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 One
thing that everybody expects to find in a poor neighborhood
is graffiti. But their image of graffiti is not based on the
reality. This mural would be considered graffiti by
the city. It’s a memorial for one of our leaders
who was killed at the age of twenty three by a drunk driver.
A couple of years
ago the city started a major campaign against graffiti - and
against the kids that made it, the graffiti artists. A
lot of these kids were arrested, given fines and put in jail.
There was a serious coordination between the police, schools,
newspapers and community groups to round up these kids. The
mayor probably best captured the rhetoric of the campaign
when he said "Graffiti is the number one problem facing
these areas." But the graffiti writers weren't the ones
responsible for the factories and businesses leaving the community.
For kids who can’t
afford to go to the movies or hang out at the mall, graffiti
is an affordable activity - something to do. Sure some
of the kids aren’t that talented, but if you go into
factories around this neighborhood, you’ll see beautiful
murals, painted by kids.
We had another
mural - for a union leader who fought to build a relationship
between the employed and the unemployed. It was much
more political - with the words poverty and prosperity and
images of people protesting. Even though it was painted
on one of our member's private houses, the city came out and
painted over it a week before the March of the Americas came
to town (after leaving it sit for almost a year.) Covered
it up. They didn’t ask permission, they just slapped
pink paint over it. We had a group of young people who
worked on that mural for days.
Next: Kensington
& Cumberland: Birth of KWRU
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