Have you ever seen some graffiti? If not, that’s just weird, it’s everywhere! If yes, some of you might think it’s art but there is a dark side to graffiti too. Here’s my experience with some graffiti. It was just a normal train ride home to New York City from my Aunt’s house in New Jersey. I had been in Brickfair, New Hampshire and boy it was fun, but that is a different story for a different day. Anyway on the train ride back I saw graffiti on the back of a house and I realized graffiti was everywhere. I had seen so much of this before in New York City, in fact just a couple of weeks later I saw graffiti on a parked truck. I felt that graffiti wasn’t going to stop. It was everywhere and it wasn’t going away. MY PERSPECTIVE

IT CAN BE ANYWHERE Graffiti is a crime because it steals someones right to have their property clean. On any object you see there can be some graffiti on it. Well places where it would makes sense to be. For example, graffiti would be art if it didn’t damage someone’s property, like his or her home. In an interview with my dad, Mark Donahue, a Home Depot worker who lives in Long Island, he told me that on his way to work at the Home Depot he sees UPS trucks covered in graffiti. Now that you know where graffiti can be, you need to know who does it and what graffiti can do to people and the environment.

IN PLAIN SIGHT As you can see in the picture on the left, this photo was shot outside of Yankee Stadium and everybody can see it. In the picture on the right, graffiti is in plain sight but no one cares except the people who own the truck.

ON ANY OBJECT You may think that graffiti removal may not hurt anyone or anything but that is not true. Graffiti removal products used by citizens can involve chemicals that can hurt the environment, which is bad if you want to keep the earth healthy and clean. Actually, it is not hard to remove graffiti because of all these chemicals. The way graffiti removal can hurt people is by the chemicals, which cause harm to the people and their physical well-being. Also graffiti removal can cause thousands of dollars. The people who pay for it are the people who’s property have been dameged. Not fun to pay for somebody else.

ON A WALL Now all you need to know is about the bad people who do this dark graffiti and harm the earth. Some people believe the ones who mostly do graffiti are gangs. In the interview with my dad, he said he believes gangs do graffiti. Also in this interview, my dad Mark Donahue said he believes one reason why gangs may do this is to mark their territory so other gangs don’t come walking in. He also said another example of why gangs do this is because they do it out of boredom and they have nothing better to do. Gang graffiti also unwelcomes an area and gives a bad first impression of a place. Some people believe that gang related crimes are most likely associated with graffiti. This means that most crimes that gangs do are graffiti.

THIS WILL NEVER BE ART As you can see, there is a negative side to graffiti. I think that if you see graffiti, clean it up using non-chemical water so you don’t hurt the environment and people around you. Now if you ever see graffiti you know what to do. Clean up graffiti and we can make the world a better place that is graffiti free.