Flower Power
On October 21, 1967, 75,000 anti-war protesters surrounded the Pentagon in Washington D.C.. On that day, Bowen organized 200 lbs. of daisies, purchased by his New York friend Peggy Hitchcock, (the wife of Walter Bowart), to be dropped from a light aircraft onto the Pentagon, but the FBI heard of the plan and seized the aircraft, so the flowers were distributed to the protesters as the Military Police protected the Pentagon from the massive anti Vietnam War demonstration. The daisies, brought to the front lines of the tense confrontation by Bowen and others, were taken by the demonstrators and put into the nearest holder that symbolically communicated their anti-war sentiment. The iconic photograph "Flower Power", taken by photojournalist Bernie Boston, of the daisies being put into the bayoneted gun barrels of the soldiers by the unarmed anti-war demonstrators, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1968. The photograph "flower power" is listed as #30 amongst the top 100 wartime photographs and the idealism of flower power remains as an anti-war symbol.
Read more about this topic: Michael Bowen (artist)
Famous quotes containing the words flower and/or power:
“Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;”
—Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)