Fnnch’s “cute art” is not the innocent beautification of the urban landscape; its autonomy as art-for-art’s-sake is illusory and deceptive. It’s all a public relations smokescreen disguising dispossession, displacement, and destruction that benefits investors, developers, and other capitalists (AKA YIMBYs, the State’s BFFs).
Artwashing is a direct product of the complicity of people like fnnch and his fans[/stans] in the weaponization of art by real estate interests. They do this to increase property values, which forces out low-income renters of color, many of them trans or queer. We have seen it in Boyle Heights in LA; we have seen it across Manhattan, NY; we have seen it around the world, displacing tenants and houseless people with skyrocketing rents and evictions, while delivering prime real estate to developers. We see it now in the beady gaze of each Honey Bear peering out the window of a techie’s flipped TIC, each koi fish spray-painted on a sidewalks in front of hostile architecture, each mural decorating privately-owned, gated parklets built on “public” stolen Ramaytush Ohlone land.
Gay Shame says enough. Off with their heads!
GAY SHAME is a virus in the system. We are committed to a trans/queer extravaganza that brings direct action to spectacular levels of confrontation. We work collectively outside boring and deceptive non-profit models to fight white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, cops, settler-colonialism and all forms of domination. Liberals think we are frivolous decorations and mainstream gays want us gone. Against them and with each other we instigate, irritate, and agitate to build cultures of devastating resistance.