Week 6 - The Mission to Explore Mission

Hey People! Hope you’re having an amazing week & thank you so much for following my research journey!

This week, I explored San Francisco’s Mission District. I was able to get several (hundred) amazing pictures of graffiti pieces. It was very exciting to explore the city and see various artists that I recognized from traveling on BART.  I also discovered new artists such as Lento and Frisk. It was amazing to be able to see all of the different styles and modern graffiti in person.

These 2 slides contain several of the images I describe below.

I was able to see artwork about many different topics. I saw at least 4 “Free Gaza” messages. I saw a piece that had so many layers to the message behind it. It was centered around COVID. I was able to take a look at a graffiti piece that encouraged voting. The same artist conveyed a message about being “outsiders.” I took a look at a piece that seemed to take inspiration from the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat. This piece had large separated strokes of color, and also contained a symbol of the Nazi swastika crossed out with a large red cancel symbol. The same piece had a big red ‘X’ over the words “drugs crew.” Another piece had a message about how “our ancestors fought so we could…” Granted, it wasn’t anything extremely political (It talked about how they could “swagger.”), however, when we think about the message, many minorities such as Black and Hispanic groups, could not walk with ease and simply exist without harassment. It’s important to read the context and see that it is still an issue to this day, and the underlying message of that piece was to take control of the power ancestors fought for and not let people push you around.

I was able to take pictures at a skatepark. One piece that stood out to me was the one that stated “After Dark Punks Set The Pace.” I think this piece was the one that was the most memorable for me because it showed a direct link between punk culture and graffiti in today’s world and it was really cool to see that in person.

These pieces show the applications of graffiti as a form of protest in 2024. These specific pieces and messages embody the use of graffiti as speech and a tool to call out injustice and oppression.

One great example of this was a piece that simply stated “Justice for Cesar Vargas.” I did some research and found that Cesar Vargas was killed by SFPD after an attempted carjacking. There were better ways of making sure he didn’t hurt anyone instead of firing four bullets and killing him. This incident occurred in 2020. One bystander at the crime scene stated, “It’s crazy that we’re living in a system where some of us are looking at this and saying it’s okay that they shot him because he was apparently committing crimes,” the resident continued. “You look at other countries and they don’t have this problem. You can see videos of police just de-escalating that exact same situation without violence.”

This piece calls out the incident due to the SFPD’s previous show of restraint and de-escalation tactics. Note that these two incidents both occurred in the SAME year, 2020.

“The SFPD has successfully de-escalated tense situations. In July 2020, the SFPD engaged in an eight-hour standoff with a Vietnam veteran carrying a metal pole on 18th Street, eventually disarming him. The man was subsequently taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.”

Adriana Camarena, a police reform activist who advocated for the family of Luis Gongora Pat — a homeless Mexican immigrant whom officers shot and killed in the Mission in April 2016 — suggested the tactics of the July incident could have been used with Vargas. Adriana Camarena also stated “What did the officers do to de-escalate the situation other than rush this individual?” “Were there any other situations in which a perimeter was created and which some sort of containment was happening? Did these officers make a plan to de-escalate? Because I didn’t see any.” (Mission Local 2020)

This week was very exciting as I got to see applications of graffiti in punk culture and as a form of protest for very recent issues. I also was able to see a connection to hip-hop with an MF DOOM Tribute / Reference with the art piece containing his iconic mask.

That’s all for updates this week <3

See you on the next blog!