Monument to Courage

A writer, Charles Glass, had an idea for a sculpture to honor three 'whistleblowers'. They, by telling the world what government has done in spying on people and acts in war, lost their freedom because they informed people with the truth. An Italian professor of sculpture, Davide Dormino, cast life size bronzes of them standing on chairs.

This is public art,“Anything to Say?”. These three stood above the crowd and got a better view, and they spoke.  People are encouraged to stand on the empty chair, and so they did in East Berlin's Alexanderplatz on May Day 2015, and the day after. Then it went to a Berlin Museum, it will then go to Dresden, Switzerland, and Paris. East Germany was a secret police state under the Communists, all of Germany before was under an Hitlerite dictatorship, now Germany wants to show the public it believes in free speech. This art is to travel the world (will the US be part of that world?).

Edward Snowden gave up a comfortable life by telling the world what extent the U.S.'s National Security Agency employs electronic surveillance on its citizens. Julian Assange created the website Wikileaks, which published Bradley Manning's army secrets of Iraqui occupation. Manning was tortured, and is now under a thirty-five year sentence of imprisonment.