Open Letter to the Keith Haring Graffiti Artist

Never a toy in my heart

WINKS

Dear Graffiti Artist,

I write to you on behalf of the graffiti artists I know—they say “Keep going.” Whether or not you’ve practiced “traditional” graffiti; you have blackbooks, scribes, greasers, and mops; or follow agendas, line weights, middle lines, “flow” balances, or Keith’s own specifics, lifestyles, and scenes—keep going.

Our politics are interpreted by our daily environments, manifested in the streets, skylines, lamp posts, tunnels, benches, and encampments we pass by without a second thought. The deliberate engineering behind our infrastructure only reveals itself after constant, mundane observation: the “riot-proof” width of Dinkytown’s streets, the quiet segregations and creeds of our neighborhoods, the anti-unhoused architecture, and the University’s own slow and unnoticed property grabs—all snaking across stolen land and through the hearts of our local communities.

Graffiti is a singular tool that takes our infrastructure, our streets, and makes them speak for us—not parasitic housing developers, city planners, boards of regents, or the other genocide-complicit forces which surround us daily (MPD, corporations, trash incinerators, surveillance systems, Tesla owners)—but for us. I cannot think of a better function of public speech than to fill the lives of passersby—even for a second—with such love and play, whimsy and ease. That is what you have done—I believe most everyone on campus would agree.

And the property-damage-decriers? Grow up, live a little. At the very least, graffiti artists create jobs, keep rent low, and “beautify” our neighborhoods. Would you, dear reader, want to live in a uniformly grey and uninteresting city, or rather one where every corner is literally dripping with love, talent, character, and intrigue? 

Graffiti has always been a product of expression, ownership, and creativity—opening minds to the possibilities of a cityscape being an artscape: an endless canvas, encouraging all to cultivate their own aspired lives within its many frames.

Were those painting the Berlin Wall wrong? How about Haring himself? Basquiat? Residents of Pompeii? Our cave-dwelling ancestors? The Stop Cop City forest defenders?

Now, in the age of Tesla Takedowns, “violence” to property (not people), and domestic terror charges for “felony vandalism,” graffiti has come to mean so much more: it is a symbolic attack directly against those arrogant enough to think we’ll roll over and comply—that we won’t put ourselves on the line for our cities.

Wear the “vandal” badge with pride. And keep going… Just don’t get caught.