Graffiti is a cause of disagreement among residents of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Graffiti is a cause of disagreement among residents of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.
In 2023, a federal judge temporary stopped Seattle police from making graffiti-related arrests. [1] [2] [3] The ruling was appealed by a city attorney. [4] [5]
According to Crosscut.com, reports of graffiti filed by the public increased by more than 50 percent between 2019 and 2021. City agencies removed 5,000 and 8,700 tags in 2019 and 2021, respectively. [6] In 2023, Gary Horcher of KIRO-TV said there were approximately 20,000 reports of graffiti in 2021 and wrote, "Seattle has been covered in more graffiti, and more graffiti is being covered up — at a higher cost to taxpayers — than ever before." [7] Graffiti is often seen along Interstate 5. [8]
Seattle Public Utilities created the Graffiti Rangers team in 1994 in an effort to remove graffiti on public property. [9]
In October 2022, mayor Bruce Harrell announced the "One Seattle Graffiti Plan" to reduce graffiti as part of a larger city beautification project. [10] Ahead of the 2023 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, Harrell relaunched the Graffiti Abatement Partnership, to focus on graffiti removal in downtown Seattle and the Chinatown–International District. [10] [11]
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
Bruce Allen Harrell is an American politician and attorney serving as the 57th and current mayor of Seattle, Washington. He was a member of the Seattle City Council from 2008 to 2020. From 2016 to 2020, he was president of the city council. He was acting mayor of Seattle from September 13 to 18, 2017. He was elected mayor in his own right in the 2021 Seattle mayoral election, becoming the second Black mayor since Norm Rice, and the first African-Asian American mayor of the city.
A bikini barista is a woman who works as a barista, preparing and serving coffee beverages, while dressed in scanty attire such as a bikini, lingerie or a crop top combined with bikini bottoms or hotpants. In the United States, this marketing technique originated in the Seattle, Washington area in the early 2000s. Similar phenomena have appeared in countries such as Chile and Japan since at least the 1980s.
Buket is a graffiti artist who came to prominence after a YouTube video showed him tagging above a Los Angeles freeway in broad daylight.
Cristian Gheorghiu became famous as an American street artist/graffiti artist and contemporary painter under the name of Smear in the 2000s. He further rose to prominence in a series of high-profile arrests and subsequent articles on the arrests and on his art which appeared in the Los Angeles Times from 2009 to 2011, followed by television appearances and further media coverage. In 2011 the Los Angeles Times called Smear "a subculture sensation" and his work has appeared in contemporary art galleries, and a solo museum exhibit in 2009. He was also a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by the L.A. City attorney's office, a lawsuit which largely because of its First Amendment implications has garnered the attention of international media, including the Huffington Post, L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press.
The Robert E. Lee Monument was an outdoor bronze equestrian statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller located in Charlottesville, Virginia's Market Street Park in the Charlottesville and Albemarle County Courthouse Historic District. The statue was commissioned in 1917 and dedicated in 1924, and in 1997 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was removed on July 10, 2021.
Metro Transit Assassins, also known by the initialism MTA or as Melting Toys Away and Must Take All, is a graffiti street artist collective based in Los Angeles, most famous for its half-mile graffiti "MTA" tag along the concrete walls of the Los Angeles River.
Bell Street Park is a 1.33-acre (0.54 ha) park, created in 2014 in Seattle, Washington's Belltown neighborhood. Situated in a neighborhood described as a former "hot-spot for low-level crime, drug-dealing and civil disorder", and intended in part to reduce crime rates on the street, the property was transferred from the city's transportation department to Parks and Recreation, and it was redeveloped as a woonerf or mixed-use pedestrian/vehicular traffic area without curbs.
In the United States, states have primary jurisdiction in matters of public morality. The topfreedom movement has claimed success in a few instances in persuading some state and federal courts to overturn some state laws on the basis of sex discrimination or equal protection, arguing that a woman should be free to expose her chest in any context in which a man can expose his. Other successful cases have been on the basis of freedom of expression in protest, or simply that exposure of breasts is not indecent.
The city of Seattle experienced protests over the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and 2021. Beginning on May 29, 2020, demonstrators took to the streets throughout the city for marches and sit-ins, often of a peaceful nature but which also devolved into riots. Participants expressed opposition to systemic racism, police brutality and violence against people of color.
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), originally Free Capitol Hill and occasionally the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), was an unlawful occupation protest and self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The zone, originally covering two intersections at the corners of Cal Anderson Park and the roads leading up to them, was established on June 8, 2020, by George Floyd protesters after the Seattle Police Department (SPD) left its East Precinct building. The zone was cleared of occupants by police on July 1. Its formation was preceded by a week of tense interactions between protesters and police in riot gear which began on June 1 and escalated on June 7 after a man drove his vehicle toward a crowd near 11th Avenue and Pine Street and shot a protester who tried to stop him. Tear gas, flashbangs and pepper spray were used by police in the densely populated residential neighborhood. On June 7, the SPD reported that the crowd was throwing rocks, bottles, and fireworks, and were shining green lasers into officers' eyes. The next day, the SPD boarded up its building and moved out of the East Precinct in an effort to de-escalate the situation.
Adrian Z. Diaz is an American law enforcement officer serving as the chief of the Seattle Police Department. Diaz had previously served as deputy chief of the department. Diaz assumed office in an acting capacity on September 2, 2020, following the resignation of Carmen Best. On September 20, 2022, Diaz was appointed to the permanent position.
The 2021 Seattle City Council 3rd district recall election was held on December 7, 2021. Kshama Sawant, a member of the Seattle City Council from the 3rd district, defeated an attempt to recall her. This was the first recall election held in Seattle since the one held against Mayor Wesley C. Uhlman in 1975, and the first for a city councilor in the city's history.
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Danielle E. "Utah" Bremner and Jim Clay "Ether" Harper VI are American graffiti artists, called the "Bonnie and Clyde of the graffiti world". They have tagged trains and buildings in over 30 countries on five continents, and have made books and videos about their exploits. They have also been arrested, fined, and served multiple prison sentences for vandalism. Their use of social media has been used as an example in a book about graffiti artists, and they have been the subjects of a video exhibit and a song.
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The March for Science Seattle was a protest held in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. This local protest was part of the March for Science, a series of rallies and marches in Washington, D.C., and over 600 cities across the world on April 22, 2017.
Graffiti is a cause of disagreement among residents of Portland, Oregon. Residents can report graffiti and request removal. In 2023, a poll conducted by The Oregonian showed 61 percent of Portland voters considered graffiti a "big" problem.
Media related to Graffiti in Seattle at Wikimedia Commons