My generation hasn’t had any significant progressive leaders that have served as role models in the public sphere. I’m pretty sure we can all point to people in our smaller circles that live their life in a manner that you try to live up to. But as far as progressive leadership with a substantial voice in mass media, nada. Michael Moore would be the closest thing to someone who consistently put himself out there to get people thinking, talking and inspiring organization. But at his core he is a movie maker. Not a leader.

My generation grew up in the era where Rambo, The Terminator and the World Wrestling Federation dominated our eyes and ears and in the process we became more intimately acquainted with guns, ammunition and violence than we did with any sort of progressive thinking or leadership on a large scale. The dominant leaders from our history who began to successfully organize the people with a broad, accelerated, positive structure were taken down by the same bullet that dominates our popular culture and threatens to completely pollute the next generation.

Enter The Assassinated Public Figure Playset!

What better way to teach the next generation about the progressive, peaceful leadership who gave their lives to senseless violence in their prime than by picking up the Playset at your local Wal-Mart, Target or K-Mart and break it out on family game night.

Too much? Maybe. You get what I’m trying to say here.

This piece will be shown in the “My Uzi Weighs a Ton“, guns & pop culture – art show at the Neon Forest Gallery in Orlando. I chose to depict Abraham Lincoln, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X. Each person is hand painted on a .50 caliber (non-firing) round. This is the largest bullet a citizen of the USA can purchase. No permit necessary. I found it overwhelmingly troubling that it was easier to buy a bullet that could kill from over a mile away than it was to come up with a relevant, progressive thinking leader that is accessible to our next generation. (although I still have hope) Let’s do the damn thing.

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