My last Liberty Snake, number 21, is complete. There were so many people I could have These painted snakes could have stretched out indefinitely. I could have made a “Don’t Tread on Children” snake, or “Don’t Tread on Students.” One for mothers, parent, or first providers. More minorities could have been included. For current events, I wish that I had an extra snake for “Don’t Tread on the Postal Service!” And what about the rights of animals?
In the end, I decided to include all the rest in my “Don’t Tread on Anyone” snake. This snake did not use my large stamps and was instead painted free hand, with intense colors and heavy black outlines. The inspiration came from looking at the free style quilts of Rosa Lee Tompkins. I had seen her work in person at some point, but in which museum, I cannot recall. I had been thinking of creating a more free style snake like this one, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in some way, Tompkins was the goad to do that. 
It is good to bring this project to a close. When I first began painting these large snakes back in 2017, I found with a certain irony that the image and slogan of the Gadsden Flag that sports the “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan had already been appropriated by the Alt-Right. This would arguably cause anyone with a moral compass to immediately drop the slogan, the snakes, and run with alacrity and all speed ahead in the opposite direction. In the end I decided that I had just as much right to use snakes as a symbol as anyone else. Borrowed snakes aligned with the first few words of a slogan are not, after all, the flag that is associated with the Tea Party and other dubious groups. The snake here is freed from his original context and is at liberty to point the way to a higher cause. In time, I came to think of these as antidote snakes to extreme, toxic ideologies. Most of the people spouting these ideologies, and their version of the rattlesnake sign, do so in opposition to civic mindedness and social responsibility (i.e. anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers). They do so because they have come to misconstrue their own desires with “rights.” To be precise - their “right” to do anything to anyone, anytime they please. For example, so-called “gun rights” advocates I have spoke with did not seem to be really defending the right to bear arms as outlined in the Constitution for the purpose of a well-regulated militia. They were wanting to acquire any kind of firearm, at any time from anywhere, for all and everyone, threaten people with them if they desire - regardless of other citizens’ actual rights to public safety. What they espoused were wants, not rights. Just as refusing to abide by mask wearing mandates is a want, not a right, and an unseemly one at that. No one has a “right” to endanger the lives of others.
It has been discouraging these past few years to witness the growth of demagogues who flood the airways and social media with hate mongering and misinformation. I am at a loss to explain what they profess to be “taking back the country” from. Decency? Respect for the common good? I am often discouraged at modus operandi of some purporting to be “left” or “progressive” vitriol as well. I tire of the misogynous “Karen” memes on social media. I am alarmed at the number of people who forget their humanity and wish Covid-19 on others - “just to teach them a lesson,” I sometimes read, in utter disbelief. I am shocked by the anti-semitism. The disparagement of working class people is discouraging.
Perhaps in some small way I wish to take back my country, too. Or to be more precise, nudge it back to some semblance of common human decency, civic responsibility and equal opportunity. In the mean time, I’m taking my snakes back.
References:
https://bampfa.org/program/virtual/rosie-lee-tompkins-retrospective
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-shifting-symbolism-of-the-gadsden-flag
https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.6/north-extremism-the-gadsden-flag-is-a-symbol-but-whose
http://gadsden.info/history.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag
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