Faster, better…

Over the years I came to believe that the five stages of grief apply not only to someone that has lost a loved one or cherished friend but also to the crime victim. This includes graffiti victims.  The five stages of what to expect after a loss are manifested in different ways perhaps but are essentially the same from tragedy to tragedy.  The major difference in the application of the five stages is in the scale. Not just one person or a family is grief stricken but an entire community is affected by graffiti vandalism. This article is my opinion on how the five stages of grief apply to the victims of graffiti vandalism and how I worked through all five stages.

The five steps are:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

Denial

Not in my neighborhood! Not in my city! This could not be as a big a problem as it looks. This will all get cleaned up and go away. That’s how I felt. But that was not reality. The vandalism remained on most private property, the various jurisdictions were slow to respond or never did. Rather quickly the business owners and residents of the community were way past this stage.

Most amazingly a few jurisdictions decided in public meetings that despite the visual evidence they did not have a graffiti problem! As I recall it took considerable convincing at local political levels to even get an acknowledgment  of the obvious.  Politicians may deny graffiti vandalism is an issue because they have no idea how to deal with it and do not want to cope with the obvious economic cost.

Anger

You’re darned right I was mad! I owned a home for almost 13 years in a victim community. What was a great place to live was suddenly surrounded by vandalism.  As I recall I was acutely sensitive angered by each and every tag or throw up.  I knew where all the vandalism was.

What I did after proceeding through the rest of the steps was to channel my anger into a productive effort directed at local abatement. Every anti-graffiti activist I have met has done the same thing. Anger became positive action whether that was just to pick up the telephone and report it to the police, go to a council meeting,  or join an abatement program to paint out or clean the vandalism.

Bargaining

There is an unfortunate twist to the graffiti vandalism bargaining stage that is way out-of-scale with other crimes.  Normally, bargaining as defined in the five steps is done with God, or perhaps one person, or perhaps an employer. After the anger has set in one tries to make deals that might assuage the anger or the feeling of, “Why me!” Anything to make the hurt go away.

The graffiti-vandalism subculture takes advantage of the bargaining step socially and politically.  But as all the begging and wishing and wailing and praying doesn’t bring back the dead, neither does the twisted truly anti-social rhetoric of the graffiti subculture.

The graffiti vandal wants to bargain with you so that you will in the end make yjeir sub-culture a positive part of your acceptance in step 5.  The vandal knows full well that if he can get your resignation you will leave him or her alone. But as the various five-step definitions will tell you resignation is not acceptance.

At first it seems reasonable to buy into the bargaining.  When you do you are asking for nothing but continued grief.

Some on the political left actually make the bargaining part of their ideology claiming that the vandals are simply oppressed poor with no positive way to express themselves. They ignore the fact that vandals in this criminal sub culture are from all economic and age groups.

Vandals will bargain for safe walls or free walls. They will insist that graffiti is art and try to get you to think likewise.

To get past this step you need to resign yourself to some know facts:

1. Safe walls do not work. Anywhere you have a so-called safe or free wall you will have vandalism spread outweard from the safe wall for thousands of feet if not miles.

2. The difference between graffiti and art is permission.

Depression

The scale of a community-wide, nation-wide, or world-wide depression is demonstrated by the Great Depression of the 1930′s and more recently to the failure of our politicians and regulators to prevent the recent economic catastrophe of 2008. The scurrilous reprehensible and over-powering greed of others (which I now liken to the thrill a vandal gets from graffiti) led to massive worry and feelings of hopelessness. Not even the prospect of a new president in 2008 gives us much hope because we are all sick and tired of the same foolish people that remain in charge of our destiny.

Depression is hopelessness. Unrestrained and unabated vandalism leads to widespread fear and hopelessness in a community causing property values to suffer and people’s interest in the community to decline.

Communities without anti-graffiti activists and political or responsible social leaders that care cannot get past this stage.  Moving out of the depression takes time but it is done with graffiti ordinances, law enforcement, graffiti abatement, and zero tolerance attitudes. There is no bargaining with vandals.

Acceptance

You have to accept the loss but you do not have to bear it quietly. You accept the fact that a vandal has defaced your community but you report the vandalism to law enforcement and abate it – quickly. Your anger is channeled into positive action. You maintain the fondness for your home and your community while not permitting a lawless vandal with a spray paint can or etching tool to take it all away from you.  Depression is not part of your plan! Acceptance has to be community wide and it cannot stop at one border and resume at another. Acceptance spreads outward from responsible citizens and active governments concerned for the welfare of a community. As long as the problem persists there are anti-graffiti activists prepared to fight back.

My own acceptance was channeled into seeing that my city at the time had a graffiti ordinance, that it was applied, that we reported the graffiti to the police, that we abated the graffiti.  I have see it work this way everywhere graffiti is a problem. To combat the insidious effects of random acts of vandalism by the graffiti sub culture you have to accept the fact they are there and challenge and erase their acts of vandalism.

Five Stages of Grief Link at eSSORTMENT.

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