Urban Roses
Graffiti is a Tool of Social Change
Story by Alan Chararo

In the late 1960's, a group of inner-city youths discovered an alternative to the violence and crime that plagued their communities. It involved expressing themselves in a manner that promoted positivity and creativity. It was a way of releasing the powerful contents of their imaginations. It was a way of reminding the world they existed. It was graffiti.

Like lush ivy, the art proliferated without end, covering dilapidated walls in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, providing beauty where there was none. City officials didn't mind these wall painting artists at first—as long as they kept to themselves. It wasn't until the passion spilled into middle class communities that they were labeled vandals.

This leads me to believe that the war on graffiti is a socioeconomic power struggle, in which the affluent classes are trying to suppress the poor. Moreover, it's what the art represents, not the actual art, that the rich detest and fear.

It frightens the bourgeoisie to think that the disenfranchised have the ability to promote themselves freely. Unlike billion-dollar corporations like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, who compete for visible city space as regularly as graffiti writers, independent street artists can not afford to buy city property to display their messages. That's why they take to tunnels, abandoned buildings, and city walls to exhibit themselves.

In this sense, graffiti is the voice of the economically impoverished. This harsh reality manifests in graffiti's rampancy in poor neighborhoods. Its mere existence highlights the disparity of our nation, in which the poor have been shoved under the carpet to be forgotten. Graffiti art is the product of their struggle—a struggle against our government's capitalistic gluttony, which has sacrificed certain segments of the population in order to expand its wealth. With graffiti, repressed masses have created a way to fight back. Graffiti is their tool, their voice, and abiding by the philosophy of the Zapatista revolutionaries of Chiapas, Mexico, they wield its message as their weapon.

This is what city officials find most alarming. This is what they aim to destroy. They aren't against the actual art, but the ideas and people behind it, so they invest prodigious resources in trying to eradicate them. But it's simply unfair to pin the graffiti problem on individual artists. You can't stop graffiti by throwing people in jail or by portraying it as a social blight. You must attack the root of the problem—poverty. Yet, we never see attempts to clean up city streets, only to sweep the people who inhabit them off into prison.  

And if you think cleaning graffiti is a waste of tax dollars, consider this: mothers, husbands and children are being killed overseas with the money you supply the government with. But I don't see anyone being fined or imprisoned for that. Does that mean spray painting a wall is worse than dropping a bomb? Believe me, graffiti is not as abhorrent as you think.

In fact, graffiti is an act of creation, not destruction. It is a beautiful process of immortalizing the intangible, transient nature of the imagination by putting it on display for others to view. With blazing colors, interlocking angles, bold characters, and swift movements, graffiti undoubtedly qualifies as an aesthetic display of emotion. It was never meant to be the destructive force some believe it is today. It was meant to unify communities and promote positivity. And if we allow it to, it can become this instrument of social change again. Graffiti artists must take it upon themselves to make sure this happens. Keep fighting for the art to exist.

True graffiti is an elaborate, intellectual production that embellishes entire city blocks. It radiates beauty, growth, and love, just like a rose, and we must never let anyone take that away from us.