[SML] CPAC Stage Design

[Mick Alderson]

And hate groups keep appropriating symbols. During load-out of the last concert I worked as a down-rigger before Covid shut us down, someone 20 feet away asked me to do something. It was noisy, so I flashed an OK sign to indicate I understood, as I have done all my life. I did not receive the response I expected. I did not know white suprematists has co-opted the sign. Then there are aloha shirts. I have several and like wearing them in the summer, but given their prominence at protests and counter-protests, I did not feel comfortable wearing them in 2020, for fear of sending a message I didn’t intend. What had been perfectly innocent now means something unpleasant.

It’s nothing new. My great grand-mother made a quilt in the 1880’s or 90’s for my grandmother. It which was passed down has a family heirloom to my cousin who destroyed it, because it had a decorative border of small vertical (not tilted) swastikas. Before the 1930’s it just was a good luck symbol and a sun symbol in MANY cultures world wide. I love reading about archeology. So far as I knew, the Othal Rune was just the letter “o” in the Elder Furthark runic alphabet. I ran across it in articles about neolithic standing stones in pre-Christian northern Europe. Before last summer, I had no idea it too had been appropriated and had become a hate symbol. If you aren’t in that culture, how would you know?

> On 3/3/2021 7:57 AM, Dougherty, Jim via Stagecraft wrote:
>> Here?s a lexicon of hate symbols; it?s not all swastikas and lightning 
>> bolts.
>> 
>> ?https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols <https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols>
>> 
>> - ?Jim Dougherty
>> 
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> Skimming just the first couple of pages, and nearly all of them were new 
> to me.  I guess that proves I've never been in prison, as most of them 
> seem to be associated with prison gangs.   There are a bewildering 
> complexity of symbols on that page.  Certainly more than my poor brain 
> can retain.  How is a designer supposed to know and not use any of those 
> symbols? What reasonable due diligence?
> 
> This brings up another question.  Are there any symbols that are not 
> hate symbols to some group or another? The ancient Inca's, for instance, 
> would certainly regard the christian cross as one, as the Spaniards and 
> Catholic Church subjugated them to slavery, forced conversion, and death 
> during the conquest of central america.
> 
> Dale

Mick Alderson
IATSE 470
USITT Midwest Section