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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