Pro-Palestine Subway Art Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Mar 4 2024

Location: 

New York City

"Late last night, an autonomous group of activists placed posters throughout the subway system, blocking out advertisements with their own materials protesting Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza.

One group of about a dozen gathered deep in the Bronx, obscuring their faces with N95s and hoodies. One person wore sunglasses even in the dead of night. Lookouts peered around for cops and for cars with digital ads. Finally, they boarded a 4 train car, and when the doors closed, they sprang into action, pulling ratchets and screwdrivers out of tote bags and hastily undoing the metal and plastic cages that housed the advertisements.

Over lottery ads, they shoved images of devastated city blocks in Gaza and warnings to riders that their taxes were funding genocide. Tinder ads with couples in neon clothing were replaced by black posters with the words of a grieving Gazan mother and the text from a Facebook post by Aaron Bushnell, the United States airman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. last week."

External sources: 

https://hellgatenyc.com/artists-replaced-mta-ads-with-pro-palestine-posters
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4OdFJOOxWl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Posted by yulani.r on Mar 12 2024

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.
To make more people, specifically New Yorkers, aware of how their tax dollars are being spent to fund a genocide abroad.
This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
To rally people into standing up to the US and Israeli government, demand a ceasefire, and a safe return for Palestinians to their homeland.

Notes

It's unclear of how many people were moved by these images however the protest goal of amplifying the issue is clearly effective. The only question is to what extent was it effective.