TALKING THROUGH YOUR ARTS – THE PRICE OF CHALK

Fly in, fly out, clock on, clock off – there are so many changes in just one human day. I know that time is an experience so different as to be an entirely other, unimaginable substance for the footpath I stand on.

I heard a story recently from a Sydney mother whose 17-year-old, daughter was charged for chalking the pavement steps of Town Hall station at a protest for asylum seekers during pre-election.

I listened to the single mother of one, distraught with the passing of a law, the passing of money and time in which her daughter’s potential future was in the state of being defaced. In September, Section 9 of the NSW Graffiti laws was amended to include any markings applied in public view that use materials, temporary or permanent (such as chalk) without the consent of those in charge of the premises, as an offence.

This youthful offender and her friend were sited by police for spelling-out chants of support for the protest’s cause in an area that was without consent. A path around the centre of the protest at Town Hall square, where other notices were being painted by artists such as Deborah Kelly onto placards, was free to those who had something to voice on paper. Here they were all investing in theirs’ and others’ future.

Yet on George Street where we come and go, up-and-down, punching in-and-out, is where these unbeknownst criminal boundaries were deemed to be an untidy and unlawful short-lived scrawl.

Everybody is usually so busy with being at work, or getting on with day-to-day commitments, ferrying kids, here and there. This young woman has ambition to be an international ambassador with plans to start studying at university in 2014.  A criminal conviction would jeopardise her future pathway.

Where is the security in that?  What is the cost of things? Perhaps someone should alert the anonymous person who chalks two words in Glebe, ‘Praise God’, or complain that your kids, in their onesies, confetti out–of-season paper flowers on the neighbours’ bitumen driveway or Arthur Stace’s ‘fashion on footpaths’ is eternally graffito! (AS)

BY ANGELA STRETCH