Fake SF Fleet Week Ads Call Out US Role in Gaza Violence
Screenshot from a video sent to me by Handsome Major
If you were in San Francisco last week it was nearly impossible to ignore the fact that it was Fleet Week. Seamen throbbed thronged The City’s hotspots hoping to meet someone who has a thing for people in uniform, the blue angels screeched terrifyingly overhead for days on end, and somebody parachuted into a crowd, landing on a woman and her child. It was the usual rah-rah “look at our mighty war machines” propaganda that is the LOUDEST reminder of that the US military gets a blank check while the government claims it can’t afford non-rapacious higher education and universal healthcare.
But there was some other, far more guerrilla, propaganda going on in San Francisco during Fleet Week as well. A reader who goes by MDN sent this to me the other day. It was recorded by everyone’s favorite corner store/dog Instagram account, Handsome Major. The poster was at the 22 Fillmore stop across from Key Food Market at 501 Fillmore St. for 48 hours according to Hafeth “Omar” Mansouri who runs the IG account.
View this post on Instagram
As you can see, the poster is a photo of Aaron Bushnell, a US service member who lit himself on fire in protest of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and who reached out to media beforehand to say, “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.” The poster also has his final social media post and some background on Bushnell.
Joshua Bote and Megan Rose Dickey for The Gazetteer reported that there were other locations of this guerrilla art activism in SF including at a bus stop on Haight and Fillmore Streets. There were a number of different guerrilla bus stop posters around the city all of them criticizing the roll of the US has played in the death of over 40,000 Palestinians. You can see them in IG post below:
View this post on Instagram
Interestingly enough this all coincided with the San Francisco run of events put on by legendary billboard activists INDECLINE. Most famous for putting the giant naked Trump statues around US cities in 2016, INDECLINE are also behind such viral billboard liberations as this one below:
Photo from INDECLINE
The folks from INDECLINE were in town for the release of their new photo anthology Control Alter Delete and to screen their films The Art of Protest and Side Hustles.
Considering INDECLINE’s history and work, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind this bust stop activism. But this at this point, we still don’t know who the activists behind the work are.
Unfortunately you probably won’t be able to see these posters out in the wild. As The Gazetteer reported, a spokesman for MUNI anticipated they’ll all be taken down by this morning.
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