They say a picture is worth a thousand words. At twenty-five frames per
second, Mark Ecko’s recent two-minute clip of him spray painting a
graffiti tag onto the side of a US Air Force presidential transport Boeing
747-200B is worth over 3,000 words every time it's viewed. And the maxim
stands true if you count the amount of column centimetres dedicated to his
stunt on internet sites and newspapers around the world.

Ecko claimed to have tagged the engine cowling of the 747 as a protest
over the erosion of free speech in the USA. A noble sentiment; it may be
over 20 years since the case of Michael Stewart (a young, black graffiti
artist who was strangled to death while in the custody of eleven white
transit police who had arrested him for writing graffiti on a subway wall
in New York City), but real curbs on urban art are coming back.

In Joe Austin’s book Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban
Crisis in New York City, he chronicles the draconian measures Mayor Ed
Koch brought in to curb the spread of graffiti in the 1980s. After the
Stewart incident, during which the coroner ‘lost’ the inquest evidence,
most states repealed laws. Ecko, however, pointed out that regulations are
coming back. In New York now it is illegal to buy a marker pen until
you’re 21 years of age and carrying a can of aerosol can be reason to be
stopped and searched in many US cities, Ecko says in his video explanation
of his acts.

But Ecko is no revolutionary. Far from it, in fact. Ecko is the
multimillionaire owner of Eckō Ultd clothing range and Complex urban
lifestyle magazine. He has just launched his début video game, Getting-Up:
Contents Under Pressure, in which the characters score points by spraying
name tags on well-guarded public buildings. No surprise, then, that a day
after the video appeared, Ecko put a disclaimer on his site admitting it
was a fake.

However, if the images of a five-dollar can of paint putting a pimple on
this Goliath made you feel warm and fuzzy inside, get active. Take Mark's
advise and "think first, act second" so be careful, be strategic and don't
get shot or thrown into jail for years. Here are some suggestions:
http://www.ibiblio.org/netchange/cco/orgaction.html


> First, I don't believe this is real. But let's suppose it were.
>
> It strikes me as pretty insane.
>
> Did this do anything to organize people to resist or to take control of
their lives?
> Did it do anything to educate people?
> Is it going to convince people who aren't already supportive to be so?
Did it prevent, slow down, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with any
state crimes?
> Did it even get press?
>
> The answer is obviously "no" to all these. Which means that at best it
is in the category of the most symbolic of cd.
>
> But symbolic cd that, had people been noticed (and had it happened) they
would likely have been shot. Or at the very least charged with serious
felonies. (Plowshares activists, in much less tense times, working in a
less threatening manner, have been given a decade in prison for such
symbolic actions at airbases, and that didn't
> involve the president.)
>
> So a couple activists would have been taken out of circulation for
years, or dead, so as to carry out a stunt with no political point.
>
> Here's a radical political thought: think first, act second.
>
> Sorry to be cranky, but if I were a cop assigned to disrupt movement
groups, I'd be out trying to convince everyone to do stuff like this.
>
> Yours,
> Mark
> On Sep 5, 2006, at 3:12 PM, ˇEnough is Enough! Project / Proyecto ˇYa
Basta! wrote:
>
>> For a two minute video from a group that entered Andrews Air Force Base at
>> night and tagged Air Force One, visit:
>> http://geocities.com/zapatistablock/
>>
>>
>>