dancinbutterfly:

isuggestlandback:

radicalgraff:

“Decolonize Everything”

“When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish caught… then you will realize money cannot be eaten.”

Anti-colonial graffiti seen in Pensacola, Florida

“Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

-Alanis Obomsawin, Abenaki, 1972

This is my town. This is Graffiti Bridge.

Pensacola is weird.

And you could be like “oh well it’s a Navy town” but I am telling you it’s fucking not normal.

It’s haunted. It’s fucking strange even for Florida.

Pensacola is the oldest European settlement in North America but due to being destroyed by a hurricane St Augustine gets credit for oldest city. Ted Bundy got caught there and we have a few square blocks with snow white squirrels that for some reason don’t spread around don’t mix with the red of the local population. Chief Geronimo was held at the Confederate Army Fort on Pensacola Beach and his wife is still barried on the island. Every Memorial Day Weekend all the gays in the South take over Pensacola Beach for Sexacola Beach and have been in one of the longest running Pride events in the South that has been ongoing since the 70s with only COVID interrupting it. The Gulf Breeze Zoo is more than 40 years old and has more than 900 animals of the despite the city being only around ~150,000 people.

I need you to understand that this particular picture? Is not a big deal.

Graffiti Bridge is another of those Pensacola things. All the the graffiti in the city basic localized to this one overpass that you go under coming off of the 3 Mile Bridge (Bob Sikes Bridge but no one calls it that-it’s the 3 Mile Bridg so called because it is you guessed it, 3 miles long). I believe it is over 9th Avenue? Or Cervantes? I can never remember which is which to be honest with you.

Anyway. You go under Graffiti Bridge and the kid superstition was to kiss your fingertips and touch the roof of the car as you passed and life your feet(because there are railroad tracks up there and you have to lift your feet going over railroad tracks).

But all the graffiti in town was centrally located to this overpass. Front and back, and up the sides. Every time you pass it could be something new.

It was the only place in town that the cops never enforced. There was a collective agreement that they wouldn’t.

I genuinely don’t know if it was formal or informal - I suspect informal because doing illegal things is more fun - but it was never enforced. I think I saw it painted over once and it made the news. People were PISSED.

And as a result I don’t ever remember seeing much graffiti growing up anywhere else actually.

My mom used to say that if you gave people a place to do things they wouldn’t need to break the law so, yeah, my first introduction to harm reduction actually.

But my point is things written on Graffiti Bridge in Pensacola are not special. It’s sandcastles.

I’m not saying they have no value. Sandcastles have value too. But the point is that the people who put them there knew they’d be covered in days, a couple weeks at most - while most tags that make a political statement stay for weeks or months.

So yeah. Context matters. This not a tag so much as an art installation.

(via prismatic-bell)