The distinguished legislator from Michigan's 12th District had two
smears of blue paint on his left cheek and a dab on his lower lip.
State Rep. Steve Tobocman, D-Detroit, wore torn khaki shorts and a
white, paint-smeared "Summer in the City" T-shirt. More paint festooned
his hands and arms: blue, beige, a sort of pale purple.
A public servant in the truest sense, he had spent the past few hours
in the hazy August sun Friday with Kathy Stott, 10 mostly suburban
teenagers and an assortment of paint rollers. Stott's own paint-splattered
T-shirt explained the mess and the mission: "Southwest Detroit Graffiti
Free Collaborative."
The anti-graffiti gang's target had been a long wall along Newark near
17th Street, southwest of the old train station. Taggers had sprayed it
with their names and various other unimaginative doodlings.
The art critic in Stott was unimpressed, but the problem goes deeper
than esthetics. As program director of Graffiti Free, she will tell you
that wall-scrawling in a neighborhood or business district "instills crime
and instability."
"Gangs will attack each other over territorial issues," she says.
Painting "Waldo Wuz Here" on the wrong wall can be enough to touch off a
fracas. Eliminate Waldo's words, and maybe you can keep some rival
spelling champions from trying to eliminate Waldo.
Graffiti Free came into existence a decade ago with a grant from New
Detroit, and is now part of the Mexicantown Community Development Corp.
Before it hit the streets (and walls), Tobocman says, "Businesses here
felt demoralized."
There was no sense cleaning up their own flat surfaces when city
property across the street might have been left to taggers and other
miscreants for years. At one point, Stott counted 144 graffiti-impaired
buildings in a 2-mile strip.
Blight led to image problems, Tobocman says, that led to a lack of
development that led to just about every other economic minus-sign
imaginable.
There's no way to tell how much Graffiti Free has to do with the new
order on West Vernor Highway, but the area is one of the leading success
stories in the city, with storefronts reopened and small businesses
thriving.
Armed with donated paint and enthusiastic volunteers -- Friday's came
mostly from Oakland County high schools -- Stott aims for a 24-hour
response to what she calls "incidents." Graffiti Free also provides paint
at no charge to property owners who want to do their own clean-up.
Businesses in the area know her number, (313) 967-9898, and she's eager
to share tips with anyone else inclined to fight Krylon with house paint.
No. 1, she says, "We would never paint over the nice brick." That gets
scrubbed. Second, "We want to match the color so it blends with the
landscape." Third, "Paint it out right away. If you get hit again, paint
it out again."
Vandals, she has found, get discouraged more quickly than volunteers.
The teens who helped Friday went from Newark Street to a barbecue at Clark
Park. No one grills burgers for taggers, and a few paint smears weren't
going to intrude on a good time.
Tobocman, 35, tries to spend every Friday with a nonprofit agency in
his district. Rubbing at the paint on his forearms, he says Graffiti Free
has brought "a restoration of community pride."
It has also redecorated a state representative, and how many groups can
say that?