'Fearless Girl' Wears A Bulletproof Vest, The Newest Fashion Must-Have For Students Of All Ages

Wall Street’s beloved ‘Fearless Girl’ got a makeover in advance of Tuesday’s election — and days before this week’s slaughter of 12 mostly young people in a shooting late Wednesday at a bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Artist Manuel Oliver gave New York’s most famous symbol of women’s empowerment some extra armor last Friday, dressing her in a bulletproof vest broadcasting the hashtag #FearfulGirl.

Oliver’s son Joaquin ‘Guac’ Oliver was murdered along with 16 other victims in the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“She can’t be fearless if she’s afraid to go to school,” wrote Change the Ref, Oliver’s pro-gun control nonprofit, on Twitter, about the rebranded “#FearfulGirl.” The organization is dedicated to using “urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of the mass shooting pandemic,” according to its website.

Oliver has another project, a series of ten 3-D printed sculptures—a reference to the ongoing debate about the legality of 3-D printed guns—depicting children cowering under their desks to hide from a school shooter. Each statue in the series, titled “The Last Lockdown,” is engraved with disturbing statistics about gun violence, such as “22 kids are shot every day in America.” This fall, they toured voter-registration drives around the country.

artnet News shares the details of Oliver and wife Patricia’s extensive campaign for changes in America’s gun laws. Not many Parkland-related issues get by us at AOC, but this one did. We will dig down into the Olivers’ efforts because they are visually impressive and thereby imprinted in our minds.

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