PROTEST MESSAGES
"Flour masacre"
Latex paint on linen scroll with wood dowels and ribbon.
(In regards to my artwork pulled from exhibition at Judson Memorial Church due to swastika)
The Role of the Churches in Nazi Germany
The list of "bystanders" -- those who declined to challenge the Third Reich in any way -- that emerges from any study of the Holocaust is long and depressing. Few organizations, in or outside Nazi Germany, did much to resist Nazism or aid its victims.
[I]t has become abundantly clear that [the Churches'] failure to respond to the horrid events...was not due to ignorance; they knew what was happening. Ultimately, the Churches' lapses during the Nazi era were lapses of vision and determination.
Assisting European Jews was not a high priority of the Allied governments as they sought to defeat Hitler militarily. The courageous acts of individual rescuers and resistance members proved to be the exception, not the norm.
To a great extent, this inertia defined the organized Christian community as well. Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent while Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered. In Nazi Germany in September 1935, there were a few Christians in the Protestant Confessing Church who demanded that their Church take a public stand in defense of the Jews. Their efforts, however, were overruled by Church leaders who wanted to avoid any conflict with the Nazi regime. Internationally, some Church leaders in Europe and North America did condemn the Nazis' measures against the Jews, and there were many debates about how Christians outside Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territory should best respond to Hitler's brutal policies. These discussions, however, tended to become focused more on secondary strategic considerations -- like maintaining good relations with colleagues in the German Churches -- than on the central humanitarian issues that were really at stake."
From Wikipedia: Peoples Flag Show
"The organizers of the exhibition wanted to test the boundaries of “repressive laws governing so-called flag desecration.”[3] This intent was posted on a flyer calling for artist participation for the week-long event. While the exhibition was not explicitly an antiwar event, it grew out of the antiwar movement, with many of the works included in the exhibition referencing and in some cases expressing disapproval of the Vietnam War."
An excerpt from my response: Considering the eruption and controversy the original flag show ignited in 1970, and this show was in celebration of its 55th anniversary, and in light of the ongoing holocaust of the Palestinian people by Israel, funded by the US, while screaming "NEVER AGAIN!", I am quite shocked and deeply disappointed. Whether policies or laws, it is this suppression of expression, and free speech that the 1970 flag exhibit was testing and rooted in.