Object Lesson #18

New Haven's most famous graffito of all time:

"HELP! Bang! Bang! New Haven's Children Cry."

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/nyregion/new-haven-has-an-attitude-a-new-one.html&quot; rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/nyregion/new-haven-has-an-attitude-a-new-one.html&lt;/a&gt;

Oh! Kobasa such poetry such fine analysis, come live in the hood with the brothers and help them, nurture them, support them, teach them, and love them; abandon you poetry for reality, abandon your fiction for truth, abandon your self for others, abandon your comfort for our life abandon Westville for Newhallville.

PS Don't preach from your "safe house", join the living of New Haven, we fight for our pride, dignity, respect but we ask just once give it to us don't write about us we know who we are and who you are, come cross the divide to our side of town , just at least drive through, shop in our hoods see our lives, meet your fellow New Haveners.

<a href="http://seeclickfix.com/issues/5585&quot; rel="nofollow">http://seeclickfix.com/issues/5585&lt;/a&gt; -
to see a collection of the skulls around New Haven.

I like the skulls too and the artist has been kind enough to keep them off of private property.

Unfortunately because of the other scribble that shows up all over our district we do have to have someone that removes the scribble so sadly in the interest of being neutral the skulls will go too the next time there is graffiti cleaning on the overpass.

Ben,

Maybe now you realize how ignorant your campaign is. You get to decide which graffiti is worthy of praise, and which is scribble?

The "broken window" theory is completely unsubstantiated. Give me a clean city where there is still a vast disparity of wealth, and I guarantee there will still be crime.

I wonder how many resources that seeclickfix has taken out of dixwell and newhallville? squeeky wheel gets that grease

bunch of rich people demanding and getting more services to the cost if peeps in da' hood.

The broken window theory actually makes a lot of sense. I regularly walk through New Haven and come across areas that are littered with glass and trash. For aesthetic reasons, these are streets that I won't choose to walk on again -- and many of my neighbors feel the exact same way. The result? No eyes on the street there, more crime, more disinvestment. People choose to spend time in areas that look nice - even from one side of a street to the other can be a big difference!

Clean up the city, remove trash, plant trees, stop the noisy speeding traffic plaguing most of our neighborhoods, improve the quality of life. A bad environment causes massive stress, especially on mothers and children, and is one of the principle underlying causes of all other social problems, and there are plenty of studies to prove it.

Seeclickfix is a great way to empower citizens to report issues in the 'hood. Maybe one of the foundations in town would work with "Dixwell Livin" and the City Government on a plan for encouraging communities to use it more widely. You know that you can also call or text message issues into Seeclickfix, right?

The government wants us to report neighborhood problems there because it makes government services more efficient, but it takes all of us to help get the word out and find ways for people to participate... especially the people who have been marginalized by poor government services for so many years. Maybe the city could hire high school students for $8/hour to roam neighborhoods and document concerns?

Anon,

Good point. Of course blighted city streets are where crimes happen. I think that is why they get neglected in the first place. (We can argue all day about which came first, the chicken or the egg).

My point is that the nice neighborhoods, no matter how nice, will still be the victims of crime when they are surrounded by poorer neighborhoods. Just look at East Rock to see an example of this.

To think that you can magically solve the effects of poverty by planting trees and buffing graffiti is just plain ignorant and naive. Crime is not going away in New Haven while there is such a gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' How do you plan to solve that?

I'm sorry to say that seeclickfix is a bandaid solution to our deeper economic problems on an international scale. As long as workers are exploited and the affluent are able to profit from the hard work of others, there will be crime.

So to come full circle, doesn't graffiti now seem like one of the only positive outlets for youths in these afflicted neighborhoods to express themselves and to feel like they are being recognized, when everyone else has turned their backs on them?

Graffiti saved my life.