As many of you probably know, Hurricane Sandy is barreling down on the Mid Atlantic. Classes here at the University of Maryland are canceled today (a major relief for many, I can assure you). Right now, as I look out my window, things do not look so disastrous, though as the wind and rain pick up, it's easy to see the slow build to what is likely to be an evening to remember.
So, with nowhere to go and little to do, I can actually get this blog out today at a reasonable time! Nothing to stop me, right? (unless the power or internet goes out...we will hope that won't happen. Or at least that it stays on for a good long while.)
So seeing that the storm is keeping me inside today, and that running around campus trying to post on things would be unproductive anyways, I figured that today I would tell you about two very intriguing posts that I saw over the weekend. Posts that I have nothing to do with, but that are mind-boggingly similar to Post It Politics.
The first has been the work of the UMD Tri Delta chapter. It seems that these sorority girls have been doing a kind of "You're Beautiful/Love Yourself" movement on campus.
Now, admittedly, this chalking campaign does not differ to much from those of other student groups (Jesus Loves You chalking, Free Hugs, etc etc). However, I do appreciate that some of these Tri Delta do-gooders have started to use a media that I am all too familiar with
Granted, none of these posts are made to change the meaning of any existing material. It's not as if they are putting these messages on top of pictures of "flawed" men and women (which would probably ruin the message of the whole thing anyway). But hey, they're still putting messages out there in a new, creative way to get people to view their surroundings differently. Good on you Tri Delta! I wonder if you've seen my tweet.
*On a somewhat unrelated note, I am very curious about what kind of Post-its they are using. For some reason they are much stickier than the ones that I bought on campus and have been using. I could use me some of those.
The other posts that I found caught me completely off guard. My girlfriend and I came upon them in the DC Metro station on U Street.
Now what exactly is this, you might be asking yourself. The poster in the background was posted by a group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and anti-Islam/anti-Muslim group that is organized out of Pamela Geller's Stop Islamization of America. The poster reads "IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE, SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN. SUPPORT ISRAEL. DEFEAT JIHAD."
I first became aware of these posters from news stories about them being put up in New York City subway stations, and how people were concerned not only about their racist message, but also about the effects these posters could have in wake of the deadly riots across the world that were set off by the release of an anti-Islam movie trailer. I had no idea that these posters had been put up here in DC until I ran across this one.
Now what seems to have happened here is that Palestinian supporters (and perhaps others who feel that this poster is racist and wrong) went ahead and fought this poster's message, turning what used to be a crass call to action into a resistance.
Someone had even gone so far as to reword the sign for their own message
Now I'm not sure if everything that was done here was organized or spontaneous. From what I could see, there were no organizational markings or anything of that nature, and most of the notes were written with different hand writing. Maybe it was organized to begin with, and has taken off from there. Regardless, I threw my own post into the fray. When I flipped my coin, it ended up, so that's how I posted. Not quite sure how that will be interpreted by passersby. Am I supporting the original poster, or am I supporting my posting brethren? When I tweeted the photo, I sent out tweets with tags both for AFDI (#SIOA) and those resisting these ads (#MySubwayAd) to gauge any kind of reaction.
When I looked into who might be doing these postings, I was unable to find any specific group, though this New York Magazine article does explain how people have reacted with imagery to the posters in the New York Subway. Also, going around is news of Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American writer and activist, and her vigilante attempt to fight these posters. See the result here. I believe this whole exchange puts the struggle between freedom of speech and its consequences better than I ever could.
Once again, though I am unsurprised that others have the idea to post in the same way I do, it's fairly moving for me to know that there are those who also see propaganda and want to put it into dispute. Now, I just wonder whether or not I'll have a chance to spread this from controversial advertising and into political propaganda as a whole with a little more than a week to go before the election. Hurricane Sandy is certainly not going to help any...
For now, stay safe, and as dry as you can.
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