In an act of symbolic sedition, a group known as the Hilltop Action Committee has declared war on Tacoma’s condominium development community. Don’t worry, it’s just a spray-paint war, and no one seems to have noticed.



The “war” with developers was declared in a recent post in a blog hosted by the Guerilla News Network — a cyber hub for radicals and political activists. The poster was an affiliate or member of the Hilltop group calling him or herself Shiftshaper (which is probably the best Internet alias in the world).



Shiftshaper does not mince words. The Hilltop Action Committee, not to be confused with neighborhood-based Hilltop Action Coalition, doesn’t like condos, and has no qualms about spray-painting cute little designs on the sides of them in protest. They have marked several already, according to the post. The aerosol-propelled protests will continue, says Shiftshaper, to let “soulless, greedy businessmen” know they aren’t welcome in the city’s oft-troubled neighborhood.  Tacoma Police officers at Tacoma’s Hilltop substation had no knowledge of the declaration, but said they would “look into it.” Shiftshaper also suggests on the Guerilla News Network what they will find, and why, thusly:



“Over the past few days, several condos in plain sight of the Hilltop community have been paint-bombed. One of the targets was a model condo that every prospective buyer must enter. This was done so that every potential buyer of said condos (priced at over $200,000) knows that they are not welcome in our neighborhood. Hilltop Action Committee finds condos and ‘development’ in general to be a direct act of warfare against the population of Hilltop. Condos are soulless, lifeless bricks of s**t dropped by soulless, greedy businessmen. They feel no pity in doing whatever it takes to push through their plans. In the place of real culture and community, they wish to replicate the disgusting capitalist monoculture which is eating up neighborhood after neighborhood, city after city, forest after forest.”



Disgruntled Tacomans such as Shiftshaper aren’t the first to use graffiti to make political statements. Complex and thoughtful graffiti has long been used as a tool by people who feel disenfranchised by dominant cultures — the words of the prophets written on subway walls and tenement halls, as Simon and Garfunkle put it. Street scholar Daniel Oliver Tucker suggests that people like Shiftshaper use graffiti and other less-than-conventional means of communication because traditional formats such as television and print won’t give them, or their messages, any attention. In this case, the Hilltop Action Committee claims that the Tacoma Police Department began driving people from their homes in the early 1980s in preparation for development. Police officials call the claim absurd.



Committee members say the graffiti assault is an attempt to forestall further abuse of Hilltop residents.



“The Hilltop Action Committee pledges to clean up Hilltop and ensure that, no matter what they try and re-name it, our neighborhood will remain ours and not theirs,” says Shiftshaper.

Let’s mince words

Graffiti derives from an Italian word meaning “scratching” or “scribbling,” and was coined in ancient Rome.  The most widely-mentioned instance of early graffiti is a caricature of Jesus, in which the dying God is tied to a cross with his feet resting on a platform. In this particular rendition, Jesus has the head of a donkey. Next to him is a Christian with arms raised in adoration, with the statement “Alexamenos worships his god.” That’s true. Look it up.

These days, most people equate graffiti with the “tagging” phenomenon, which is largely carried out by suburban white kids, suggests scholar Daniel Oliver Tucker. A Tacoma police officer, who asked not to be named, suggested that Tacoma is light on gang-affiliated tagging.

“Most of the tagging that goes on here is done by skateboarders,” he says.