The Rebel Loon Comes to Ohio: Stickers, Solidarity, and the #BraveOfUs Tattoo Contest
Guest Blogpost by Dexter Komakaru
We've all seen famous symbols of resistance before. From the Monarch Butterfly symbolizing migration and freedom of movement, to the Hunger Games’ Mockingjay symbol, a fictional anti-authoritarian bird that found its way onto real protest signs, when a symbol clicks, people run with it. We identify with it, tattoo it on our bodies, print it, paint it on walls, and stick it on everything we own. It stops being one person's design and starts belonging to everyone who carries it.
That's exactly what happened in Minnesota this year with the Rebel Loon. During ICE's Operation Metro Surge, Moorhead software engineer Bernardo Anderson fused the state bird with the Star Wars Rebel Alliance symbol, and released it on Reddit on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a Creative Commons license, so anyone else can use it too. It spread immediately.
Tattoo shops across the Twin Cities started inking it. Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong put a Rebel Loon sticker on his guitar at a Super Bowl performance. LED signs of the loon started glowing in shop windows across Minneapolis as a signal: that this is a safe place.
Tattoo artists used it to run fundraiser flash days; local shops used it to organize; communities used it to identify each other. And people in Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, and other states started adapting it, swapping in their own state birds to claim the symbol for their own local resistance.
That's what good creative organizing does. It gives people something to hold onto, something to wear, something to point to and say, "I'm with you." It turns solidarity from the abstract into something you can stick on your laptop, ink on your skin, or hang in your window.
Ohio's Take: The Rebel Cardinal
Here in Ohio, Columbus-based artist Luka Weinberger (@lowbarluka) has been doing exactly this kind of work. Luka is a tattoo artist at Last Moon Tattoo, a muralist, and a fine artist with a BFA from Laguna College of Art + Design. They've been a collaborator with OIA on multiple projects, and when the Rebel Loon symbol started spreading state by state, they created Ohio's answer to it.
Their "OH ICE OUT" design features two flaming Ohio cardinals, wings spread, gripping a fiery hot icepick between them as they crack into a melting block of ice. It's detailed, it’s symbolic, it's gorgeous, and it is unmistakably Ohio. Luka also created a companion piece, "¡Fuera ICE!", which shows a flaming fist punching through a crumbling ICE block. Both designs carry Luka's signature painterly detail, creating artwork that can be appreciated both up close and from afar.
This is the spirit that allows movements to gain critical mass: when local artists use their craft to channel collective power into something tangible. Something you can hold in your hand, put on your water bottle, slap on a street sign.
Get These Designs as Stickers at the Columbus Arts Festival - Saturday, June 13th!
Stickers by (@lowbarluka), available on June 13 at OIA’s “Ohio Is My Second Country” concert
OIA will be selling Luka's Rebel Cardinal "OH ICE OUT" and "¡Fuera ICE!" stickers in person at the Columbus Arts Festival on June 13th. Come find us before or after our 3pm concert, grab some stickers, and support both a local artist and immigrant justice work in Ohio.
While you're there, you can also catch OIA's performance on the Cultural Arts Center Stage from 3 to 4pm (ARRIVE EARLY). Mauritanian-American pop star Salif Sarr will be performing alongside artist Shema Asifiwe and OIA Advocacy Director Demba Ndiath to celebrate OIA's new coloring book, "Ohio Is My Second Country," drawn by Shema with text by Dr. Manuel Chinchilla. Free coloring pages for the crowd, books and OIA merch will also be available for purchase.
OIA’s concert will take place on Saturday, June 13, at 3pm on the festival’s Cultural Arts Center Stage at 139 W. Main Street (map). More details can be found here.
The #BraveOfUs Tattoo Design Contest Closes June 30th
A flyer about the #BraveOfUs Tattoo Design Contest
Luka's work is a perfect example of what we're looking for with the #BraveOfUs Tattoo Design Contest, and submissions close at the end of this month.
The contest is an open call for tattoo artists and apprentices across the U.S. to submit original designs expressing immigrant solidarity and potentially win $500 for first place, or $250 each for five finalists. Winning designs become free flash for tattoo artists nationwide and go on fundraising merch for OIA. You retain full copyright. Artists can submit up to three designs.
The Rebel Loon showed what happens when one piece of art gets released into a community that's ready for it. The Rebel Cardinal is Ohio's version of that same energy. The #BraveOfUs contest is an invitation to keep it going: design the next symbol, the next piece of flash, the next image that someone sees and says, "That's what I believe in, and I want it on my body."
The deadline is June 30, 2026. That's less than four weeks from today. Submit your design at ohioimmigrant.org/braveofus.
Don’t forget to come see us at the Columbus Arts Festival, June 13th. More info here.
Dexter Komakaru (dxtrose.com) is a Central Ohio based artist, storyteller, Project Manager for the Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s #BraveOfUs Tattoo Contest, and collaborator with Ohio Immigrant Alliance.
