City-wide Graffiti Wipeout
For Many, Saturday
Becomes A Wipeout
Dallas Morning News
Posted on May 21, 2006
By DAVE LEVINTHAL
Wielding brushes as big as their forearms, 5-year-old twins Jesus and Francisco Solis slopped stroke after stroke of gray primer on the graffiti-riddled wall. "Paint over the black!" their mother, Mia Medrano, said as she helped her daughter, 8-year-old Karina Solis, remove the spray-painted word "PIZZA" from a squat cinderblock building at Greenville and Ross avenues.
While many of their friends were playing video games or watching Saturday morning kids shows, dozens of children worked among about 700 volunteers who scrubbed, scoured and shellacked more than 200 Dallas buildings free of graffiti, from Oak Cliff to Lake Highlands.
Officials billed the citywide "Graffiti Wipe Out 2006" as the first event of its kind in Dallas.
Private companies and community organizations donated more than $40,000 in supplies to combat "tagging," which community activists say lowers property values and degrades neighborhoods.
The activity coincides with increased efforts at Dallas City Hall to stop graffiti proliferation, including an ordinance the City Council passed this month allowing police to arrest people carrying spray paint and other graffiti implements – even if they haven't tagged anything. The penalty? A misdemeanor charge that carries a $500 fine.
In Deep Ellum, paint-flecked council member Angela Hunt had just helped a team of volunteers coat a graffiti-covered building with fresh paint when she spied a man writing "fantastica" in permanent marker on a nearby wall.
Ms. Hunt called the police. Within minutes, they arrested the man. "It's a constant battle. You have to keep cleaning it up and staying vigilant," Ms. Hunt said. "And if you see a graffiti vandal, you should treat it like any other criminal act and call 911."
Along Oram Street in Old East Dallas, lawyer Angel Reyes, who had traded his business suit for a muscle shirt, stretched overhead to cover a patch of graffiti on a metal door that young volunteers
couldn't reach. "Don't worry – you guys are going to be as tall as me by the time you turn 13," Mr. Reyes said.
The soccer teammates and Ignacio Zaragoza Elementary School classmates smiled, grabbed their brushes and darted into an alley to paint over designs on a wall. "They should be helping instead of messing things up," Jonathan Mora, 12, said of graffiti artists.
Said 11-year-old Mauricio Juarez: "Graffiti looks bad. This is our community, and we need to keep our community clean."
E-mail dlevinthal@dallasnews.com
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Dallas Morning News
Posted on May 21, 2006
By DAVE LEVINTHAL
Wielding brushes as big as their forearms, 5-year-old twins Jesus and Francisco Solis slopped stroke after stroke of gray primer on the graffiti-riddled wall. "Paint over the black!" their mother, Mia Medrano, said as she helped her daughter, 8-year-old Karina Solis, remove the spray-painted word "PIZZA" from a squat cinderblock building at Greenville and Ross avenues.
While many of their friends were playing video games or watching Saturday morning kids shows, dozens of children worked among about 700 volunteers who scrubbed, scoured and shellacked more than 200 Dallas buildings free of graffiti, from Oak Cliff to Lake Highlands.
Officials billed the citywide "Graffiti Wipe Out 2006" as the first event of its kind in Dallas.
Private companies and community organizations donated more than $40,000 in supplies to combat "tagging," which community activists say lowers property values and degrades neighborhoods.
The activity coincides with increased efforts at Dallas City Hall to stop graffiti proliferation, including an ordinance the City Council passed this month allowing police to arrest people carrying spray paint and other graffiti implements – even if they haven't tagged anything. The penalty? A misdemeanor charge that carries a $500 fine.
In Deep Ellum, paint-flecked council member Angela Hunt had just helped a team of volunteers coat a graffiti-covered building with fresh paint when she spied a man writing "fantastica" in permanent marker on a nearby wall.
Ms. Hunt called the police. Within minutes, they arrested the man. "It's a constant battle. You have to keep cleaning it up and staying vigilant," Ms. Hunt said. "And if you see a graffiti vandal, you should treat it like any other criminal act and call 911."
Along Oram Street in Old East Dallas, lawyer Angel Reyes, who had traded his business suit for a muscle shirt, stretched overhead to cover a patch of graffiti on a metal door that young volunteers
couldn't reach. "Don't worry – you guys are going to be as tall as me by the time you turn 13," Mr. Reyes said.
The soccer teammates and Ignacio Zaragoza Elementary School classmates smiled, grabbed their brushes and darted into an alley to paint over designs on a wall. "They should be helping instead of messing things up," Jonathan Mora, 12, said of graffiti artists.
Said 11-year-old Mauricio Juarez: "Graffiti looks bad. This is our community, and we need to keep our community clean."
E-mail dlevinthal@dallasnews.com
<< BACK TO LAW FIRM NEWS ARCHIVE