits from selling his own designed buttons on the streets. This street peddling of art was deemed illegal by the city council but Drooker opted for the elusive self-publishing rather than a 9-5 suit-and-tie job. Because of his frequent exposure to the streets, he often saw his friends have their musical instruments confiscated by the police, an image that is recurring in his artwork.
In 1983, when Rudolph Giuliani was appointed US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, laws became tougher on street dwellers, street artists, and street musicians. Not only were they often arrested and thrown in jail for violating city rules, they were also strip searched for such "crimes" as playing music. Drooker believes that his portrayal of police brutality and injustice is not exaggerated in his art.
In Street Posters and Ballads, Drooker discusses briefly the history of the community in lower Manhattan, and specifically Tompkins Square Park. In 1873, residents and workers of the Lower East Side organized in the park. The protest was a message for the urban authorities and businessmen that unemployed people wanted more jobs instead of charity. During this demonstration, policemen on horses forcibly broke up the unarmed demonstrators. Drooker called the Lower East Side "New York's oldest stomping ground" and a "gateway for immigrants from all over the world." (2) For decades, an eclectic mix of people and ideas thrived unmolested in the Lower East Side. The community produced and attracted famous artists in all genres such as composer George Gershwin, comedians the Marx brothers, beat generation writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and folk singer Woody Guthrie. However, in the 1980s during Reaganomics, the Lower East Side started to become a fashionable place to live. Because of the high demand for real estate in the area, the tenants who had been living there could not afford to stay any longer. After evictions, the displaced tenants lived in the park, and caused the new apartment owners to complain. This led to a curfew in 1988 at the park, which infuriated the people, such as Drooker, who had lived by Tompkins Square Park for years. However, instead of passively accepting the loss of their neighborhood, the evicted tenants collectively mobilized and gathered for a demonstration to resist the curfew and to take back the park. Similar to the demonstration more than a hundred years ago, unsympathetic police with riot gear brutally broke up the crowd. Unlike the demonstration more than a hundred years ago, the police had leftover tanks from the Korean War. Despite the overwhelming mechanical force of the police, the spirit of the crowd was unrelenting and finally the curfew was lifted.
Drooker was personally attached to this neighborhood and empathized with the displaced tenants of the Lower East Side. Although he was not homeless or jobless, he understood that the heart of the community was being eviscerated because of real estate greed. Drooker was equally disturbed that the police--supposed peacekeepers--and lawmakers of the city were so adamant on suppressing people's freedom of assembly and speech, fundamental rights of democracy. Drooker recalls "the police just cracking people's skulls open and charging on horseback, helicopters hovering low above tenement buildings. An unforgettable, apocalyptic scene." (3) The protest did not win a favorable opinion of the police, but it demonstrated the power of a determined and passionate crowd, which Drooker captures in many of his prints.
Because of his leftist political art, Drooker was only to find work illustrating for progressive magazines at first. He illustrated covers and drew ink comics for local and radical magazines such as the Marxist Daily World, The Progressive, and the spoof pornographic Screw. For a cover of Screw, Drooker created an illustration of then President Ronald Reagan raping the Statue of Liberty. His work was recognized by other progressive artists such as Seth Tobocman, and contributed to and later became an editor for the journal World War 3 Illustrated, which was like a comics version of the old socialist magazine The Masses (published by John Reed) that was shut down during World War I. High profile artists, musicians and poets also saw Drooker's talent and propelled him to illustrate their work, and his paintings even made covers of The New Yorker. Although The New Yorker a is a more mainstream and distinguished publication than Screw, the contents of the former are thought provoking and likewise Drooker's message and themes in his are not diluted. Even with his success in publishing his work, he continues to allow social activists to use his art prints on their posters.
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