Blog
We the People
Danh Vo’s sculpture We the People (2010-2014) is a to-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty broken apart into 300 different pieces. The work is never meant to be assembled or shown in full, with many of the individual fragments held in museum collections across the globe. Vo was faithful to the materials and construction of the 1876 original: the thin copper exterior was hammered in sheets over an iron cage of scaffolding. This fragile facade and hollow interior are visible when the fragments are displayed. Some portions are recognizable—a finger clutching the torch, a section of her crown—while others appear more abstract. The folds of her robe are indiscernible out of context.
Vo describes himself as having little attachment to the idea of nationhood. Born in Vietnam in 1975, his family escaped to Denmark when he was a young child, and he now splits his time between Berlin and Mexico City. The artist is well positioned to complicate the Statue of Liberty’s status as a symbol of freedom and democracy, understanding it also from lived experience as an artifact of global exchange between two colonial forces who pursued violent, expansionist goals in his home country. We the People is an invitation to examine your relationship to liberty and freedom, highlighting and holding the contradictions and hypocrisies within the “American experiment”. It’s a work ripe for projections from its audiences, open for multitudes of interpretations and metaphorical resonances, a monumentally scaled puzzle that will never be put together, never a cohesive whole.
I’ve found myself thinking about this sculpture often as a staff member of Maine Initiatives. Topics of nationhood, immigration, settler colonialism, white supremacy, and constitutional rights come up regularly in our work, our writing, and our responses to the socio-political landscape. Organizing and funding racial justice work in the whitest state in the nation reckons with all of these threads and their historical underpinnings. As a multiracial, intergenerational staff, we also hold a range of different perspectives about the promises of constitutional democracy. And yet, our shared commitment to racial justice allows us to hold those complexities without flattening them. We can disagree about the “American experiment” and still be aligned and work together on addressing one of its foundational harms: racial injustice. Advancing collective liberation is what unites us: asking us to be responsible to history, practice accountability and transparency, work in right relationship, foster collective decision-making, and support community leadership, power, and care.
This is part of the powerful and transformational invitation Maine Initiatives extends to people again and again (including its staff, its growing network of grantee partners, and the broader community of donors and volunteers): If you believe in racial justice like we do, you have a place to support this work. You can live into your values, connect with people who share them, and take part in both collective action and personal transformation.
We step into 2026 with so much good work ahead of us: raising, pooling, and granting funds to support critical work advancing justice and equity in our community. We will make $540,000 in grants to support our Grants for Change grantees: 36 BIPOC-led organizations doing critical racial justice work; and $250,000 to support 25 Outdoor Equity Fund grantees. The Immigrant-Led Organizations Fund will open applications for the 3rd cohort of its participatory program: convening immigrant leaders and community members, inviting volunteers to read applications, and selecting 10 new immigrant-led organizations to receive $450,000 in new multi-year grants. The Giving Project Fund for Community Organizing is in the midst of its second year, with a donor organizing cohort working and learning together to fundraise at least $100,000 to support and select 5 new grantees doing critical community organizing work. MaineShare is wrapping up its Fall Workplace Giving campaign, raising funds from employees at 55 participating workplaces and resourcing the 93+ grantee organizations on the MaineShare platform.
All of our grantmaking funds are raised from the community, from people like you who believe in supporting BIPOC-led efforts promoting Wabanaki sovereignty and self-determination, abolition and justice reform, immigrant flourishing, outdoor equity, community organizing, and so much more. When you donate to Maine Initiatives, you make these grants possible. Join us this year, and be part of a diverse, growing coalition united in our conviction to advance racial justice and collective liberation in Maine, unceded Wabanaki Territory.
Image credit: Danh Vo, We the People, Public Art Fund
