Outspoken artist provocateur Yoko Ono has fired off a characteristically eye-catching personal campaign vying for gun control via a Twitter posting she made on Wednesday, March 20.
Ono, renowned widow of Beatle John Lennon, shows in her tweet a haunting picture of her late husband's blood-splattered glasses with the note running above: "Over 1,057,000 people have been killed by guns in the USA since John Lennon was shot and killed on 8 Dec 1980."
Lennon was tragically murdered by a troubled fan who shot the singer-songwriter five times, hitting Lennon four times in the back.
Both the number of deaths that have occurred and Lennon's name are emblazoned on the image in bright red to bring out the full effect of Ono's tweet that brings together both the intimate and universal, much as the duo had done so many times while Lennon was alive. Their deft artistic portrayals' goal was to change our culture for the better.
In its coverage of Ono's gun control tweet, Rolling Stone Magazine points out that this is not the first time that the chanteuse has used her celebrity to try to gain awareness of important issues.
Back in October 2012, Ono — along with son Sean Lennon — worked to convince Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York to delay fracking until more health tests could be used to measure its deleterious effects on the environment and inhabitants alike.
Ono earlier used the stark image of Lennon's glasses for the cover of her 1981 album "Season of Glass."
Ono's most recent tweet is part of a series that has also included these messages:
- "31,537 people are killed by guns in the USA every year. We are turning this beautiful country into a war zone."
- "The death of a loved one is a hollowing experience. After 33 years our son Sean and I still miss him."
The fact that March 20, 2013 marked the 44th anniversary of Ono's and Lennon's wedding might have caused Ono to choose it for her "1,057,000 people have been killed" tweet.
"We [Lennon and Ono] decided that if we were going to do anything like get married that we would dedicate it to peace," Ono tweeted on March 20, as well.
Ono also included a link to a sadly prescient interview Lennon and she gave to Rolling Stone in 1971:
"We think that peace is only got by peaceful methods and that to fight the establishment with their own weapons is no good, because they always win and they'd been winning for thousands of years," Lennon said. "They know how to play the game 'violence' and it's easier for them when they can recognize you and shoot you. They don't know how to handle humor, and peaceful humor. And that's our message really."
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