'Terrifying': Crop artist speaks out after harassment over anti-Trump '8647' piece
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Tamara Sawyer fled her home Sunday after she was subjected to harassment and doxing after a piece she had entered in the Minnesota State Fair Crop Art Competition went viral. Sawyer told MPR News that her photo, home address, email, phone number and employer were shared online. The number “86” commonly means to remove or get rid of something, but some critics interpreted Sawyer’s use of it alongside “47” as a call to kill President Donald Trump.
“It was all veiled death threats, like, ‘Oh, let's 86 Tamara Sawyer. Here's her address,’ Sawyer said. “I'm not worried about 99.9 percent of the people. The ones that I'm worried about are the ones that mistakenly think I threatened their president, and now they're going to come pay me a visit and either kill me or hurt me or terrorize me or whatever, and that is terrifying.”
Sawyer said she had no intention of threatening the president. She said she was expressing her desire to see President Trump impeached and removed from office for sending thousands of federal immigration enforcement agents to Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge.
This is the first time Sawyer had entered anything in the fair. The Minnesota State Fair has declined to comment for this story.
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Sawyer’s crop art submission said “8647” using mung, black and red beans as well as ground white corn. Sawyer said she was using the phrase "86” as the term that’s commonly used in restaurants and bars: to indicate that a menu item is no longer available, removing something from an order or eject an unruly patron.
“If you're at a restaurant and a customer doesn't want onions on their plate, the term for that is ‘86 the onions.’ It doesn't mean you go kill the onions; it's don't put them on the plate,” Sawyer said. “It was a direct meaning of ‘Impeach Trump.’ I don't want him dead. I actually want him impeached, and I want him in jail, and I want him to see the damage that he’s done.”
Each crop art piece displayed at the fair must have a legend card with the seeds and plant parts used. Sawyer said her card was difficult to see because the artwork hung high on the wall. The card explained the meaning of the artwork.
The grits that make up the slab of ice represented federal agents, and the different beans represented different communities targeted by ICE, Sawyer said.
“The mung beans represent the Asian population because they were definitely targeted. The black beans represent the Black and brown populations,” Sawyer said. “The red beans did represent blood. That's one thing that they had correct online. However, it did not represent President Trump's blood. It represents the blood that was spilled on the streets of Minnesota by crimes perpetrated by ICE, so that was hugely symbolic.”
The inspiration for the piece was two-fold. Sawyer was part of a group of community members who patrolled their neighborhood observing ICE activity.
“I did that for weeks, and what I saw on the news, and what I saw myself was very upsetting and heartbreaking,” Sawyer said. She got the idea for the design from the image former FBI director James Comey shared on his social media of shells on a beach spelling out “8647.” Comey has been indicted by the Justice Department for threatening the president.
Sawyer said she first learned about the backlash when a friend texted her on the first Friday of the fair with a link to a Facebook post by Alpha News about her crop art. That night she tried to shut down all of her social media but someone had already taken a screenshot of her LinkedIn page. Sawyer, a public employee, said the crop art was done in her personal time.
On Saturday, Aug. 29, Sawyer said that Marta Shore, the fair’s crop art and scarecrow superintendent, contacted her to see whether she was OK. Then her artwork went viral on X and other social media, and that’s when the doxing began.
On Sunday, Sawyer called Shore to request removal of her artwork because she was no longer feeling safe. Shore acted immediately, Sawyer said, and removed the piece from the wall, and people took photos of her doing it. Those photos also went viral.
“It just slammed me,” Sawyer said. “I didn't expect to see it on social media, and I didn't expect to see it in all these other places, and it hit the news magazines and the newspapers, that same photo, and that was really painful.”
Sawyer added, “I mean I was excited. I'd never put anything in the fair before, and this was really cool. And it was my statement against ICE. And then here I'm getting all these death threats, and now I'm seeing the picture of her on the ladder taking it down.”
Sawyer was not the only fair artist to respond to Operation Metro Surge. There were so many artworks on the topic that cropart.com created a new section just for tributes to what they are calling the “Minnesota Resistance.” In fact, artists and crafters across the fair responded to the surge, from the Fine Arts exhibition to the Creative Activities building.
There were also other political works. A piece that said, in stark black and white, “Fauci Lied” hung directly below Sawyer’s artwork, and another piece depicted President Trump as Jesus.
Sawyer said her family, friends, employer, the fair and the crop art community have all been “extremely supportive,” so she is already planning the crop artwork she will submit next year.
“I’ve contacted a friend of mine who's really good at drawing, and she is drawing it up. I will be back next year,” Sawyer said.
Sawyer, however, said she hoped that the fair would update rules to shield crop artists from harassment.
“The protections that I'd like to see to protect crop artists would be the option to opt out of having their name on the piece or using a first name only to give them some anonymity,” Sawyer said. She said the city listed for each artist should also be optional.
In the meantime, Sawyer said she is not ready to return home.
“I need my life back, and I don't know when I’ll feel safe enough to go home,” Sawyer said. “I'm trying to take some steps, and do some mental health healing and other stuff, but it has totally disrupted my life at this point, and I don't feel safe going home.”
