To the editor:

In all the controversy around Josephine Meckseper’s art piece no one has spelled out the message she means to convey by it. If you look closely at the “stain” on her American flag, you can see that it is an image of the U.S. in two pieces. I see this conveying a country with an under-class oppressed by an over-class. It seems to me that the stripes on the sock in the corner of the flag are meant to say that the stripes belong to the people and that the government which is represented by the flag is not above the people. I think what she means to signify by this is that the government has done things which betray the values for which the flags stands. An example would be every time a police officer shoots a person of color when he or she doesn’t have to.

Craig Voorhees,

Lawrence