Euclid Avenue is the main artery that feeds residents from the Westcott and University Neighborhoods to the Syracuse University campus. Traveling by foot, bike or car on a daily basis, literally thousands of students and faculty and residents from varying generations, cultures and life experiences mix and mingle on this vibrant street. Euclid is normally alive with music and art, but today it was marked by hatred and intolerance, a product of the divisive rhetoric that one of our current presidential candidates has fostered.

This morning, I learned that a public art project I had funded in partnership with the Syracuse University Student Association, had been defaced in an unacceptable way.

As a resident of Euclid Ave and as an investor in rental properties in the University Neighborhood, I worked with students and the city of Syracuse to bring public-use, decorative trash receptacles to Euclid Avenue. This project was widely supported by Neighborhood Associations and Community Organizations as well as dozens of area residents. The premise was to relieve this major pedestrian thoroughfare of litter and also offer something aesthetically appealing, giving a positive, tangible impact to the University Neighborhood.

Unfortunately, this morning it was discovered that someone or some group chose to use one of these receptacles as a political platform to spread hate. One of these artistic and colorful trash receptacles had been spray painted over night with a swastika and the message “Trump 2016.”

It is not uncommon to see graffiti tags or impromptu artistic expressions on signs and other objects along Euclid Ave, but in my thirty years of living and working in this neighborhood, I have never seen anything celebrating Nazism nor supporting a politician who seeks to divide ethnic and racial groups.

While some may find such an offense minor and discount it as an immature act, I take it very seriously. My neighborhood is filled with people from countries where genocide is real and ongoing, as well as Jewish neighbors who are all too aware of what it means for swastikas to appear in the dark of night.

For these people, for any people with a knowledge of history, there is no question of what Trump represents, and what his dog whistle messages mean. For myself, and my neighbors on Euclid ave, the literal and figurative “hand writing is on the wall” and we will not turn a blind eye to it.

Ben Tupper
Syracuse, New York 

Published on June 18, 2016 at 11:36 pm