New Yorkers unite, ‘wipe out’ Nazi graffiti in subway
Nazi graffiti of swastikas in a New York subway were literally wiped out after passengers banded together in a randomly united effort, armed only with hand sanitizers, tissues and their “stubborn” New York spirit.
The incident was witnessed and photographed over the weekend by Manhattan lawyer Gregory Locke, an associate at the law firm Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP. He wrote about it, and then posted it publicly on his Facebook account.
The post soon after went viral, garnering over 700,000 likes and almost 500,000 shares on Facebook alone, as of this writing.
In an interview with BuzzFeed, the 27-year-old lawyer noted that while he had previously seen swastikas and Nazi grafitti occasionally, even before US President Trump’s win, he said the incident marked the first time that he saw an entire train cabin covered by such racist symbols and words.
Locke’s post got mixed reactions. A few Trump supporters criticized the post for supposedly being the typical liberal overreaction, blaming the graffiti and racism in general on Trump.
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
Still, the majority of commenters praised the action of the train passengers as inspiring and as something that fostered solidarity amid diversity.
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
Image: Screen grab from Gregory Locke’s February 5, 2017 Facebook post comments
As for Locke, he considers what he has witnessed as a shining example of the New York spirit. In the interview, Locke said that the action of his fellow passengers proved how New Yorkers “have a strong sense of community, [knowing] diversity isn’t a threat to the country.”
“People think of New Yorkers as cold and uncaring, but that’s not true,” Locke said. “We just have a harder shell to crack.” Jen Balboa
