Open wide

I believe in equality for all, that everyone on every inch of this earth should experience joy, and happiness, that everyone should have all the necessities provided to them.

I believe that the privileged are here to help those who need it more.

I believe no one should be suppressed or discriminated against because of their beliefs, sexuality, skin color, gender, and everything inbetween.

I believe that we move too fast now a days.

I believe in good music, that rattles all 2000 bones.

I believe in laughter and silliness.

I believe in serious, heart felt conversations with unexpected people.

I believe in finding happiness in the darkest places, I believe there is beauty in dirt.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, whether we find that reason sooner, later, or never.

I believe that full fat brownies are the only brownies.

I believe in eating with your hands.

I believe that artistic expression opens the mind, releases stress, changes the world.

I believe in home cooked meals.

I believe in pushing yourself to your limits, because that is the best way to grow.

I believe in doing things outside my comfort zone.

I believe in past lives.

I believe that only you can decide to make yourself happy.

I believe in looking through every lense.

I believe you can never learn enough.

I believe in doing what you love and what makes you happy over doing what other people think is best for you or what will be the most prosperous option. 

I believe in giving everyone freedom of speech, even if I strongly disagree with what they are preaching.

I believe honesty is always the best policy.

I believe in seeing the world.

I believe putting others before myself.

I believe in being wrong.

I believe in learning how to do things the old way, driving a manuel transmission, threading a projector, developing film, I believe in the human touch.

I believe this list will go on forever. 

Morgan Mannino

Don’t get me wrong, I am not the proudest American out there by any means, but the mere fact that people burn American Flags in and of itself is a contradiction. People can go ahead and light up as many Flags as they wish, to do a so called “demonstration”, but aren’t people, by doing that, just demonstatrating the mere fact that we can do that? It is because we are American that we are able to burn a our own flag.

 I fully believe we should have the right to burn an American Flag, and I am glad we do, but I also believe there is no point in doing so. If we did not have the right to burn an American Flag as a form of protest, then what could we protest? If we were to take the right away to be able to show how much we hate our country (in a non-violent way), then what would be stopping us from taking away the right to show how much we hate anything else? The fact that we can burn an American flag in this country not only represents our freedom as a country, but also our freedom to stand up for our rights and what we believe in, however rediculous they may be.

“We must bring ourselves to realize that is it necessary to support free speech for the things we hate in order to ensure it for the things in which we believe in with all our heart”  -Heywood Broun

“In silence change does not blossom.”

Most of us take our civil liberties for granted. But if we are reminded that if we say nothing, nothing will change, then maybe we will remember to use them and stand up for what we believe in and for what we want our future to look like.

When we began this project about freedom of speech, and I first witnessed the Westboro Baptist Church I instantly began digging my teeth into my tongue. Their views are the polar opposite of mine, and it pitched a fire inside of me. My first thought was that people shouldn’t be allowed to say and do such hurtful and disrespectful things. But then I stopped to think, if we were to ban people from saying how they feel, regardless of how extreme or hurtful it may be, it would not only create a forced one side opinion, but it would also seal the mouths of the people who disagree. In silence change does not blossom. After all, our country is founded from the spark of leaving a country that once had a only one true religion, and a threat to those who spoke out.

Imagine not being able to criticize others, the government, or burn the flag. Criticism blossoms change. We criticized England and created a free country, we criticized slavery and the separation of whites and blacks and now have equality, we criticized the role of woman in society and now have woman in almost every field, we criticized McCarthy and now are free to believe what we want and be open, we criticized the way homosexuals are treated and are on our way to gay marriage for all. We must not take these rights for granted. Use them to their fullest extent. Don’t let fear get in the way of a great change, or doing what that fire inside you burns for.

The first amendment not only liberates me as a person in society, but it also allows me to flourish as an artist. What would art be in silence? It would not be art.

Civil Liberties are necessary for art to evolve.

And even with out them, the push for them is also what has made art move.

Rococo art changed the hierarchy of art, from only religious imagery being worthy of art, to painting school boy jokes.

Jean-Honoré FragonardThe Happy Accidents of the Swing c. 1767

The Abstract Impressionists broke out of perfect renderings and tapped into childlike, expressive markmaking.

Franz Kline, Orange Outline c. 1955

Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists made us question what is considered art in a time of oil paintings.

Fountain c. 1917 Marcel Duchamp

Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili have the freedom to express their beliefs and speech freely in their art, regardless of others opinions.

Chris Ofili  The Holy Virgin Mary c. 1996

Andres Serrano Madonna and Child c. 1989

Manet painted what he saw, and society didn’t agree, but he had the right to.

Olympia Edouard Manet c. 1863

Performance art is breaking boundaries and statements never broken before, and too, changing our idea of art.

Joseph Beuys How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare c. 1965

Shepard Fairey can freely comment on our nation’s faults.

Greetings from Iraq c. 2005 Shepard Fairey

The idea of art and what is considered art is expanding rapidly, and a lot of it is thanks to a country that lets us criticize and burn flags. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.