When an anonymous reader sent a text message to the office, requesting that attention be brought to the issue of vandalism, which is becoming a problem once more, I was happy to oblige for several reasons.
The first reason is that it is always nice to be recognized, so when a reader takes the time to send a message with some encouraging words, and to advocate for a topic, my grateful and attention starved heart is always glad to oblige.
The second, and more important one, is that the concerned reader has a fair point, and their preferred topic to be discussed, which is vandalism, is something that deserves our attention as it is one of those little things that aren’t so blatantly evil but at the same time, is a seemingly minor annoyance that still has the potential to drag a town or city down if it is ignored and not addressed by the public officials and the public themselves.
Until it happens to us or any of our property, vandalism and its effects are often easy to ignore, mainly because it rarely affects us directly. I know this for a fact because despite being a naturally observant person due to the nature of my work, which involves commenting on the things that happen around us, I have rarely discussed vandalism and yet, if you come to think of it, it is everywhere.
Just a few meters from where I spend time in an office is what used to be one of the whitest walls in Bacolod City, which has impressively survived the attacks of vandals for a few years. However, over the past few months, it seems that its owners have lost the fight and now it is at one with the other vandalized walls in the city. I pass by that wall almost every weekday, and at the beginning, noticed how it held up and then saw how it was finally overwhelmed, but never thought to write about it.
That little anecdote demonstrates how vandalism has become so normalized among most of us. We see it, we know it is wrong and ugly, but most of us can simply afford to shrug it off because it isn’t our wall anyway.
Vandalism is not only wrong and ugly, it is also a crime, punishable by imprisonment and a fine according to the Anti-Vandalism Act of 2009. Despite that, it is apparently not among the list of priorities of most cops and barangay officials, based on how much of it we see everywhere.
In the case of that big white wall that somehow remained graffiti-free for a couple of years, it was obvious that most, if not all of the effort to keep it clean came from the owners, and not from public officials. When it was newly painted a couple of years ago, it was like a shining beacon for vandals and I never expected it to remain pristine for long. However, it managed to stay graffiti free because the first few attempts were quickly spot-painted over. It seemed like the tenacity of the owner earned the vandals’ respect, so they somehow stayed away from it after a few attempts.
However, after some time, probably after the leftover paint that was used as the last line of defense ran out, some graffiti was able to get through, and as soon as the vandals saw that their crap wasn’t being painted over anymore, that wall eventually became a target and was quickly overwhelmed by ugly gang signs and all sorts of graffiti. The owner tried their best, but without any help from the government and the neighborhood, there wasn’t really much they could do once the vandals started ganging up on their wall.
Some might think that our country already has enough problems, so we can forgive our public officials for taking vandalism for granted, even if it is illegal.
But if you come to think of it, that kind of logic could be why we have so many problems.
If we cannot even take care of the simpler issues, in this case, vandalism, then how are we to expect government to handle the bigger ones? Perhaps if our public officials and the authorities can shift their focus to the basics, and wage a more reasonable and nonviolent war against vandalism rather than a murderous war against drugs, it is possible that we could end up with a better society.
In the end, if we can’t fix society by going after vandalism, at the very least, we won’t have so many ugly walls.*
