Sculpture By A Victim's Dad Is A Moving Tribute To 'The Last Lockdown'

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


It's an image no parent ever wants to see; a child huddled and hiding under a desk. Shoulders hunched, eyes on the ground, terrified. And yet that is exactly what this sculpture by a Parkland victim's dad captures. A level of fear that no child should ever be forced to experience, especially not when they are simply going to school. As upsetting as this sculpture happens to be, it was created with deliberate intention. As a reminder and a tribute that the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida should really become the "last lockdown" in American history.


Artist Manuel Oliver lost his 17-year-old son Joaquin in February in the mass shooting in Parkland that saw 17 people killed and 15 more injured in a matter of six minutes. These bronze-coated sculptures, which were created with 3D printers as a nod to the fact that guns can be made with 3D printers, are meant to not only memorialize the lives lost but also keep voters aware of what can happen without more reasonable gun laws. Because it's happened before. As Oliver explained to the Chicago Tribune, "I know my son – he was a cool dude – and I know he would think this statue is a really powerful way to get our message across. That’s what art does, it stops people, makes them think. It connects with people in a more powerful way than trying to talk them into it.”

The sculpture depicts a young child hiding under her desk during lockdown procedures at school. Each desk is covered with statistics about gun violence, and Oliver worked with fellow artist Sean Leonard to create this project the two called "The Last Lockdown." As midterm election season starts to get underway, student activists are set to place 10 of these statues at voter registration centers around the country in cities like Parkland, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, and Millwaukee. Some of these districts were chosen, according to CNN, because representatives in each of them have been known to take money from gun lobbies. Others were chosen because of the terrible violence that has already happened, unfortunately.

As artist Leonard explained to the Chicago Tribune, these statues are meant to make people uncomfortable:

We have been calling them chilling, pop-up art installations. We keep going back to the fact that statues are typically celebratory or honoring someone, but we are taking that idea and flipping it. We wanted the realism. You should feel unsettled when viewing these.

The concept behind the art installations is clear; don't let people fall into a safe sense of complacency again. Remind voters, over and over, that there is a better way. That children should not be going to school afraid for their lives. As Oliver told Huffington Post:

It’s too late for us to save Joaquin from gun violence. But through art my family and I are making sure that we protect the rest of the kids out there.

There are millions of children in the United States who need to feel safe. And if this art installation encourages voters to keep this in mind when casting their ballot... all the better.

breaks my heart Seeing the sculpture reminds me of what happened with columbine, virginia tech, sandy hook and so on. No child deserves to go out like that

It's such a great shame and tragedy that there would probably never be a "last lockdown". No-one deserves to go through anything like this.

This sculpture is really horrible, in a good way. It is so effective that I feel bad just by looking at it. The kid's features are so detailed and expressive. Poor kid, we all could know him.

UncontinuedProcess wrote:

It's such a great shame and tragedy that there would probably never be a "last lockdown". No-one deserves to go through anything like this.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  Sadly I agree with you. There will likely never be a "last" lockdown.  Until people stop making it about the choice of weapon and focus on why these kids are so uncaring of others lives as well as their own, then this will continue to be a regular theme as it has been for many years now.

Sculpture's good, don't agree with the gun control message though.

InsaneIntruder wrote:

Sculpture's good, don't agree with the gun control message though.

Yeah, I'm disappointed it has such a political agenda. The sculpture speaks for itself, something must change, everybody agree on that, but the message is dividing. I would have prefered it to be only a tribute, and not such a political thing, but since the creator is the dad of a victim I understand he wants to turn it into a gun issue. I still don't think it is (mainly and first) a gun issue. It is much too simplistic.

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

UncontinuedProcess wrote:

It's such a great shame and tragedy that there would probably never be a "last lockdown". No-one deserves to go through anything like this.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  Sadly I agree with you. There will likely never be a "last" lockdown.  Until people stop making it about the choice of weapon and focus on why these kids are so uncaring of others lives as well as their own, then this will continue to be a regular theme as it has been for many years now.

Honestly I think getting into the "why" part might be nothing more than creating some interesting case studies, cause the kinds of people that take up arms against others like this almost always have a unique motivation.

The "Why" is going to be a unique combination of things. What they have in common is access to guns. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the difference between the USA and countries that don't have disturbed teenagers shooting up schools is the American gun culture. It's got to the point in the UK now that when there is another mass-shooting in the USA, we just shrug and are glad we're not raising our kids in a country where children are murdered in their classroom. Nothing will change.

Pixie13 wrote:

It's got to the point in the UK now that when there is another mass-shooting in the USA, we just shrug and are glad we're not raising our kids in a country where children are murdered in their classroom.

Cause instead you have Pakistani rape gangs and acid attacks. What a joy to live in the UK. 

QuestionMark wrote:

Pixie13 wrote:

It's got to the point in the UK now that when there is another mass-shooting in the USA, we just shrug and are glad we're not raising our kids in a country where children are murdered in their classroom.

Cause instead you have Pakistani rape gangs and acid attacks. What a joy to live in the UK. 

Or the mass stabbings and vehicular attacks, but you know let's not focus on the real issues, let's blame inanimate objects instead! I mean could accept the fact that gun crime in the UK has increased since the 2 major bans were introduced and that gun control has not prevented criminals from obtaining firearms, but let's not do that, we should instead let the government take our rights and freedom.

Tommy QTR wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

Pixie13 wrote:

It's got to the point in the UK now that when there is another mass-shooting in the USA, we just shrug and are glad we're not raising our kids in a country where children are murdered in their classroom.

Cause instead you have Pakistani rape gangs and acid attacks. What a joy to live in the UK. 

Or the mass stabbings and vehicular attacks, but you know let's not focus on the real issues, let's blame inanimate objects instead! I mean could accept the fact that gun crime in the UK has increased since the 2 major bans were introduced and that gun control has not prevented criminals from obtaining firearms, but let's not do that, we should instead let the government take our rights and freedom.

I think we can all agree that each country has its own set of issues to deal with.

Pixie13 wrote:

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the difference between the USA and countries that don't have disturbed teenagers shooting up schools is the American gun culture.

Indeed, it is obvious that only in America there is an American gun culture. But America is not the only country where many people have guns, Switzerland also have a gun culture and it works pretty well since the last mass shooting occurred in 2001.

"The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a nation of 8.3 million people." "In 2007, the Small Arms Survey found that Switzerland had the third-highest ratio of civilian firearms per 100 residents (46), outdone by only the US (89) and Yemen (55)." (Source: The Independent)

It is not gun culture that is to blame, it is gun culture in the American context that doesn't work, and this is probably so because of many issues. As you said, the teenage perpetrators were "disturbed", so mental health may be one of those issues.

However, maybe we will agree on that and I have said it many times on this forum and nothing makes me change my point of view, I do think it is obvious that if you have guns there will always be a risk of having a mass shooting. Sure mass murders can happen in every countries, but except for bombings (although Columbine, the bucket bomb in the London tube in 2017 and the Oklahoma City Bombing show us that bombs can be either a complete failure,especially for "disturbed teenagers" or a huge disaster, especially in case of terrorism) and to some extent arson, other forms of attacks usually leads to a much smaller amount of victims. A mass stabber has more chance to be stopped before he kills many people than a mass shooter. And I think it is a choice that a nation have to do between freedom and ability for each individual to defend himself without depending on others, and security and confidence in other people and the police.

We don't have "mass stabbings" we have teenage gangs that stab each other. We don't have teenagers walking into our schools and stabbing children as they are huddled in their class room. Acid attacks are not as common as shootings are in the USA, there has been a surge and it is worrying but imagine the fatalies that would occur if it had been guns instead of acid. No country is perfect and crime free (pretty sure your rape statistics are about the same as ours) but what we don't have is random men walking into schools and shooting defenceless children. Do you know when that last happened? 13th March 1996 when 17 innocent lives were lost in Dunblane and we said never again. Has our government enslaved us? Are we murdered lying in our beds? No. We just don't have children lying slaughtered in their school.