Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 8/11/2021
SPRINGFIELD – Manuel Oliver and his wife, Patricia, have spent three and a half years using art and activism to bring about an end to gun violence after the 2017 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in which their son, Joaquin “Guac” Oliver, was killed.
Now, they are using two billboards in Springfield, home of Smith & Wesson, to call attention to the epidemic of mass shootings in America.
“I can’t turn 21 and enjoy my first legal beer because a Florida teen was allowed to get his first legal AR-15,” the billboards read, next to a photo of Oliver’s son. Joaquin, 17 years old at the time of the shooting, would have been 21 this year.
“I happen to love billboards. They reach people who wouldn’t unless they follow you,” said Oliver, who began the organization, Change the Ref, with his wife after their son was killed. The goal of the organization is to affect change by using art to push the needle on gun reform laws. Some of the changes Oliver said he would like to see include red flag laws, universal background checks, and “smart” guns that only recognize the registered owner.
The billboards are located near the Smith & Wesson facility on Roosevelt Avenue and are visible from Interstate 291. Oliver said the placement is meant to call attention by putting it at the doorstep of the company that made the weapon that killed his son.
“They don’t understand that they’re part of the problem,” said Oliver, adding that gun manufacturers are the main source of the weapons in the United States. Oliver pointed out, “[Semi-automatic] weapons are banned in Massachusetts, where they’re manufactured.”
Gun manufacturers aren’t the sole focus of Change the Ref. Instead, it is one part of a larger approach to ending gun violence. Through Change the Ref, Oliver has been able to have conversations with communities around the country, as well as members of Congress and the president. The organizations ran nine different campaigns in 2020 with the goal of shaking up the conversation around guns. “We use messages that are somewhat disruptive,” Oliver said.
One messaging campaign had 40,000 postcards sent to legislators from locations around the country where there have been mass shootings. The cards, designed by 30 artists from around the world, depicted the shooters and people fleeing from the violence. The message on the back describes the incident that happened with the message “Is this how [the city/town] wants to be remembered?”
The latest campaign from Change the Ref has teens writing last wills in case they are one of the 109 people who die each day in shootings. The wills are sent to legislators with a request to sign as a witness.
In April 2018, Oliver created a “wall of demand” in front of the South Congregational Church in Springfield. He painted a mural with the names of the Parkland shooting victims as flowers on a tree and the image of a shooter destroying them. The four panels of the mural were vandalized within two days.
“I wasn’t upset,” Oliver reflected. “I said, ‘It’s part of a process.’” Oliver noted that the incident reminds him how much the movement has grown, from 50 people watching him create an 8-foot tall mural to two billboards and thousands of people following Change the Ref.
“We won’t stop,” Oliver said. He said that legislators won’t enact gun reform until public support is overwhelming.
“This is a decision society will make,” Oliver told Reminder Publishing. “That is what happened to the tobacco industry.” Philip Morris International, one of the largest cigarette manufacturers in the world, recently announced that it would end cigarette sales in the United Kingdom by 2030. The decision was made to keep in line with government goals after years of public pressure. In the United States, the company is transitioning away from combustible tobacco products for similar reasons. Oliver thinks that, likewise, the gun industry will eventually, change its stripes.
“I think we have an eight-year goal,” Oliver said of gun reform in the United States. “Two more administrations and a lot more dead, unfortunately.”
Reminder Publishing reached out to Smith & Wesson for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.