About Stephen Parlato & the Forward Dems Movement
Stephen Parlato is an Artist, Activist and Educator whose unique collage-illustrated children's books earned him creative recognition around the world.
His publications have been carried in notable venues such as The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., The Walters Art Museum, and The Baltimore Museum of Art. Stephen’s latest creation ‘Dragons Love Art,’ was released in the Fall of 2019 to much fanfare.
With the most important Presidential election of our lifetime quickly approaching, Stephen was both inspired and driven to create a new, more appropriate and exciting symbol for the Democratic party representing the many coalitions which form our party and their need to unite behind whoever the chosen candidate is as ONE POLITICAL FORCE in order to succeed.
Forward Dems is an urgent call to action for ALL coalitions to come together as ONE. The Donkey symbol has become stale and symbolizes intransigence. It is time for the Democrats to rightly reclaim the flag and the momentum needed to create TRUE change and return to Moral Leadership!
Here, enters FLAG HORSE ...
Forward Dems in the Press
Live Coverage Article from THE HILL: "House holds first public impeachment hearing" November 13, 2019.
VIDEO: Stephen Parlato and his WITNESS banner during the Washington DC Impeachment Hearings on December 17, 2019. Source: Showtime's "The Circus."
Trump protester endures the cold outside impeachment hearing ...
"There are not many people braving the cold of D.C. Wednesday morning to protest outside the Longworth Office Building, where the impeachment hearing is being conducted. But Stephen Parlato is an exception.
He came in from Colorado for the opportunity to encourage those passing by on Independence Avenue to vote Trump out of office — if the impeachment effort fails to remove him first.
"I'm terribly concerned about the need to put an end to this criminal presidency," Parlato said, adding that Trump is "encouraging despots around the globe."
Temperatures in Washington were hovering around 32 degrees Wednesday morning, but felt more like 23 with the windchill. Parlato didn't seem to mind. He is from Boulder, after all. Also, he said, "I'm wearing three pairs of socks."
ARTICLE: Courthouse News ~ Senate Vote for Impeachment Witnesses Is Imminent - January 31, 2020
Outside the Senate, Stephen Parlato of Colorado said has protested regularly since impeachment began.
Parlato said he has always believed the trial would end in acquittal, though he hoped for witnesses.
“We’ll have them, but it will be after the fact,” he said. “But I absolutely believe we will have a tsunami of an election that will resemble the midterms and will unseat this criminal presidency.”
As to what the future holds, Parlato said he had a message for his fellow Americans.
“Do not despair!” he said.
ARTICLE IMAGE: THE IRISH TIMES - February 8, 2020
"FLAG HORSE" Press Image: The Independent November 14, 2019
ARTICLE: The Democrat debates, where divided America converges—and bickers. The country's seething political tensions took over the streets of Westerville, Ohio.
McClean's World: October 16, 2019
“I am truly concerned about the selection and what a pivotal election this is for the country,” said Stephen Parlato, who flew here with his wife from Boulder, Colo., to fly a fragile 10-foot-tall helium balloon he strapped into his jacket with electrical wires and rope.
On his balloon is emblazoned his latest creation: a speeding horse composed of American flags and the self-explanatory slogan, “Dems! Forward, the many as one.” Because the Democrats’ traditional donkey logo was born from Andrew Jackson being called a jackass by his opponents, Parlato felt it time to introduce a more positive symbol.
“People relate to the image, understand almost immediately that it’s a more invigorating one,” he says. “That’s all I have to offer, really. It’s anybody’s who wants it.”
TWITTER: Jennifer Benderly - Senior Political Reporter for Huffington Post. December 18, 2019
ARTICLE from PODCAST 2020 & BASLER ZEITUNG (Germany) January 25, 2020
They still exist, the Americans who actually believe that the outcome of the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump is an open question. This week, a friendly man named Stephen Parlato stands in front of the Capitol in Washington in the freezing cold and holds up a self-painted sign that says: "His lies tear us apart!
Parlato has been demonstrating against the president since the beginning of the Ukraine affair, for which he travels from Colorado to the US capital. Impeachment is like bull riding, he says. "Once you get on the bull, you never know where you'll end up." He was optimistic that the procedure would trigger something: new evidence, new witnesses - and thus new impetus for Trump's deposition. "If public opinion turns, it can happen very quickly."
"FLAG HORSE" Press Image: The Toldeo Blade October 15, 2019
FORWARD DEMS *SPOTLIGHT FEATURE* with Denver Westword - March 13, 2019
The time for Democrats to dump the donkey has come, says Boulder-based illustrator Stephen Parlato. What does he think should replace it? His Flag Horse.
He initially created the collage character for his 2003 children's tale, The World That Loved Books.
"The premise of that book is that there once was a world where even the animals loved to read and what everyone read, they became, until they closed their books and became themselves again, only smarter," Parlato explains. "So the horse image is for a horse reading about flags and feeling so proud waving at even strangers. It was sort of an anti-xenophobic message within the book; the flag was welcoming, and that there was reason to be proud."
Shortly after the book was published, a Republican candidate running for office in Florida contacted Parlato about licensing the image for his campaign. "I had to tell them, "No. I’m a lifelong Democrat, and I couldn’t in good conscience allow you to use it,'" Parlato recalls.
It didn't occur to him then to hoist up the Flag Horse to represent his own party. But he finally did when the 2018 midterm election rolled around.
Last fall, Parlato hung a 6-by-18-foot banner depicting the Flag Horse facing off against Trump's head made with snakes, along with the caption "Your vote is the only antidote," on Folsom Street in Boulder. He also rented a mobile billboard to drive the design around Washington, D.C.
“People began saying that would be a great image for the party," Parlato recalls. "A friend’s cousin who does work with the DNC in California made the comment that if they were smart, they would dump the donkey and use this, so that stuck, and that’s when I actually got serious about campaigning."
As the icon of the working party, the term "jackass" was first hurled at Andrew Jackson by opponents during his 1828 campaign to become the seventh president of the United States. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast began sketching the donkey in his own iconic works, and the image stuck.
"In almost prescient-Trump-like fashion, Jackson accepts it as a label," Parlato recalls. “So it seemed serendipitous that here’s the Jackson jackass, and we have our own jackass who has the Jackson portrait hanging behind him in office."
Under #DumptheDonkey, Parlato is urging Democrats to retire the stubborn old mule and embrace the new energized Democrats — which should be symbolized by the Flag Horse.
"This is such a crucial election that is coming up, that, yes, we need to have a vigorous, no-holds-barred debate among the party, but in the end it has to coalesce into a single political force," Parlato says. "The idea of the moderate, of the Joe Biden coming to the rescue — it's time has passed. The energy is with the young, but it’s got to be a decision at the end of this process, and everybody’s got to be on board, because as I say, this guy in office, we can mock him all we want, but he is canny, and he’s effective."
A traditional collagist, Parlato collects photographs and attaches them to thick paper. Instead of gluing the photos in place, he fixes them with sequence pins, maintaining fluid control over the evolving image. The resulting collages are bizarre and intricate, surreal and striking, reminiscent of Eric Carle on acid, or a postmodern take on Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
Originally from Long Island, Parlato studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture and the Maryland Institute’s Hoffberger School of Graduate Painting. In 2017, he moved to Boulder from Baltimore, Maryland, where he was previously occupied as a social worker addressing the drug and gun crisis. Parlato moved out west to marry the love of his life, but admitted that it took him a while to get used to living in "the Boulder bubble" because "the lack of stress at first was stressful.”
Last week, Parlato held his poster of the Flag Horse up high outside former governor John Hickenlooper's presidential campaign kickoff event in Civic Center Park. Armed with 1,500 prints, Parlato plans on attending college campuses and rallies leading up to the election, sharing his message of unity, pride and patriotism.
IMAGE: CNN/New York Times Democratic Debate on the campus of Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio on Tuesday, October 15, 2019.
Caption: "Stephen Parlato, from Boulder CO, promotes Forward Dems."
Democratic presidential candidates take the stage prior to the CNN/New York Times Democratic Debate on the campus of Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio on Tuesday, October 15, 2019.
ARTICLE MENTION: Washington Post "Lev Parnas, barred from impeachment trial, makes himself its star anyway." January 29, 2020.
"Across the street, Stephen Parlato from Boulder, Colo., stood outside the Capitol’s Senate entrance with a poster board sign: “The stone wall is CRACKING.”
If the wall does crack, Parnas has dealt a few hammer blows."
Image: FRANCE - World Republicain-lorrain. "Donald Trump mocked in front of the Capitol"
Jan 31, 2020.
ARTICLE MENTION: Lehigh Valley Live - "Donald Trump Impeachment Trial Update" January 31, 2020
ARTICLE IMAGE: Oakland Press - "Crime required for impeachment? Not so, say legal experts." January 22, 2020
Stephen Parlato, of Boulder, Colo., displays his artwork depicting, "the evil Republican senatorial judges", as he demonstrates outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
ARTICLE IMAGE: NY Times Article - "Set Change on Capitol Hill: An Impeachment Trial to a Presidential Address" February 4, 2020
IMAGE: Buffalo Heart Images - "Silence Now is Complicity."
TWITTER IMAGE: Women's March 2019. "Enough! Act Now!"
Voice of America News: Day in Photos - A look at the best news photos from around the world. February 04, 2020
"Stephen Parlato of Colorado protests outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C."
ARTICLE INTERVIEW - Colorado Politics: "More than 1,000 descend on state Capitol to protest stay-at-home orders" April 20, 2020
The protest drew only a handful of counter protesters, including Stephen Parlato of Boulder, who stood under the Civil War statute on the Capitol steps, holding a sign that said, "Only widespread testing will tell."
"I'm here to offer a counterprotest because of my great fear of opening too soon without having the medical knowledge" that could lead to playing Russian Roulette with the public's health, Parlato said.
"I believe these people are very sincere with their concerns, being kept from earning a paycheck and the psychological torture of being homebound" for weeks on end. At the same time, however, he said it's a dangerous thing to have a president pressuring states to open up, "a gamble that sets a priority for re-election above the lives of the citizens."
ARTICLE INTERVIEW - Washington Times: "Senate reconvenes under historic lockdown rules." May 4, 2020
ARTICLE IMAGE - Corporate Dispatch: "University of Washington Forecasts 135,000 coronavirus deaths in US by August.
Outside the Capitol, where protesters tend to gather on the sidewalk, a single protester stood vigil Monday. Stephen Parlato said he traveled from Boulder, Colorado, to hoist a banner that read: “Slowdancing with death? Only Widespread Testing Will Tell!”
“I feel even before this pandemic, I was very concerned about the upcoming election and felt it was going to be the most crucial election in my lifetime, in our country’s lifetime, and this has only made it more urgent,” Mr. Parlato said.
“This goes beyond being able to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, this becomes a license to murder through political pressure thousands upon thousands of innocent people who are being misled.”
Mr. Parlato said he found a hotel room near Capitol Hill and planned to stay for two weeks to continue protesting various issues that matter to him. He said he intended to demonstrate at the Capitol for eight hours per day six days per week.
"A protester holds a sign outside the US Senate East Front steps, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, USA, 04 May 2020. The Republican-led Senate returns to session 04 May, despite strong criticism from Democrats who say the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic makes convening unsafe."
ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGE - "Protester Stephen Parlato of Boulder, Colorado who disapproves of President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, holds a sign at the Senate steps on Tuesday, May 12, 2020.
ARTICLE IMAGE: Roll Call - As House Democrats push virus relief bill, GOP candidates pounce. May 15, 2020.
Jake Sherman Tweet: Mr. Sherman is one of the lead Washington reporters for NBC, MSNBC and Politico - May 15, 2020
FORWARD DEMS SPOTLIGHT ARTICLE: "Boulder Artist Stephen Parlato Takes His Protest Art to D.C." - Denver Westword, Kyle Harris. May 22, 2020.
Stephen Parlato, a Boulder artist who is currently staying at a small Hyatt in Washington, D.C., takes a Lyft every day to the U.S. Capitol, where he stands outside with a four-by-six-foot banner of his prints strapped around his neck and decries President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters in the Senate.
His prints are unabashed agitprop. They show dramatic images of fists ripping apart a U.S. flag and are emblazoned with phrases like "His lies tear us apart." An image of Christ on a cross made of guns hanging above human skulls has the phrase "Every Gun Murder a Crucifixion. How Many Must Die Before We Change the Laws?"
Parlato’s a lone protester in a largely empty city, speaking his truth to power and rarely being listened to, though he and his placards have attracted some attention from the international press.
“I’m putting these things in the faces of the senators as they go out of their cars real fast to go in and take their vote and then come out and scamper away,” he explains.
When Parlato sees a lawmaker like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, whom Parlato describes as “a despicable sort of man,” he confronts him. “I ask him out loud: ‘Do you think it’s a good idea when you continue with the killing of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic?’ He just ignores me.”
Parlato is used to being ignored.
Especially concerning one of his overriding obsessions: In recent years, he has attempted to replace the ass, the symbol for the Democratic Party, with a horse.
“I really feel — especially now, with our candidate locked in his basement there — we need an image that is strength and momentum and a whole idea of a return to moral leadership,” Parlato explains.
But his proposal has gone nowhere with the party.
When he got wind that Governor Jared Polis was about to talk about the stay-at-home order from the Homeland Security center in Centennial, Parlato sped out there to display one of his signs — this one showing a huge mound of human heads with the message “The Lasting Monument to Trump’s Presidency Is Being Built One Death at a Time.” But when he arrived, Parlato says, a Marine came out and told him that Polis would be delivering the speech from the governor’s mansion, so Parlato rushed back to Denver, hoping to make the news.
He stood there with his sign and watched a reporter with a camera enter. Eventually, a security guard came out, asked him what he was doing, gave him the okay to stick around, and went back inside. Parlato waited for the reporter with the camera to return for more than an hour and a half, and when the journalist came back out, he ignored Parlato.
This, the artist relates, is standard practice for Denver media.
“You don’t exist if you’re not there for the story you’ve been assigned and the angle they’ve been assigned,” he says. “At one of the demonstrations for new gun laws, I brought an eight-foot-high Christ made out of guns, and I marched. You’d never know I was there. They shot around me.”
One of the odder demonstrations he attended — in this case, protesting the protesters — was the recent gathering at the Colorado State Capitol in opposition to Polis’s stay-at-home order.
“I was torn about what to do when I heard these crazies were going to have these demonstrations to try and force Polis to reopen as a result of Trump sending these liberate-the-states tweets,” says Parlato. “I did wrangle some N95 masks, so I felt I could be safe enough, and I went there with one of these banners that just got published by The Guardian. It says, 'Slow Dancing With Death?' — and it shows a ghostly figure representing death and says, 'Only Widespread Testing Will Tell.'”
He was bemused by the crowd. “All these people were acting as if they were at the state fair,” he says. “You had motorcycle gangs and anti-vaccine people pulling their kids in wagons, and Cowboys for Trump on horseback.”
Parlato situated himself with his back to the Civil War monument and watched in amazement as people toting "Don’t Tread on Me" and American flags stood near a man having a hacking fit. "There was this guy who couldn't keep himself upright,” he recalls. “He was coughing like death personified. I thought this guy was at death’s door, so I called 911, and they showed up in ten minutes.”
The next thing Parlato knew, the cougher was chasing away the ambulance.
“He was screaming at the paramedics, screaming, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Leave me alone,’” Parlato continues. “I say it was a symbol for what happened. These people were like, ‘Fuck you! Leave me alone! I don’t care if I die.’”
Parlato, a lifelong Democrat who's been making political art since he was a high-schooler protesting the Vietnam War in the early ’70s, and who spent most of his career working with youth suffering from schizophrenia, found himself returning to the streets right before the 2018 elections.
“The activism really begins because of Trump,” he says. “It really begins in earnest with the midterms, because I felt I had to do something.”
In the months that followed, he ramped up his actions. At one point, he rented trucks to drive around D.C. On the sides, he displayed prints with slogans like "Your Vote Is the Only Antidote," accompanied by a horse made of flags symbolizing the Democratic Party, standing off against a nightmarish image of Trump. He brought massive helium balloons with slogans on them to the midterm debates. And he started strapping signs to his body and dogging politicians.
While Parlato is concerned about the current administration's handling of the pandemic, he also sees it creating a moment of political possibility...assuming that a civil war doesn’t break out.
“The moment we’re in has been like an instant MRI on the inequalities of the Republic and the disease of our politics,” he says. “That offers an astounding opportunity for change...for curative politics. But we’ve got two huge roadblocks. One is Trump, and the other is the virus and what it’s about to unleash that we haven’t even seen yet, which is quite possibly social unrest in a fashion we haven’t experienced since Vietnam. That fear was made very concrete for me experiencing that gathering of the anti-stay-at-home crowd in Denver.”
But while others are staying at home, avoiding the virus and the ideologues who insist that public-safety orders are akin to gas chambers, Parlato insists on spreading his message that there needs to be large-scale political change in the United States — and that begins with a new president.
“All I have is my art,” Parlato explains. “I couldn’t live with myself if, through this period, I didn’t try and help tag Trump as the danger he is.”
ARTICLE MENTION: NBC News 'Just kind of sucks': Disappointed Milwaukee a political ghost town for the Democratic convention. August 17, 2020
RADIO INTERVIEW + ARTICLE - WUVM 89.7 Milwaukee August 17, 2020
Stephen Parlato of Boulder, Colorado, was standing in front of the black fence wearing an N95 mask and holding a piece of art that read, "BROKEN GOVERNMENT, SHATTERED LIVES."
He said he had been planning to protest President Donald Trump at the convention since the 2018 midterm election and wasn't going to let the pandemic deter him.
"I'm here to express my dire concern for the welfare of our country if this president is re-elected," he said. "You've got to do what you can do if you're going to live with yourself, and if you realize the moment is as dire as this one is for our democracy."
Stephen Parlato’s concerns propelled him to board a plane in the middle of the pandemic and come to Milwaukee from Boulder, Colo., for convention week.
He stood in front of the Wisconsin Center holding what he calls a reptilian-inspired poster of President Trump. The image depicts threatening-looking snakes slithering through and around Trump’s head. The poster bears the message: “Your vote is the only antidote.”
“It’s quite crazy that this very mediocre individual was somehow able to create this persona that is destroying our very system of government,” Parlato says.
What does Parlato hope to accomplish standing in protest throughout the DNC?
“Well, I’m an artist. Imagery is what I have. I believe in the power of images and I believe we need them to impolitely contain these messages of dread and the need for immediate action and concern,” Parlato says.
ARTICLE FEATURE: PATCH - Boulder Artist Among 1st Demonstrators At 2020 DNC In Milwaukee. August 19, 2020
Stephen Parlato traveled from Boulder to have his voice heard at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
"A Boulder artist hauled a dozen large banners and a 10-foot helium balloon to Milwaukee for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Stephen Parlato, an artist who writes and illustrates children's books, was among the first — and only — demonstrators to take up residence outside the security fence Monday morning, keeping a 7-foot-long banner aloft by hoisting its support wire over his shoulders.
"I still have faith in the press and that the press would be here," he told Patch Editor Scott Anderson. "It's the one bulwark that we have left that we can use to circulate our views every chance we can get."
Parlato said he knew in advance that Milwaukee's convention would be of the scaled-back variety but wanted to come nonetheless. He said he took a Frontier Airlines flight out of Denver to get to Milwaukee two days in advance. He booked a room at a hotel just down the street and dined at a local Subway sub shop.
"I've prepared about a dozen large banners," he told Anderson Monday. "If things go right, I have a 10-foot helium balloon that I'll use for a celebratory ceremony during the coronation, so to speak."
March on Washington - August 27, 2020
ARTICLE IMAGES: The Milwaukee Record - 2020 Democratic National Convention
USA TODAY Interview: We condemn from afar but where's the empathy when it comes to abortion?
Suzette Hackney, November 30, 2021
New York Times Physical Print
Stephen Parlato, 67, of Boulder, Colorado, is a retired mental health counselor. He helped young adults dealing with diagnoses such as schizophrenia. He encountered girls and women who made difficult decisions about abortion. He described the heavy-handed barriers to abortion as "a war on those who are already warred upon."
"I'm here pleading with this court not to overturn Roe, especially at this moment in time where we have an evangelical community that has made a pact with the Republican Party," Parlato told me. "I fear that our separation of church and state is being eroded, and I am adamantly against the state having any say whatsoever in something as intimate as a woman's choice whether to bring to full term an unwanted pregnancy."
Denver Gazette - January 19, 2022: A voting rights demonstrator
holds a banner in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington
