COURTESY BADLANDS UNLIMITED
Early on Monday, Anish Kapoor released a statement condemning the National Rifle Association and throwing his support behind the newly energized gun-safety movement in the United States. Then, at the end of the day, the Paul Chan-founded publishing company Badlands Unlimited announced the release of a new line of its “New Proverbs” posters for two upcoming gun-control protests: the National School Walkout on March 14 and the March for Our Lives on March 24.
As with past “New Proverbs” posters, which Badlands first printed for the Million Women’s March in January 2017, the new ones are fairly incendiary, sporting messages like “NRA TAKES LIVES,” “FUCK YOU GUNS,” “IVANKA KILLS TEENS,” and “TRUMP KILLS TEENS.” They seem likely to be a hit with indignation-seeking Second Amendment absolutists, Fox News hosts, and members of the Trump administration.
Badlands said in a release that they will provide signs for students at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, the High School for American Studies with the Bronx High School of Science, Beacon High School in Manhattan, and the Fieldston School in the Bronx. “We’re walking out to voice solidarity with high schoolers trying to make a difference, change this country, and stop it sinking into more of a sh*thole,” Henry Davis, a Saint Ann’s student involved in the protest, said in a statement, alluding to the president Donald Trump’s reported use of that expletive. “The Badlands signs provide exactly the statement we need.”
The “New Proverbs” signs were inspired by those used by the Westboro Baptist Church, notorious for protesting against members of the LGBTQ community, Muslims, Jews, and a variety of other people at the funerals of U.S. servicemen and women—and “arguably one of the pioneering Christian hate speech groups in America,” in Badlands’s words. Sales of the signs raise money for the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and other groups.