The City still doesn't get it, or at least the police and the Daily News still fail to understand, making the second Union Square box incident this month look like it was as worthy as the first.
Ani Weinstein was arrested yesterday while taping a number of black boxes, labelled "FEAR ART," to the walls of Union Square station. She was booked with essentially the same charges made against Clinton Boisvert December 11 when he was arrested for taping boxes, labelled "FEAR," in the same subway station.
The Daily News headline read, "Another art hoax in Union Sq. subway," called Weinstein a " copycat prankster" and referred to each of the installations as a "stunt," but the news article at least allows that "investigators believe Weinstein acted to show solidarity with the art student [Boisvert]."
Boisvert told us that our fears are not being addressed rationally; Weinstein showed us that some of us still can't understand this, which more than confirms the original message and its imperative, and why it will have to be repeated again.
comment I'm having trouble understanding this (I mean the original Boisvert story). The newspeople on WNYC were talking as though the artwork could be mistaken for an act of terrorism, which made no sense. So what was so threatening about it? Afterall, there are still signs all over the place acknowledging a general fear ("United we stand", "We won't let them take away our X" etc) & people with those signs don't get arrested. Maybe fear of terrorism is something the corporate media/government wants to generate & use for its own ends, to tell people how brave & good they are to follow orders & suppress questions. They need to keep the fear, its causes & the responses to it, unambiguous. Does that make sense?
My partner, Barry, just read your excellent comment and responded, as I do, in absolute agreement: "Remember, Terror is a monopoly of the state, and don't forget it!" He added, "That's why they're so upset about September 11."