"What is a city for? And to whom does it belong? If you believe that a city belongs to its people, as a place for them to live, work, eat, sleep, sing, love, argue, and ultimately die, then there’s no particular problem with graffiti. It simply expresses all of those things, which make up life itself. But if you believe that a city belongs to its property owners, then graffiti is very bad indeed. After all, it’s not that politicians and members of the economic elite object to the act of writing on walls as such. They write on walls all the time, and on a much larger scale than anyone else; they just call it 'advertising.' The giant gold letters spelling out T R U M P on a skyscraper are this kind of elite graffiti, the biggest 'tag' of all. But the elite believe that only those with money should be allowed to write their thoughts on the city’s surface. They take it as an article of faith that the right to do so must be bought and paid for, as they believe all things must — and in turn, that those who can’t pay have no right to leave a trace of their existence.
This way of thinking has nothing to do with aesthetics. A sublimely beautiful piece of graffiti on a bus shelter will be removed, while an ugly ad for a dentist or an insurance firm will stay up. Graffiti, which is free to anyone with a Sharpie or spray can, is an act of transgression by humanity against the existing order of property and power. That is why politicians and police are disgusted by it and spend a disproportionate amount of time, money, and effort trying to wipe it from existence. Giving the game away somewhat, Richard Ravitch — the former head of New York’s MTA, and later lieutenant governor of the state — once called graffiti 'a symbol that we have lost control.' (Someone should have asked him: who are 'we'?) More recently, after far-right blowhard Tucker Carlson visited Moscow, he praised it for having 'no graffiti' in sight. The kind of city he and people like him want is clean, orderly, prosperous, extensively policed — and utterly inhuman."
- Alex Skopic, from "In Defense of Graffiti." Current Affairs, 19 August 2024.
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