American Mayday | Sara Trail, 2012

Materials: Cotton, Thrifted American Flag, Batiks
Techniques: Raw-edge appliqué, machine quilted 
Finished Size: 80" by 64"

On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The murdered children were all six or seven years old. After the shooting, politicians took little to no action to address the root causes of gun violence, and media portrayals of the shooter depicted him as simply someone with mental health issues. When gun violence is perpetrated by people of color or by immigrants, media accounts of the killers are very different, which is rooted in the racism surrounding gun debates in this county. We now live in a time and place where school shootings are not rare. Children are killed regularly simply for attending school. After the more recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, which claimed the lives of seventeen people, young people are standing up to the gun lobby and making their voices heard through activism. Youth are telling our country that they've had enough of seeing their peers killed and they're demanding action.