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Florida Deploys Police To Stare At Crosswalks, Stop Them From Being Painted Rainbow Colors
(www.erininthemorning.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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you aren't stating a fact, you're speculating that colorful chalk on the crosswalk could contribute to an accident in some unspecified way. I've asked for what data could support your opinion (by way of observing its absence) and- you'll correct me if i'm wrong here- you've just agreed that in almost the decade since the pulse shooting there have been exactly no incidents that can be traced back to this potentially dangerous political statement that you 100% agree with. do i have this about right?
I assume the original memorial crosswalk had reflective paint used on its markings, if people are just using chalk or regular paint now it would end up reducing the reflective properties of crosswalks which would effect low light visibility. Im not sure if people have been doing this for other crosswalks but if that is the case the person you are responding to does actually have a bit of a point, we are better off just painting walls, steps, or making signs as they originally suggested, considering the state isnt just going to accept and standardize rainbow crosswalks under this administration. That also removes the hiding of motivation for the police from this being a safety act to being purely bigoted which is important. Don't allow the fascists some reasonable cover to do what they do, force them to do it with their motivation on clear display.
the crosswalk was painted at some point with highly the reflective white paint commonly found on american roads in the expected pattern for a crosswalk, but the paint has not been maintained for some time. it is dirty and not a very good reflector, even in places where chalk and standard-issue road grime has been washed off. I base this analysis exclusively on the image of the chalkwalk in the OP article. when you go back to review that image in the article, please observe the flooding overhead light directly illuminating the entire crosswalk. I would be willing to grant that, in the event of a power outage or service interruption on that light, the chalk would probably not be significantly more effective at catching a car's headlights than plain asphalt- or cracked, broken, flaking, dirty, generally neglected 'reflective' paint.
and yes you're absolutely right. there are plenty other crosswalks and walls for that matter in florida. They want that particular crosswalk to not be flamboyantly homosexual? well. there's more of us than there are of them, put it that way.
edit: and in looking up the government's line on this: ron desantis is plainly displeased with the fact that public property is being used for political speech. stop carrying the fascist's water for them. this argument is not made in good faith by the people actually carrying out the erasure.
https://x.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1958583393714667572
The possibility that a random person would go to the lengths of adding micro-beads, or go to the trouble of procuring reflective pavement paint of the colors used seems a bit far-fetched to me. Could be, but unlikely in my view.
Yeah, like your point was reasonable, which is why i wanted to step in. I dont think that its tuning into reddit per say but I do think people are just getting extremely tired of this administrations rhetoric, which is completely understandable, but if we have any chance of fighting it we all need to be able to take a step back and view others with out the bickering or they win out easily and allow us to be fractured to easily. Plus your point of using other means for memorials or painting is better as it removes the administration's ability to just act like this is being done for safety reasons and forces them to admit its out of bigotry. Eh I'm probably preaching to the choir by saying this to you. Hopefully we all can take the steps back when needed I know even I fall into the trap sometimes. Have a good day, though.
No, I'm sorry but no.
For any movement to cohere they have to fundamentally agree about the nature of reality. As long as you continue to insist that the artwork in this image displays some legitimate traffic risk, we're not living in the same reality. until the day that you understand why i can't pretend you didn't just say two incompatible things about the nature of this erasure: that it's an excuse to exercise bigotry and also a reasonable point about safety, we are not on the same side. it's past time to figure out which reality you're living in.
say what you will about conservatives, they struggle to see the world differently than how they are told to see it. They share a very firm consensus reality.
This has been described multiple times throughout this thread that describes why this can be a traffic risk. Without a reflective paint you impeed visibility in low light conditions, fog, night time, heavy rain, etc. Without the right paint you reduce friction in wet conditions that can cause accidents for those on motorcycles or bikes. Unfortunately this administration is clearly not going to repaint this memorial with the appropriate paint to facilitate that, which means its going to pose a risk unless those repainting it can use something appropriate. Its not the art itself that is a problem but the quality of paint used to make it. I have no problem with the memorial when its done right but to ignore that it does carry risk with its current implementation that people are using is being obtuse and means you are fundamentally ignoring parts of basic physics.
Like seriously no one is trying to applaud the conservatives efforts to erase this monument, we are only pointing out better ways to do this in the future. Like make your gripes make sense please because it seems you are to hung up to admit the reality that this memorial was implemented in a sub optimal way originally, there is no reason why we cant accept something wasnt done right the first time and strive for it to be done better next time. Like why continue to paint the crosswalk when people could be painting the sidewalk or using chalk on the sidewalk instead. that doesnt fuck with road safety and continues to keep a memorial in place. Like seriously, how is pointing something like that out incompatible with your reality?
okay. i'm going to pretend for a moment that this is not the obvious bogus excuse for bigotry you've already described it as, and that there is some merit to the traffic claim on the grounds that its obstructing the reflection off the paint in a way that the neglect I referred to wasn't already doing, which I've already agreed would cause issues in certain rare but distincly possible conditions, like if that giant fucking overhead light turns off and also at the same time your headlights dont work and also at the same time it's night and/or foggy and also at the same time are driving too fast for those conditions all at the same time. i'm going to pretend that i can't take exception with any of that, and that I didn't hear out of ron desantis' mouth and see it on his twitter feed that he is taking this step to suppress politcal speech, and i'm going to pretend that there has been shown any data at all to support the conclusion that this chalk artwork has had any measurable effect on traffic incidents at that intersection.
how do I get from "you can make reflective paint non-reflective by coloring it with chalk," which I have already granted, to "you're not allowed to put chalk in the spaces between the reflective paint?"
is it a basic physics lesson now? teach me. how does adding colors to the spaces between the reflective paint reduce visibility?
a. they don't need an excuse. they have power. if you are in doubt of that, please check the actual reasons ron desantis and co. are saying out loud with their words directly that they are doing this for.
b. the fact that the chalk was colored inside the lines of the crosswalk after this supposed safety issue was pointed out and the chalk still being removed is sufficient to give that lie its character.
with the notable exception of observing basically, 'you don't have to place the memorial directly on the spot where a tragedy occured,' yall are just carrying water for ron desantis.
The article says "Paint", a whole different ball game from chalk. Visibility aside, I'm a motorcyclist, and I can assure you that slick paint on the road is deadly. Pointing out that there hasn't been an accident yet, and declaring it safe is a textbook example of logical fallacy.
Want data? Ask google for "high contrast safety". Here is a result, in case your google-fu is not up to date
it's hard to be up-to-date with google fu these days. I tried looking for traffic data on that intersection (eg pulse nightclub traffic safety before:2025-01-01) only to find it either doesn't exist as such or is so obscure to me that it might as well not exist. visibility on the road is a very different thing than slickness i hadn't considered, granted full stop.
I still need to be convinced that whatever paint it is they're using is actually causing the road to be slick before i retract or make any edits to previous statements, but that's definitely a more serious point in my opinion and thanks for specifying. like i could see latex as an issue but i wouldn't agree spray paint is an issue. and then the problem would be how should we both allow these people to memorialize a tragedy in such a way as to safely allow for the passage of traffic, not unilateral denial of a precedented memorial on grounds that can not at this time be shown to be supported by evidence, whatever you may say about the fallacious nature of my skepticism.
and not for nothing, but i just actually checked and, only the headline could have its ambiguity be interpreted to suggest the memorialists were 'painting.' at least according to this article, the floridian state are the ones using paint and the pulse memorialists are using chalk, and despite the OP's headline referring to "repeainting," the images of the crosswalk show it 'painted' with chalk within that article, so actually, are you sure you didn't just read the headline and come to a 'reasonable' conclusion and 'civilly' express your '100%' support for the cause while actually thoughtlessly supporting the erasure of a tragedy's memorial for some reason?
then, from your source:
are you honestly suggesting a colorful pattern instead of black would tend to reduce visibility? this is the part i was saying is absurd on its face earlier. and i'm sure you'll forgive me as i return the accusation of "did you even read this?" i was not going to slap you with this earlier because it's such an obvious retort as to be insulting, but, how are you not constantly struggling with visibility on the road with all the different colors of car?
I'd like to hear what florida state law or traffic data or the people actually using the crosswalk have to say about the matter, not this unrecognizable messageworks public interest group on the first page of a "traffic visibility" google-fu session, or some ergonomical motorcyclist who i frankly suspect will never come across this intersection in their life.
I have probably not explained myself well enough, or maybe you have not read, or understood correctly.
Here you clearly have a problem with reading comprehension.
Stating that something is safe because another event hasn't happened yet, is a logical fallacy. It's like stating that smoking isn't harmful because your grampa smoked until his 80's and didn't die of cancer.
no, you have this backwards and i'm not taking time out of my day to explain how to you.