On Oct. 16, the Beehive Collective- a political grassroots organization based out of the small-town of Machias, Maine- made a stop at Brandeis University on their cross-country tour to campaign against war, colonialism and globalization. Several Brandeis clubs including the Radical Student Alliance invited the Beehive Collective to this campus to educate the students about the Beehive Collective's political views.The two hour presentation took place in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium, and the two centerpieces were sixteen foot cloth banners printed with representational art entitled "Plan Colombia" and "Free Trade of the Americas." Plan Colombia is the United States' $1.3 billion package of assistance to help Colombians overcome their national drug problem, human rights violations and ailing economy. The other banner was "Free Trade Area of the Americas," which is an attempt started in 1994 at the Summit of the Americas to unite all the economies of the Americas in trade without barriers.

The Beehive Collective uses anthropomorphic collages to express their views. "The Free Trade of the Americas" banner's focal point was the world totally covered by three mechanical industrial spiders representing development, militarization, and corporation. The development spider had chainsaw fangs and oil drilling legs, the militarization spider was covered in hypodermic needles, and the corporation spider had television eyes and corporate logo skin. Among their victims was a howler monkey, both entangled in the general web of the spiders and sewing machine threads which represented the plight of the sweat-shop workers, and also gas-mask wearing monarch butterflies.

The "Plan Colombia" banner was based on interviews with South Americans. They stressed that America's involvement in their country had its roots in European colonization. At the top of the banner loomed a wasp nest shaped like Europe, out of which burst another nest shaped like the United States, imitating the principal in nature that when a wasp nest gets too heavy, a second one grows out of it. The American nest contained complacent wasps (a visual pun on the rich American WASP class) watching televisions, all the while oblivious to the plight of the South American ants below.

Underneath the nests were airplanes spraying cocoa fields, because one facet of Plan Colombia is to abolish the cocaine problem. The Beehive Collective states that since the American airplanes spray the fields so inaccurately civilians 100 miles away are affected by the poisonous fumes. The South Americans interviewed thought that this was an American strategy to displace citizens.

These fields were attached to an earth which was split into a "nightmare" side and a "life" side. One example of this juxtaposition was on the "life" side there were South American minor ants unionizing, and on the "nightmare" side there were American ants training at the School of the Americas about how to destabilize unions.

Since there was a limited amount of time, and the Beehive Collective didn't have one central theme, they were not able to speak in depth about any one topic. The presentation was rushed because the presenters simultaneously tried to educate the audience, engage the audience in discussion and explain their elaborate banners in only two hours. Because they tried to cover too much, their messages were reduced to statistics and anecdotes with little time for analysis or discussion.

Still, the presenters encouraged discussion and debate, although the seating arrangement was not conducive to it. With 40 people in the audience sitting in rows, if someone in the back row wanted to rebut a statement of someone in the front row, the presenters were running back and forth with their microphones. The logistics of getting each participant enough volume to be heard was more noticeable than what was being said.

By combining art and information, the Beehive Collective provided an interesting and fun forum for students to familiarize themselves with topics that are at the center of many political debates. With the next presidential election approaching, presentations such as this are important as students begin to investigate and form their own political beliefs.