Nassar Assault Survivors Honored with Downtown Art Installation

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Tuesday, April 2, 2019, 4:49 pm
By: 
Alice Dreger

People traveling this week down Grand River Avenue in East Lansing may notice the addition of a series of teal flags along that street. The installation represents support for sexual assault survivors in a city that has become an epicenter of sexual assault awareness because of the abuse of former MSU osteopathic physician Larry Nassar.

The flags appear during a week when there’s more than the usual level of pedestrian activity in the downtown corridor because of MSU’s inclusion in the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament.

The flags were created by members of Parents of Sister Survivors Engage (POSSE) in the tradition of Tibetan prayer flags. According to a news release from the City of East Lansing, there is one flag “for each of the 505 known survivors of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse.”

The City of East Lansing has pitched in on the project by having Department of Public Works (DPW) staff carry out the installation. The photo above shows DPW staff Chris Smith and Nathan Parker hanging flags today.

Many flags have been put up this week, and more will be put up next week. ELi’s Jessy Gregg reported last year on a similar work of art installed in East Lansing’s Valley Court Park.

The flags being hung along Grand River Avenue today have been “signed by numerous individuals from the MSU student body with words of support and encouragement for the survivors. At least 4,000 students have written messages of support.”

“In making these flags, our goal was to hang them near campus for all to see and, as prayer flags, spread their messages of goodwill on the wind throughout the community,” said Valerie von Frank, founder and chair of POSSE and a mother of one of the survivors. “The flags will then be given to the individual survivors.”

“We are so pleased that the mayor offered the City’s support and encouragement in calling attention to the survivors, and more to the issue of sexual assault in general,” said von Frank. “It really has to be an ongoing, public conversation if we are going to change rape culture.”

Country Stitches, the East Lansing fabric store located on Lake Lansing Road, provided assistance as did area fabric artists. The news release specifically named Glenna Segall, Linda Karek, and Teresa Zuker as providing labor. From Mason, Michigan, It’s Yours Signs donated materials for the installation.

Many MSU organizations assisted in the work of asking for signatures for the flags. These include Reclaim MSU, the College of Arts & Letters student council, the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities student council, the MSU College Democrats, the Women’s Health Alliance, MSU Women’s Council and the Bailey Scholars Program.
 

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