At the 50th Street subway stop in Manhattan, a Pam Geller advertisement is plastered with a "caution" sticker. It reads: "This is War Propaganda. You’re the Target"
January 8, 2013
The latest installment of anti-Muslim advertisements put out by Pamela Geller have gone up in New York City subway stations. But they have quickly received a makeover, just as the last batch did.
Activists plastered stickers over the ads that read: "This is War Propaganda, and You’re the Target."
A shot of a sticker at the 23rd street station in Manhattan
Another source reports that when activists were having trouble reaching the ads above the subway platform, a tall woman waiting for the train put it up for them. The activists told her it was illegal but she didn't care--she had seen the advertisement and was offended.
Here's another photo:
At the 50th Street subway stop in Manhattan, another one of Pam Geller's ad is plastered with a "warning" sticker. It reads: "This is War Propaganda. You’re the Target"
Activists also hit another subway station, on 23rd street:
Another sticker plastered on an anti-Muslim ad, at the 23rd street station"
Here's a statement a source sent over explaining why activists took this action:
This evening, concerned New Yorkers came together to respond to a new set of advertisements placed in many of their city’s subway stations by the notoriously chauvinistic "American Freedom Defense Initiative" (AFDI), headed by the right-wing anti-Muslim activist, Pamela Geller.
The new ads, in which Geller’s organization has reportedly invested about $70,000, feature a photo of the World Trade Center exploding in flames next to a quote from the Qur’an. Concerned New Yorkers engaged these ads by labeling them with stickers that resembled bright caution or warning signs reading, "This is War Propaganda, and You’re the Target".
One participant, who works as a filmmaker, explained, "These ads must be understood as war propaganda that target regular Americans, the public that is exposed to them." He continued, "Yes, the ads are clearly hateful and racist. But the additional thing to realize is that by vilifying and dehumanizing Muslims, they work to conscript people into supporting the U.S. government’s ongoing covert and overt wars, and the related violence and injustices suffered by Muslims here in the United States."
A law student added, "Muslim communities in the United States not only endure the everyday experience of humiliating racism, but are subjected to expansive and illegitimate government surveillance, along with egregiously unjust detentions and prosecutions in U.S. prisons and courts. These new ads work as propaganda to facilitate and support violence against Muslims in the United States and abroad."
Another woman, who is a scholar and an artist, followed, "It’s abominable that these ads exploit the real suffering that fellow New Yorkers bore the day the twin towers burned to continue to incite more violence against more people. Rather than allow New York City’s experience of such suffering to generate empathy for the suffering of other people in other cities facing attacks, whether by U.S. drone strikes or other means, and seek to end such violence, they absurdly conjure Americans as innocent victims who have no choice but to be violent in a violent world."
A human rights researcher concluded, "Over the past eleven years, the U.S. government’s response to the day photographed in these ads has resulted in the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and beyond, along with tens of thousands of Americans. The United States has also threatened the Iranian people with war, and already begun a devastating campaign of sanctions against them that is effectively a war against a people by other means. … As New Yorkers we want to make clear that the particularly vulgar manifestation of vicious racism and militarism in these ads is not welcome in our city. But more broadly, we are committed to ending ongoing U.S. wars, both for the sake of people on the receiving end of American belligerence and bombs, and to secure the possibility of a meaningful democracy and livable future for us all."
Another shot:
Activists also traveled to the West 4th station in Greenwich village:
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