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City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Reverend Al Sharpton, and other community leaders gathered in East Harlem yesterday to paint over a mural (pictured) showing a rat with a noose around its neck and the slogan “Stop Snitching.” The phrase has become something of a mantra in recent years in high-crime neighborhoods, where speaking to the police is seen by some as treason that should be violently punished.
Sharpton said he was wearing his running suit for the first time in 20 years to paint and told reporters, “You cannot have mixed messages, you can’t say stand up if we’re discriminated against, that’s testifying, but if we do it to each other, that’s snitching. Crime is crime is no matter who the criminal, no matter who the victim.” But the mural had been painted on the building by Tats Cru – a group well known for memorializing victims of crime – with the permission of the previous owner. Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union objected to the city’s move to cover it up:
What we have here is an example of straight up censorship. It’s fine for community leaders to rally against this message, but in a society that values free speech, it’s unacceptable to compel anybody to remove a message from their property, simply because civic leaders object, no matter how tasteless that message is.The building’s current owner had been informed that he could let the city paint it over or be fined. Council Speaker Quinn declared, "We are not going to stand for it. Anyplace you go with paint, we will follow you with paint." But local teens seemed unimpressed with the spectacle, according to the Times: “It’s not because it’s not cool to snitch,” said 14-year-old Stephanie Ballesteros. “People are afraid they might get killed, so they stay quiet.”
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with attitudes like these, it's a wonder the black community can't get ahead in life...
I'm gonna have to agree with the ACLU on this one, as ridiculous as I think the whole "no snitching" thing is, it's not their place to tell anyone what they can do with their property like that. If they're trying to send a symbolic message, why don't they paint their own mural?
Damn, my opinion of the Tats Cru just took a nose dive.
This "Tats Cru" sounds ridiculous. Hell of a mixed message they're sending. "We'll memorialize you after you're dead, but don't expect anybody to help solve your murder." And I bet they wouldn't be such defenders of free speech if somebody put a KKK mural in Harlem.
with attitudes like these, it's a wonder the black community can't get ahead in life...
Sharpton said he was wearing his running suit for the first time in 20 years to paint and told reporters, “You cannot have mixed messages"
Running suit? For painting? Mixed messages?
huh?
That 14 yr old they quoted understands the situation a lot better than any of those grownups do. The only people who truly support "Stop Snitching" are criminals; the normal, law-abiding, but impoverished people who have to live with gun-toting criminals controlling their neighborhood are, quite understandably, far too scared, for themselves and their families, to stand up to them.
Thats bullshit virgil.
I live in Harlem and constantly see kids wearing the cliche stop sign shirt with "stop snitching" on it. Many people do unfortunately think its cool to associate themselves with crime. Just like half of the Italians I know think its cool to pretend they have family in the mob when they don't.
On The Wire, bitches get killed for snitchin.
@ dimshine,
There is no such thing as THE black community! There are poor blacks living in the inner city, middle class educated blacks in the suburbs and wealthy blacks living where ever the hell they want. There is no community that all blacks belong to. If some redneck meth-lab operator rapes his sister we don't speak of the white community. I'm black, with friends of every race, and none of the black people I know belong in this community you so glibly speak of. Hell, I've seen a lot of whites that would better fit in there. Yeah, but lump us all together, stereotype...it's so much easier than getting out and seeing Black people as every bit as diverse as anybody else. I'm black and I'd be willing to bet that I've gotten a lot farther ahead in life than you have.
On the other hand, why am I bothering wasting my breath on the Archie Bunkers that seem to spend their lives hovering and trolling here.
ineffectual posturing by stupid media whores-sharpton-quinn, et al. this does nothing for the issue, except burdening it with censorship issues.
I disagree with the NYCLU argument here. Free-speech huh? How about when someone throws up a 20 foot swastika on the side of their home? Free speech right?
One incites hatred, and the other promotes fear. Although removing a mural isn't really going to change anything because this problem is way worse than that.
I am waiting for the ironic moment when someone snitches on Sharpton.
I hope Obama gets elected mainly so 1. Republicans will be so shellshocked a black guy is their lord and master and 2. Black people won't have shit to hide behind no more. No more pity parties. It's time to move on.
Does Sharpton realize "stop snitching" will gentrify Harlem even more? Deep down inside, Sharpton loves gentrification! (As do I.)
well said plk779 & kidicarus is right. kids think it's cool. even in spanish.
Someone had a high opinion of Tats Cru? They are a corporation. It's all about money. They sold out a long time ago. Oops, did I just rat them out?
does that stop snitching rule apply to the blue wall of silence?
@ malebranche99
i could have sworn there are a lot black people in harlem, and i could have sworn that people, when they come together, create a culture, and that a culture, when it's defamed and demoralized by another culture, let's say whites, is not 'ahead.'
shouldn't the blacks in harlem come together to fight crime, snitch on criminals, and maybe clean up their community and purge their culture of undesirables?
Inso far as this mural is a call to violence, lynching of those who testify in a court of law or inform to police, I don't see how it falls under free speech.
wanting to fit in (especially if not fitting in will make you a target of suspicion and violence) and thinking something's truly cool are two very different things. or don't you remember high school?
I have seen people other than those of color wearing such attire, so it is not just a black thing, understand?
But where does the term "Stop Snitchin'" derive? Is it Madison Avenue selling a brand of clothes? If so, there should be an organized march on the retailers. Shut 'em down.
The "Stop Snitchin" fashion craze started, where else, Baltimore. A bunch of drug dealers made a video which they released around the city where they threatened anyone who snitched on their operation. The logo came along w/the video. Somebody decided to put it on a T-shirt, and the rest is history. Its mostly a viral, "grassroots" thing.
(The video btw became notorious b/c Carmelo Anthony, NBA star and West Baltimore native, was in the background of a few scenes. He didn't say anything on the video, and claimed he didn't know what it was for when it was being made.)
And for the record, most people in the "black community" hate this practice and recognize it for what it is, not some sort of cultural defect, but a reign of terror imposed on neighborhoods by violent, drug dealers protecting multi-million $ operations. (See a story a few years back in Baltimore where a middle aged woman "snitched" on drug dealers on her block, only to have her house firebombed. She was killed in the attack).
Learn a bit more about the world before you make blanket statements.
Here's a link to an article in Atlantic Monthly about "snitching" and the reign of violence/terrorism in inner city neighborhoods by drug organizations.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200704/stop-snitching
Thanks for the info, breaknight. If someone is selling product with the logo or brand, it is bigger than grassroots. Find the brand, find the manufacturer and distributor and retailer, find the ad agency, and shut 'em down. Painting the wall (probably commissioned) is hollow.
What's funny (or tragic) is that the same people who didn't snitch this week will be next week's victims. It just goes around and around...
@ dimshine
"shouldn't the blacks in Harlem come together to fight crime, snitch on criminals, and maybe clean up their community and purge their culture of undesirables?"
I couldn't agree with you more. There certainly does exist a culture of self destruction in predominantly black inner cities. I took acception to crime-ravaged inner cities being described as THE black community. They are not. There are many black people from many walks of life who neither identify themselves as being part of a community based solely on color nor view the 'stop snitching' fools as their kin.
I'm in Barcelona now starting a company and I'm black. My brother and sister are attorneys (OK, maybe not such a good thing). My best friend's father is past president of NY's Harvard Club and was head of the NY bar association, black. My cousin is a clinical psychologist in Florida.... The list goes on and on.
The people you point to are not the black community. They're simply poor people, many of them under-educated and some are criminals, who happen to be black. And many of the people living there despise the 'stop snitching' phenomenon as much as we do. Unfortunately the inner city has been hijacked by a criminal element who wouldn't hesitate to kill and people are afraid.
@ babyhitler "Black people won't have shit to hide behind no more." (sic)
Much like you hide behind the anonymity of the internet to spray your sophomoric bile? You're simply an ass. But I suppose your clever moniker says it all.
huh. good point, Sinchy.
Well I think that um... well the thing is... I guess I shouldn't really say what I think.
The free speech argument is absurd with this not-so-concealed threat. Come on, a noose around the neck?
The real question malebranhce is why don't responsible black folks shout down Clowns like Sharpton?