Raffaella Delle Donne is an amazing writer and activist that contributed the Faith47 feature to our current special African Art (November 2008) issue. Raffaella currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa and recently wrote about her experience of being charged with defacing public property for spraying “free art” on the bridges of “the Mother City.” It’s pretty crazy stuff. Raffaella explains:
“A couple of years ago, in protest against the barrage of proposed by-laws that boasted a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to all our social ills by banning everything from graffiti to the homeless, a friend and I were charged with defacing public property for spraying ‘free art’ on the bridges of the Mother City.
“Because we were middle-class whities and upstanding members of the community, our little escapade got lots of media attention (isn’t graffiti code language for gangsters?) and fuelled the debate around the shortsightedness of Draconian laws that threatened to turn two already marginalized groups into criminals: the youth and the poor.”
The entire piece is enthralling, and provides a much-needed look at foreign government’s policies on graffiti and street art. If the up cropping of zero tolerance laws frustrates you, you’re not the only one. “Our protest wasn’t just about graffiti, we were demanding to know why our leaders aren’t providing viable, long-term solutions to uplift the communities that need it most.”
Read Raffaella’s Selling(Out) the Revolution on her blog at mouth-of-word.blogspot.com
Image from Raffaella’s blog courtesy Adbusters.
When would you consider someone's protests as taken too far?
Why would you not support another person's fight to get there
point across? If more of us out there actually took the time
to listen to people, don't you think that a smaller amount of them
would be forced to take there fights to extremes that involve violence?
Or do you believe that anger, and causing conflict are the only methods
of actually bringing attention from an other wise vegetative state audience
that is our society?
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1 comment:
This is a very interesting post, and I would like to know how you found her. I think her protest is totally valid and what she is saying is valid, too. She made a graffiti to get a point across, and she is taken as a criminal. It is very smart to make a point across in this manner, because it is wrong by law, and it is going to be more auditioned. I don't think violence is necessary to protest; there are many other ways to get a point across in a way that would hurt the oppressor, or the authority, but if a protest doesn't work in a peaceful manner and the protest is beneficial for the rest of the people, then violence must take place to accomplish the goal.
It is hard to voice your opinions if these are ordinary opinions. Or they could be extraordinary but just told in an ordinary conversation. You got to take action and find a way to let the world hear you. Protest can be made in a legal fashion, but in specific occasions, you have to bend some laws to be able to protest, it doesn't matter if it is in a peaceful or in a violent fashion. And by bending some rules it doesn't necessarily mean you are a criminal. Maybe those are laws made by authority to gain more power over the people and make them kneel in submission.
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