Stickers obscuring a road sign in New York City (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Street art is everywhere in New York City, and it comes in all shapes and sizes. For those of you that are new to Turbulent London, I am especially interested in stickers, particularly those with political subject matter. So on a recent trip to New York City, I took my camera and my habit of photographing random bits of street furniture to see what protest stickers I could find on the streets of the city that never sleeps. This is the second time I have visited NYC since I started photographing protest stickers, and the first time I struggled to find many. This time however, I found so many stickers that I have decided to do two blog posts, hence the slightly awkward title (the first post, published last week, is here). In the last post, I looked at the different kinds of issues which protest stickers address, the different types of stickers you can find, and some of the most common themes in the stickers I found. This post is far less organised I’m afraid, its just everything else that I wanted to include!
Some American industries. including the building trade, still have very strong unions. Builders in New York tend to plaster their hard hats with stickers, so that they become a walking representation of their unions and the causes that they consider to be important (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Last week I talked about some of the most common themes that came up in protest stickers, police brutality and the upcoming Presidential election. Animal rights was another common theme; this sticker contains the web addresses of meatvideo.com, which shows abuse at factory farms, and In Defense of Animals, a group which campaigns for animal rights, welfare and habitat (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker also references meatvideo.com, but it is not quite as well made as the last one. I remember seeing this sticker design when I was here in 2015, so there’s a chance this particular sticker has been there quite a while (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker criticises people who wear fur. The picture is unclear because the sticker has been wrinkled by rain, but the message is still pretty clear thanks to the huge red writing (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Feminism was a less common theme, but it did crop up now and again (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
I found this sticker on some scaffolding right outside our hotel when we first arrived- I took it as a good omen for the trip! (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
The East Village is one of the ‘coolest’ neighbourhoods on Manhattan, and some stickers are local to this area. The Shadow claims to be New York’s only underground newspaper, and is published from the lower East Side. It was started in 1989, after local people were disillusioned by the mainstream media’s coverage of the Tompkins Square Park riot in 1988. I featured one of The Shadow‘s stickers last time, but didn’t know the story behind it until this trip (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker was produced by the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, which is located in a squat on Avenue C. The Museum is volunteer-run, and focuses on grassroots campaigns to keep communal spaces in the city out of corporate hands (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
The clenched, raised fist is a common symbol of dissent (Photo: Hannah Awcock).This sticker has been partially obscured, but it reads “We stand with Texas Women, and we won’t sit down!” It was produced by Ultraviolet, a group that campaigns for women’s rights. This particular campaign is about preventing attempts to restrict access to abortions in Texas (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
Being a millennial myself I find this a little harsh, but everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess! (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
The SEIU is the Services Employees International Union, and 32BJ is the local New York branch. It represents cleaners, security guards, and others whose work involves the maintenance and servicing of buildings (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
New York City has rents comparable to London, and it must be difficult for small businesses to survive. Save NYC is a campaign to “preserve the diversity and uniqueness” of New York. This was in the window of a dry cleaners in the East Village (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
This sticker has adapted the design of the one dollar bill to call for the legalisation of cannabis (Photo: Hannah Awcock).This stickers celebrates the actions of Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who leaked information from the National Security Agency in 2013 which sparked intensive debate about the balance of individual privacy and national security. PeaceSupplies.org sells stickers, shirts and patches related to various campaigns (Photo: Hannah Awcock).This sticker promotes Save Stonewall, a campaign to create a national park to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, which took place in Greenwich Village in 1969 (Photo: Hannah Awcock).Parent Team is a group which supports parents of children dealing with drug or alcohol addiction. Here they are calling for free childcare for all, which doesn’t quite match up with their main purpose, but is an admirable goal none the less (Photo: Hannah Awcock).This is a sticker produced by the street artist and anti-war activist Jef Campion (a.k.a. Army of One/JC2). He used his art to emphasise the ill effects of war. He passed away in 2014, but his memory lives on in his street art (Photo: Hannah Awcock).This photo illustrates how the location of a sticker can influence or reinforce its meaning. This sticker was placed on the stop sign at a pedestrian crossing, emphasising its anti-gentrification message (Photo: Hannah Awcock).The International Museum for Activist Art is a website which displays art that aims to raise awareness of the issues facing society, and I would definitely recommend having a browse through it (Photo: Hannah Awcock).I found this in Washington Square Park on my last day in New York. It uses the story of Goldilocks to call for the preservation of our planet. Earth is ‘just right’ for human habitation, a rare attribute that we shouldn’t take for granted (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
University Teacher in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh. Interested in the cultural, historical, and political geographies of resistance.
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