Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (June 21, 2023)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle June 21, 2023 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Opinion Graffiti Has Undergone A Massive Shift in a Few Quick Decades as Street Art Gains Social Acceptance Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor G Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Patricia Irvin Product Manager, Graphic Designer Saundra Sorenson Reporter Aurora Hernandez Digital Content Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. ©2023 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. raffiti has become so mainstream in recent years that auction hous- es, museums and entire art shows cater to street art connoisseurs and collectors around the world. Images in the news of young vandals re- sponsible for marking walls have been replaced by sleek websites belonging to global phenoms such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey. In cities around the world, graffiti is now associated with “street artists” rather than vio- lent street gangs. Today, many cities, from Pittsburgh to Pre- toria, invite street artists to help brand neighborhoods that are being revitalized and gentrified as legitimately hip destinations for business owners, home buyers and in- fluencers. Some up-and-com- ing neighborhoods in cities like Dakar, Senegal; Mexico City; Brisbane, Australia; and Seoul, South Korea offer street art tours and host graf- fiti festivals. The vibrantly colored walls in such places attract trav- elers to parts of town once deemed “sketchy.” These same neighborhoods are home to bookstores that carry graffiti coffee table books and uni- versities that offer courses on graffiti art. I have taught such courses myself. But it hasn’t always been this way. Stefano Bloch University of Arizona The history of tagging Before becoming an aca- demic who teaches and writes about graffiti, I was a graffiti writer. I started tagging, or illegally writing my name — Cisco CBS — on surfaces across Los Angeles in the ear- ly 1990s. “ Law enforce- ment didn’t seem to un- derstand what the writ- ing on walls meant At the time, local govern- ments were cracking down on wall writers with anti-gang legislation, such as Califor- nia’s 1988 Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act, and a variety of “broken windows theory” policing ini- tiatives. Law enforcement didn’t seem to understand what the writing on walls meant or who was behind those cryptic images and personal monikers. Many residents couldn’t read or understand it either. Graffiti was interpret- ed as gang-related and, there- fore, territorial and violent. Vandals were targeted with well-funded anti-graffiti task forces and police crackdowns on taggers like me. It was not enough, it seemed, to rightfully charge graffi- ti writers with vandalism. Rather, police and district at- torneys, backed by a morally panicked public, were making an example of graffiti writers, charging them with felonies, giving them six-figure fines and sending them to prison for illicitly marking walls. By the end of the 1990s, as the violent crime rate in cities across the U.S. declined and gentrification increased, new residents felt they could safe- ly move into lower cost, “up- and-coming” neighborhoods. Local governments turned to gang injunctions, a re- straining order targeting al- leged gang members, to help rid neighborhoods of the remaining taggers and wall writers who were labeled gang members and were painting political wall mu- rals. The Guadalupe, or La Vir- gen, was used to signal the Chicano community’s faith in God’s protection, delivering them from the violence of the streets at the hands of gangs and police alike. But such mu- rals, often done by local graffi- ti artists who were themselves deeply rooted in the Chicano community, were forced to make room for “street art” in the context of neighborhood change and urban redevelop- ment. As real estate prices went up, the Guadalupe murals came down, symbolizing local displacement by gentrifica- tion. While physical displace- ment was being experienced firsthand by long-standing residents, the transformation of the walls in these commu- nities symbolized a broader cultural change. By the ear- ly 2000s, politically neutral street art images replaced depictions of social struggle, Chicano/a history, and com- munity life. Graffiti made legit By 2011, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles hosted the first-ever museum survey of street art and graffiti. At this time, I was finishing my dissertation on the “Changing Face of Wall Space,” which explored graf- fiti in the nearby neighbor- hoods of Echo Park. Read more at TheSkanner.com Big Chance to Cut Climate Pollution from Big Trucks T Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS LOCAL EVENTS Updated daily online. d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n to y • ac it Hear about it first. Sign up for Breaking News and Events at he interstates built in the 1950s and 1960s killed the vitality of the com- munities where people of color and the poor lived, from Overtown in Miami to the Hill District in Pittsburgh to the South and West Sides of Chicago. The disruption and segregation of those commu- nities happened by design. The harm continues to this day for the residents who remain in those neighbor- hoods. Because the highways run through their backyards, those people are at point blank range for the pollution from the millions of vehicles driving the interstates burn- ing fossil fuels. Transportation accounts for more than a quarter of the climate damaging gases this country makes, more than any other sector. An estimat- ed 72 million Americans live in close proximity to trucking routes and they are dispro- portionately people of color or living with low incomes. We have an unprecedent- ed chance to change this longstanding disregard for so many Americans’ health and well-being, and we must grab that chance if we want to reduce vehicle pollution enough to reach our goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030. Ben Jealous Guest Columnist While heavy duty vehicles – think delivery trucks, gar- bage trucks, buses, and trac- tor trailer trucks – are only 6 percent of the vehicles in the United States, they produce “ ed, special interests and the politicians they support will oppose any regulations that have a chance to avert climate disaster. The EPA must stand up for communities most damaged by truck and bus pollution. The stricter rules should add momentum to changes al- ready happening in that part of the economy. Manufactur- ers like Daimler, Ford, Navis- tar, and Volvo have pledged to increase the number of We have an unprecedented chance to change this longstand- ing disregard for so many Ameri- cans’ health and well-being a third of the climate pollu- tion from transportation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed new rules that would sharp- ly reduce the carbon dioxide that heavy duty vehicles will be allowed to belch in their exhaust and pave the way for more trucks and buses that have no emissions. The comment period for these new rules ended Fri- day, so the EPA needs to final- ize them quickly. As we saw last year with other common sense air pollution standards for trucks that the EPA adopt- zero emission trucks they sell and big volume shippers in- cluding Amazon, FedEx, and Walmart have said they will cut their air pollution. The available models of zero emission trucks are up more than a quarter from three years ago, and their cost is expected to drop 40 percent in the next four years. Seven- teen states, the District of Co- lumbia and Puerto Rico have agreed to a plant to boost zero emission truck sales with an initial target of 30 percent by 2030. Beyond the new federal rules, we have extraordinary incentives that are part of the historic infrastructure and clean energy packag- es that President Biden and Congress approved over the last two years. We’ve pledged to spend $1 billion by 2031 on zero emission heavy duty trucks and another $5 billion by 2026 on clean school buses. We must have the bigger stick of tougher regulation, but for the first time we have mean- ingful carrots from these in- centives. We’ve finally as a nation started to acknowledge the scope of the change it will take to preserve our fragile and already damaged planet. But the interest in the status quo is strong among those who gain from it like Big Oil companies reporting record billions in profits. We can’t turn our attention away now, assuming that recognizing the problem will undoubted- ly lead to the right actions to address it. Sixty years ago, neighbor- hoods in Manhattan, Wash- ington and New Orleans fought back successfully against being divided and paved over by interstates. Finishing the job of ending the pollution from those high- ways’ traffic will take that same commitment on our part. nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
