Graffiti represents the failure of the state in its most fundamental roles. Cities fail the young when they give them no vested interest in the community, then fail the adults when they refuse to protect their property.
Rightly or wrongly, I’ve always assumed graffiti is sprayed by young men, usually in small groups, sometimes in groups that have coalesced into gangs. Young folks want to change the world, want adventure, want something grand. An aerosol can is a weak tool for energies that could be harnessed for something better.
Graffiti is expensive to remove. Where I live, it’s usually sprayed on fences or stuccoed walls that need to be sanded or resufaceded, but a metal cattle barn and van have been attacked. Some hire crews to repair the fences, but the barn remains a year later. The county and utilities do nothing to clean their painted over signs and boxes, leaving ugly, provocative reminders even when residents clear what they can.
More important than losing money or a pleasant neighborhood, people lose their sense of security when they walk to the mail box in the morning and see graffiti has been sprayed a few feet from their bedroom windows while they were sleeping.
Indeed, people take evasive action to avoid potential threats. Those who can move. When I had my fence put up, I had it stop ten feet from the road so it would be less inviting. I didn’t put up my fence to keep out trespassers, but my neighbors’ weeds and chickens. That unaesthetic choice was good enough, and perhaps was unaesthetic enough not to draw anyone’s attention or envy.
My freedom of choice was circumscribed by the threat. My apprehension taints the community as much as the graffiti itself.
Petty vandalism has always been with us. As a teenager, I remember tales of smashed mailboxes, stolen apples, tipped over outhouses. They often carried with them the recollection that some adult stepped in and made them make amends in some ways. The memorat was both a recollection of fun in challenging the limits of the permissible and an acknowledgment that order must be restored.
Now when I ask, why don’t the adults do something, I’m usually told the cops know very well who the perpetrators are because they’re their own sons. I’ve heard that explanation in different parts of the country in communities with very different demographics.
In my neighborhood, graffiti isn’t random and it isn’t constant. It seems to attack some individuals, and skip others. The latest burst happened during an election campaign when some posters in yards were defaced. A few days later, more posters, a fence and wall.
One begins to speculate about political gain, if politicians suggest certain signs be damaged, and once emboldened and in the neighborhood, young men add other targets. From there, I sometimes wonder if it’s like arson in the New York boroughs in the late 1960s when land speculators forced turnover in stable ethnic neighborhoods. The van and the house with the defaced wall were both for sale, and now will sell for a lower price unless money is spent for clean up.
The actual explanation for graffiti probably does not involve conspiracies and probably is not fodder for a detective novel.
Law enforcement agencies simply don’t want to do the boring things we want them to do. Policemen who won’t bother to pay attention to the young, to gangs, are no different than an FBI that prefers to spy on citizens rather than solve a domestic violence crime like the death of Jon-Benet Ramsey. The CIA would rather overthrow a government than interpret intelligence reports. George W. Bush would rather send the army to Iraq than have its Corps of Engineers fix levees.
When institutions that should provide role models for young men refuse to obey the will of the citizens, put their own desires for adventures above mundane tasks that must be done to perpetuate a commonweal, it’s no wonder rudderless young are open to suggestions that spray cans are actions.
It’s also no wonder we listen to conspiracy tales that assure us we are not looking at a failure of our public institutions. Policemen who won’t act to protect their families are easier to accept than policemen who refuse to act. Predatory speculators are easier to accept than predatory public officials.
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