THREE BILLBOARDS, FROM FICTION TO REALITY
Activist group places 'three billboards outside Miami' to call out Rubio on gun control
02/16/18 – The Hill
An
activist group is trolling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
with a “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"-style protest
urging him to act on gun control.
Activist
group Avaaz placed the billboards, which are on the sides of three trucks,
outside Rubio’s headquarters in Miami in the days following Wednesday's
shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead and at least 14
injured.
“Slaughtered
in school, and still no gun control?” the billboards read. “How come, Marco
Rubio?”
In
the Oscar-nominated film "Three Billboards," a grieving mother rents
out the title objects to call attention to local police's handling of
her daughter’s rape and murder.
Rubio
said on the Senate floor Thursday that gun control would not have prevented the
shooting because potential shooters “will find a way to get the gun to do it.”
Avaaz President Emma Ruby-Sachs said in a statement that the billboards
are in response to Rubio having “never attempted” to reform the state’s
“notoriously lax gun laws.” The suspected shooter reportedly purchased the
AR-15 used in Wednesday’s shooting legally a year ago.
“Today
we take the streets asking ourselves: how come, Rubio?” she said. “The Senator
has taken fire across the country for his toothless response to the shooting,
calling it 'inexplicable'. We call that 'inexcusable.’”
Ruby-Sachs
also noted that Rubio is “one of the highest recipients of [National Rifle
Association] NRA contributions and has received an A+ rating from the NRA.”
Democratic
lawmakers have upped their calls for gun control in response to the shooting.
COMMENTAIRE:
Tragic
event : a school
shooting took place in a high school in Florida last year. 17 students and
staff memebers were killed by a 19-year-old student armed with an assault
weapon
Strategies: an activist group decided to rent 3
trucks and drive the maround Miami.
They placed
3 billboards on the trucks: the first one said ‘slaightered in school’ – the
second one said ‘and still no gun control’ and the third one said ‘how come
Marco Rubio’. So they used the same strategy
as the victim’s mother in the film.
Marco Rubio
is the Senator of Florida. So the activist use naming and shaming to hold him
accountable
The
activists accused the senator of doing nothing about the issue. They also accused him of being paid by the NRA (the
National Rifle Association) = a very powerful gun mlobby
Goal: the activists’ goal is to keep
the case in the public eye so that
people don’t forget what happened
They want
to put pressure on the Seantor.
They want
the gun laws to be reformed. In other words, they want stricter gun control laws.
POWER: the activists embody opposition to
power – power is presented by the NRA and by the Senator – so ordinary
citizens, activists, protest against the government’s lack of action and take
the matter into their own hands. They use original, creative ways to express
their protest.
2. UNITED KINGDOM, LONDON
Grenfell activists use Three Billboards protest to highlight lack of progress
Justice 4 Grenfell group parades billboards around London to keep tower blaze, which killed 71 people, on national conscience - 15 Feb 2018 The GuardianCampaigners have taken inspiration from the Oscar-nominated drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to highlight what they say has been “a lack of progress” in the Grenfell Tower fire investigation.
Members of the Justice 4 Grenfell group paraded billboards emblazoned with the words “71 dead”, “And still no arrests?”, “How Come?” around central London locations in an attempt to keep victims of last June’s tower block blaze “in the national conscience”.
The protest mirrors one carried out in the film, which stars Frances McDormand as a mother seeking to force local law enforcement into properly investigating the murder of her teenage daughter.
In a statement posted on the Justice 4 Grenfell website, the group accuses the government of similar inaction in their investigation into the blaze. “Eight months on from the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower, the issue is being ignored,” it reads. “71 people died in the Grenfell Tower. And still no arrests. And still 297 flammable towers. And still hundreds of survivors are homeless. And still they are not represented on the inquiry. And still there is no justice.”
The billboards, which were mounted on lorries, were spotted at venues
including St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster.
Speaking
to Vice at the gathering,
the Justice 4 Grenfell campaigner Yvette Williams said that she hoped the
billboards would help keep the incident in the public eye. “We were told that
even as the public inquiry is ongoing, there was going to be an interim report
by Easter,” she said. “Now that’s not happening. We want the truth. We want
prosecutions. None of that is happening. We think they’re playing with time,
hoping that the story will be downplayed.”
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