Post Punk Kitchen Forum

lol. sweet troll. This exact comment perfectly illustrates the narrow-mindedness of the people that did this.

Yo, you aren't helping animals.

LEAVE. GRIMACE. ALONE!!!

Ha ha ha!

Mat.

A little flippant perhaps, but hardly trolling. Putting the AR/veg issue to one side for a moment, it's a painting extolling the virtues of a business that represents everything wrong with modern corporate behaviour in terms of workers' rights and environmental destruction; not a great loss.

If, for the sake of argument, a playground built using McDonalds money had been vandalised that would be different, but at the end of the day it's just a bunch of paint on a wall.

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So it would be bad if someone destroyed someone's property, but vandalizing someone's art...that's okay?

...

Well destroying property is the same weather it is the playground, the building, the artwork on the building etc. Except in this case, I think it is in worse TASTE to deface the artwork rather than the business itself. I don't condone the destruction of any kind of property, but messing around with someones artwork is really shitty, no matter who it belongs to, or what the content is.

Perhaps a live instillation in FRONT of the mural for a period of time would be better. Do some kind of a protest where you have people doing something outside of a business that they protest, for a short period of time. This way, you get your attention, get your point across (if done in a constructive way), and most importantly, express your opinion within your rights of free speech as a citizen WITHOUT DESTROYING PROPERTY. At the end of the day, you walk away and everything is as it was before, expect perhaps the mindset of some of the patrons of the business. As much as I dislike a lot of what PETA does, they do this often, they are successful, and I do like this approach. One of the things I do like about them

I think that would be more effective than destroying something. Also, it would be legal. Some laws exist for a reason. Destruction of property, even if it is someone you don’t LIKE is terrible. How would you like it if someone went to your favorite vegan restaurant and painted bacon all over the walls? Or your house?

Guerilla activism does not do any good. It just peas people off, it does not get them thinking about the issues. Use your brain, be constructive. Get positive attention, not negative reactions.

^^ this plus a million.

I dunno. Sometimes I think destruction of property is pretty cool? Not legal, but cool.

Like, if some people broke into a mink farm and destroyed the instruments of torture, I'd be like, "Right on, right on." I wouldn't do it, but only because I'm a huge pussy.

Which should not be construed as a defense of this particular act of vandalism--I think it's pretty dumb. But that's mostly because it's hard to understand this as anything beyond less-than-competent messaging. It's not like the McDonalds Corporation is going to be like, "Oh no, how will we sell hams-burger now?!?"

I have opinions.

Seconded. :) Including the part about being a wuss.

Easy there Mumbles! The FBI might come after you! Or do they only worry about us whacky "libtards"?

This, 100 percent. I hate the idea that anything illegal is bad. Many highly effective civil rights, anti-war, queer liberation, animal liberation and other social justice actions are illegal. I think it's pretty ignorant to say that all guerrilla activism is ineffective. There are cases, similar to mumbles hypothetical mink farm scenario, in which animals are liberated or tools used to torture them are destroyed. Also, for me, when I see someone get arrested or risk getting arrested for something like, say, a banner drop, I might look into their cause a little bit. If it's important enough for them to risk their liberty, it might be worth a few minutes of my attention.
I actually like graffiti with a political message, but this is sort of meh to me. Like mumbles said, poor messaging. I know this is a matter of personal aesthetics, but I do think the original mural is all sorts of hideous. And I know it has a charming story linked to it, but it is, essentially an ad (for an epically evil corporation.) I sort of suspect that people would not be so upset if an ad on their corner bus shelter was defaced. Guess what? People who worked on that campaign probably also went to art school and are using the skills they learned there to create ads. So I guess my point is, I don't think this was a case of great activism or bravery, but I'm not going to condemn it.

Mumbles is on point as always. Property destruction, like lots of things, is not always unethical. In this instance though, it's just stupid. What was gained here exactly? Beloved artist aside, no one's going to look at the word "vegan" painted on top of a mural of McDonald's characters and think much positive about it with the possible exception of existing AR people.

I really don't think you can compare this mural to a bus shelter printout. That can be easily recreated although I wouldn't support that vandalism either. Also, it is less of an ad because it is next to a McDonald's? I mean not that it would be excused if it was elsewhere. I've let my view be known that I think it is a crappy thing to do but hey not everyone agrees on everything. And really, like vegimator said, the only ones that would look at this positively are probably AR people. Others would look at it as those 'bad vegans' which is one of the reasons it took me years to even think about vegetarianism because I thought AR vegetarian types were crazy and this reinforces that.

Mumbles, I'm pretty sure the plural of hamburger is "hamburgers."

Maybe you were thinking of "franks furter"?

I think that part of the problem is that doing stupid things like painting over someone else's art is easy. Actually working in a community to change how people see their food and animals? That's forking hard.

Oh, man! That's embarrassing! I was thinking of hams burglar.

Been there!

Ok, I'll admit that you have a point - bus station add =poor example. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can't get too worked up over the destruction of a McDonald's ad, even if it has a charming back story. Even if I agree that this is vandalism that fails to effectively make a point.

And it does irritate me when people say that all guerrilla or illegal protests are ineffective, because that ignores the history of pretty much every progressive social justice movement ever.

Well, you don't live there and the mural means nothing to you, so of course you're not going to get worked up. The OP obviously cares more about this issue, being from there and understanding why people love the mural so much.

Eh, having worked for a big name corporation for years this is what I think.


I think the mural was much loved by the public for good reason. A local citizen painted it. He had a really good uplifting life story.

I think big name corporation hated the mural because it was done without their permission. Perhaps they gave the ok originally because they were going to paint over the the wall soon anyway. But the local newspaper did a front page story because news was slow that week. Now the public loves the mural and the painter. Big name corporation does not ever like the mural. This mural gives big names merchandizing characters a real character that big name does not want them to have. Big name likes it's stores to be all the same, that is how they make their money. Also, upkeep on a mural like that is not cheap, comes out of somebody's budget. Eventually somebody figures out if mural was gone they would save so much money. Somebody in that line gets somebody to deface mural. Big corporation paints over mural and gets more news coverage.

Some call me paranoid. I just call it thinking things through.

It looked creepy to me. Still a nasty move by somebody.


ETA: Just did a quick Google to read up on this more and found this article.
http://articles.hbindependent.com/2012- ... quor-store

I think it was dumb to deface the mural and I still consider myself radical.

No, either your for every single act of vandalism that ever happened or you're, like, a TOTAL square.

What kind of a vegan just spells out the word in giant letters near a depiction of McDonald's characters? That doesn't even come close to sending a provocative message. Seems like vegans stick with vandalism that is either clever (e.g. plays on phrases or "eating meat" stickers on stop signs) or go with a simple "meat is murder". I say we've been framed.