Graffiti and Social Movements

Being an activist on a campus with mostly apathetic students often leaves me wondering “how can I get the word out to the largest number of students?” In order for a campaign to be effective, it must be heard loud and clear by whomever the decision makers may be—the administration, the city council, etc—and the more people speaking up, the louder the demands are. 

Using social media is typically the first step student groups take in this mobilization process, but it is far from the most effective medium. Anytime a new group forms or an event is planned, a new page on Facebook is sure to be made and personal posts are pretty much guaranteed. Social media is the necessary floor from which a movement can build in today’s world. However, organizing is about the extent of the usefulness of social media. Engaging in public debate on these forums solves very little if anything at all. They are what Michael Hart calls a “zero institution,” a place for political actors go to feel like they’re doing something ultimately letting their ideas die if they do not make their way out of the interwebs. 

The article on the geographies of resistance has me thinking about potential alternative mediums for ideas to proliferate, momentum to build, and voices to be heard. And what better way to resist than breaking the law with art that all can see? I find graffiti to be incredibly fascinating, even when the extent of the political intent is to simply display your name. Members of the student organization I am a part of must also find it interesting, because we’ve paintedthe graffiti wall on Richland Avenue a couple of times this year. We deal mostly with ongoing mass atrocities, which continue to exist in large because nobody cares enough to do anything about them if they have no direct connection to the violence. 

Fall semester, we painted gENDer-based violence in order to increase the relevance of this perspective in the public sphere. Earlier this semester, we painted something that allowed concerned passer-by’s to act. From this we learned that graffiti itself can mobilize, and hallelujah for hashtags. We figured out a way to get people to act by painting:

“2 million displaced

70,000 deaths

2 years

0 solutions

#syriasly?!”

I was incredibly surprised by how many people stared at it as they walked by, but more importantly how many people used that hashtag on Twitter and engaged in the conversation. From Twitter, people were directed towards syriasly.org where there is a petition to sign and information to access. This was a unique intermarrying of social media and the public sphere that I think has been largely overlooked. The lesson: graffiti can reach people social media may not have otherwise reached and direct them towards taking further action on geographically far away issues with geographically far away solutions. These movements are necessary in order to end mass atrocities across the globe, and social media may not be the epitome of the detriment to the democratic process that Mitchel suggest in “The End of Public Space?” after all.