When Larethia Haddon started to decorate her front yard for Halloween this year, she took inspiration from her 5 and 10-year-old grandchildren, who said they were more afraid of what’s happening in the world today than actual monsters.
With that in mind, she chose to display six dummies at her Detroit home, portraying police shootings, the Flint water crisis, and dead children, among other tragedies.
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“We’re trying to do something positive instead of just having a dead body laying in the yard,” she told the Associated Press. “[I] Want to get people to be a little more focused on the issues, what’s going on in the world. We need to stick together more. We need to come together. And if we don’t, this scene in my yard is going to be reality every single day.”
This is not the first time Haddon has used dummies for Halloween decorations. She has been doing so “as a prank” for the last 20 years, she told her local ABC affiliate. But the prank especially took off last year, when passerby called the police after seeing a dummy facedown on her lawn. Given the recent police brutality epidemic, she changed the tone of the display. This time around, she wants to inspire a broader range of thought, rather than just shock.