Waco Siege

When creating this art, I had thought about what the events of the Waco Siege and the aftermath would be like for a child who had lived in the compound. I thought about what they might have believed prior, during, and after the events and how those may have changed or not changed throughout the strong media portrayal and focus of this disaster. The experience of being taken, or released from your home away from your family and then interrogated by FBI agents was one that struck me as especially painful for the children of this event, no matter what their beliefs for their families’ futures held.

In my drawing, I attempted to draw what the concept of a massive fire might seem to a child. The child in the corner watching an empty building burn is meant to represent the Branch Davidian beliefs that a great fire and massive destruction would come, that this did happen at the hands of officials, as well as give representation to the abuse the children had experienced within the compound before the intervention. The child is handcuffed to represent the experience of being interrogated, and the headline falling off of the paper is meant to give tribute to the fact that the media portrayal and legal trials took away from the care of the survivors in the aftermath.

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