The Art of Protest

QuiltCon 2026 was full of quilts that expressed opinions about human rights, the erosion of democracy is the United States, the disappearance of people of color, and as a member of the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild, the terrorism being rained on us by our own government is very real. Quilting has always been about expressing yourself, and there has always been an a strong element of standing up for human rights and human dignity. The current administration has tried to make that seem political, but it is really about morals and values. I completely identify with the meme "Radicalized by Common Decency", which it turns out, is not all that common these days. Here is what the internet says about the meaning of that: "Decency is behavior that conforms to accepted standards of morality, respectability, and modesty. It acts as a foundational, everyday moral baseline for social interaction, fostering dignity through kindness, empathy, and respect. It is often described as the "common decency" required for proper, polite, or ethical, respectful behavior." Not happening in the White House these days, and no one, not my elected officials at least, are saying boo about it. I call or write regularly and not once have they advocated the decent thing. Our schools are gutted and we have successfully made Iowa an unsafe place for women of reproductive age to live, we are sealing our own fate by our lack of common decency, and we are now gutting our workforce by being unwelcoming of immigrants who do the labor that our citizens shun. In the meantime, we protest. I bought this quilt at QuiltCon because I know the woman who made it. She was an exchange student in Germany many years ago, and she was impressed by how strongly they teach their hisotry to avoid repeating it. We in the US are trying to bury ours, and instead it will bury us.