EPRP: Getting the Message Out

Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party on the march, probably 1976

The EPRP understood the importance of revolutionary propaganda inspite of repressive conditions.

“During one of my monthly trips to Debre Markos to meet with the subzonal committee, our secretary passed along a decision made by the party leadership. The leadership thought we needed to show the presence of our party to the people in our districts...The proposed activities included throwing propaganda pamphlets over the fences of homes, posting slogans and posters on telephone polls and house walls, writing antigovernment slogans on cemented streets, fences and bridges with red ink or paint, and hanging red party banners on telephone wires....Once I returned to Bichena, Misiker and I wrote scores of party slogans on the white sheets. The slogans included, ‘Down with Fascism!’ ‘EPRP will win!’ ‘Down with Reactionary Scholars!’... The action was to be conducted around 1 a.m. when the people would be asleep. Misiker and I had the task of distributing the red paint, the brushes and party slogans to the other members of the district committee and to the several people who worked in our respective cells.” —Gizachew Tiruneh in On The Run in the Blue Nile, recounting his youthful clandestine organizing with the EPRP in the mid-1970s

EPRP demonstration, probably 1976. Note poster of Che Guevara.