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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
894 points (99.0% liked)
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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?
oh, shit. I gave you a link to the article instead of an image of the actual chalk art. that's my bad. this was the image i had intended to link before that shows the actual conditions of the crosschalk before they were described as unsafe, coinciding with a change in leadership.
Alright this is good context, I didnt see the condition of the crosswalk from before all this was done. I still feel like there are better ways to create a memorial but in contrast to the shitty condition it was in yeah I can see how if anything the chalk was creating more visibility to that area. I still feel like a crosswalk is not the best place to put a memorial and I think thats the point i was trying to get at and where i thought the original comment in this chain had a decent point, like put it before the cross walk, further down the street on the side walk itself, the curbs, the walls near it make a billboard next to road. But yeah that crosswalk was in such a bad condition already this wasnt effecting much. I had seen some pictures else where in the thread were it looked like people were putting chalk over the white paint itself and that to me is such a bad idea when as you said in your other post you could at least put it in between the painted sections of the cross walk.
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," 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?
Listen i am sorry I did not see that this was getting painted in between the lines previously, I saw a preview for one of the articles you posted (I'll link it below and maybe you can see what im talking about it could just be how my lemmy client is showing it) which had people putting paint/chalk over the white portions of paint on a freshly painted crosswalk which would decrease the reflectiveness of the crosswalk and i saw the commenters point about trying to not mess with areas that help pedestrian safety. I dont like any of the messaging Ron DeSantis is spewing to justify his actions, but this thread opened a conversation about whether or not people should be messing with crosswalks and so I wanted to engage because it feels like a bad spot to be putting art in. Like people should drive for the conditions, not be going to fast when conditions are bad but the reality is there are a lot of people who dont so why should we not be more mindful of safety precautions surrounding where we display messaging or art. We can call out the heinous shit the Republicans are doing and try to point out there are better ways to display memorials or art i dont see how that is incompatible. If all we ever do is focus on the shit without trying to find the little nuggets scattered throughout that we can use to be more effective fighting oppression in the future, or be more safety minded for when we do, that sounds like a sure fire way to be burnt out on the doom and gloom right now and not realize we can still make change. Small things add up and even things that might seem insignificant help build momentum in people's minds that enable people to push for bigger change and support bigger movements. But if we always argue assuming negative intent from others we dont get to see that, i.e. I dont think the original commenter was trying to support DeSantis he was just trying to point out how people could be more safety minded and got shit on because people assumed he was justifying the Republicans messaging. It feels like discourse everywhere is losing nuance as people get burnt out from everything, which it probably the point to this barrage of shit from this administration. Anyways hopefully my comments are clarifying where I am coming from, I'm honestly not trying to be insensitive or support the trash in this world. Maybe I should have looked at those articles directly to gain more perspective so we weren't arguing in circles here, and im sorry I didn't thats on me.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/florida-paints-pulse-crosswalk-black-protesters-colored-rainbow-rcna227073
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.