The Packards racist signs on the skywalk over Grand Blvd.

[gnome]

Mauser, as a proponent of tagging and graffiti, have you learned that words have meaning and that paint can kill?

[mauser]

Somebody hung a sign on an abandoned building - nobody has stepped forward to claim it was done by artists or that it is intended as an artwork.

The sign maker does not get a pass from me based on the rules of the Fine Art world until they step forward and identify themselves as an artist and state that it was an artwork.

Yeah - somebody mentioned "what if it were Banksy or Dot guy". Well, if it were either of those chaps, we would know damn well it was supposed to be art.

Think of how twisted this all is if everyone is standing around talking about the signs artistic merits, and it actually WAS meant as a hate crime against Jewish people or people affected by the death camps.

Im not willing to critique this thing like a painting until we know for sure it was art, because of what I just wrote above.

[mauser]

Mauser, as a proponent of tagging and graffiti, have you learned that words have meaning and that paint can kill?

I do not subscribe to your characterization of what I do or what I think, but nice try.

The death camp sign wasnt graffiti, it was a physical sign attached to a building.

[mauser]

For others who want to steer this towards a graffiti witch hunt, try talking directly to the people in your community who actually do promote and support the creation of graffiti. Derek over at 4731 Group is what I consider a vital part of Detroit's creative community. He is well spoken, and a die hard pro-Detroit person who puts his money where his mouth is.

I just take photographs, everybody knows that. If you need to learn about graffiti as an art form in relation to this region, Ima gonna refer you directly to Derek and the other folks at Grand River Creative Corridor.

Getting mad at me for taking photos of what they do is stupid.

[East Detroit]

If you were smart enough to follow the hints of conspiracy, you'd be able to follow plain language.

Sometimes folks are SO anti-"whatever", they can find it in everything.

I'm pretty sure that is at least part of what Rorschach tried to reveal with his inkblot testing.

Good Luck with that! Obsessions are blinders. If you keep 'em on, you might be convinced what you see is all there is.

Thanks for trivializing this, for speaking down to me, and for your usual making this about yourself even though you have no equity. Yeah, I am "obsessed" about the Holocaust.

Sorry, but there is no grand scheme here, no conspiracies to be revealed, no artistic expression... its just the usual anti-semitism that is found throughout society [[until shown otherwise). Again, the dismissive people either agree with the anti-semitism or just don't care.

[Gannon]

Did we have as much outcry with those huge stylings of people holding military-type weapons, like on that abandoned apartment building on Alexandrine just west of Woodward?! I don't remember ever hearing an artist's statement behind those.

I'm expecting this to be something like the promo for a documentary which compares the promise of work in Detroit, and its subsequent economic reality a hundred years later with the death camp's horrible taunt and effect in the shorter term. As others have said, there is some commentary to be made in the comparison, IF you allow it to be seen and felt.

But if you choose to allow, or worse yet force, a historic thing to remain nuclear yet obscure...this sort of divide in perception and opinion due to the resultant ignorance will remain. In my case, did I know these deathcamps existed in the past? Sure, but they were an intangible factlet, not anything with the weight and impact to cause me a visceral one-way reaction by merely reading the phrase in an entirely different context.

Historians and teachers must walk quite the razor's edge itself, allowing just enough to be imprinted on their students to allow the knowledge to hopefully keep things from happening the same way again...without totally overwhelming them with the atrocious way humans can sometimes treat each other.

It is funny that some can attack you, Mauser, for taking this stance. They cannot understand the seeming juxtaposition of someone who journals the decline of the city doing anything which seems to improve it. Whatever, they've got their own agenda, likely.


Cheers

[gnome]

I just take photographs, everybody knows that. If you need to learn about graffiti as an art form in relation to this region, Ima gonna refer you directly to Derek and the other folks at Grand River Creative Corridor.

Getting mad at me for taking photos of what they do is stupid.

mauser, shit man, you are the Larry Flint of Ruin porn. Your little snap shots of destruction and desolation has spawned a cottage industry of urban explorers. Detroit is known the world over for its juicy ruin porn and you are like Mr. ground Zero. Patient X. Homo Eco. You da man, Mauser.

Now you are outraged by paint? Curious.

[Gannon]

mauser, shit man, you are the Larry Flint of Ruin porn. Your little snap shots of destruction and desolation has spawned a cottage industry of urban explorers. Detroit is known the world over for its juicy ruin porn and you are like Mr. ground Zero. Patient X. Homo Eco. You da man, Mauser.

Now you are outraged by paint? Curious.

Don't think he's troubled by the choice of medium, but rather the application of it. If they were sized correctly, I daresay they might've been overlooked, since people mostly stopped looking up and reading the overpass there anyways.

I pass under it at least a few times per week, and for all my detail picking might've not noticed. I surely wouldn't have immediately known it was from the deathcamp, unless driven to look it up and translate.

But this thought about ancestry has perhaps helped explain why I get so upset whenever anyone tells me I shouldn't garden, or even bother growing my own food. Some Brit jerk once told some of my Irish ancestors that they could only grow potatoes...and then didn't mind when the crops failed and people starved to death. There was much more, but I'll stick with that, although while I did get pretty pissed at everything British after watching the movie Michael Collins, I won't sit around the Gaelic League when they start singing the old war songs glorifying more death and terror.

Sometimes, most times, good things come out of tragedy and atrocity...if we let it. May take a generation or two...but my ancestors are ALL better off than in the 1800s, and I'm damn glad about that. I'd say those who survived WWII could say the same out of that time frame, too.

But old grudges die hard...if at all.

Sincerely,
John

[East Detroit]

But old grudges die hard...if at all.

The holocaust is an old grudge now.

Unbelievable. Clueless. Disgusting.

[Mark Smiles]

I am not justifying anything - many people are not understanding that the sign needed to come down. I am talking about why I did it so people might understand why the sign was wrong and very hurtful.

The Joe Louis fist is all about bringing people together. I guess some "art" is more equal than others.

[Django]

The folks who did the armed figures on the abandoned building on Alex were featured in the movie Detropia I believe? Im not positive.

[Gannon]

The holocaust is an old grudge now.

Unbelievable. Clueless. Disgusting.

The Holocaust is history. What are you going to do about that?

I don't support in any way anyone who holds any viewpoint or posture which condones that behavior today, or any time in history. I didn't cause it, nor participate in it, and every one of my ancestors fought against it.

I've merely talked in generalities over the topics generated by two actions, the creation of a sign placed in the Packard plant overpass, and its destruction. And you want to equate specifics outside of the context presented, you prove to have missed comprehending the dialogue entirely.

Unbelievable you could be so clueless. Disgusting you could come to such a lame, yet dangerous conclusion.

Nothing I said was inaccurately stated. Nor is it incorrect, as far as I can tell. I never said the Holocaust was merely a grudge, that construct happened within your imagination. You made the equation.

Congratulations.

[Gannon]

Maybe people get mad at you because you encourage vandalism. You're a fanboy and nothing more. Who are you to say what is, or isn't "art"? I'm sure there are plenty of other offensive things around town that you can go cover up/ tear down if you wanted.

Nice bit about you being shy and not wanting attention though. Is that why your name was dropped in a Detroit News article? Is that why you took to your blog and facebook touting your accomplishment almost instantly with pictures and all? You're just as bad as the person responsible for the sign in the first place, not because you removed it, but because you've been pimping your actions trying to play the role of the hero.

You read his quoting the change in viewership statistics as boasting, I caught them as merely amazement. First one was basically apologizing to his server provider. I haven't seen the same thing you imagine from the same words.

But we all walk into things with our own prejudices. They can filter nearly anything to what we really want to see...let alone allow ourselves to understand.

Cheers

[Gannon]

East Detroit,

Thanks for proving more of my comments, too. You seem to have suffered

a visceral one-way reaction by merely reading the phrase in an entirely different context.

Your only seeing through anti-Semitism blinders is causing an untenable situation, something which cannot ever be resolved according to the illogical rules you've placed down.

How does one prove a negative? How could the world's ignorant people suddenly become anti-anything? That is the nature of ignorance, until someone learns a thing, they are ignorant of it. What behavior would you expect which would finally negate the anti-Semitism you say is

found throughout society [[until shown otherwise).

Again, the dismissive people either agree with the anti-semitism or just don't care.

How could we show enough care?! Since it first came up, I've left open the option that some, if not many, might simply be ignorant of history. Even if they read a few paragraphs, they could never have the empathy to feel the depth of impact on those directly affected. Oddly, the one in a hundred or more who DID react is getting shit on, and I don't see you defending him.

If you want to talk about egoic behavior, assuming everyone is against you is a pretty strong one. It helps make you behave in ways which then usher in the possibility. You aid in fulfilling the fear.

Sometimes you see even your friends as enemies.

[noise]

I'm not sure I understand how invoking recollection of Nazi concentration camps through a German phrase, even if offense was intended, could be considered a "slur". From my own perspective, I would have considered it pretty weak and indirect, but the reaction here and reported in the news made it seem very effective. Interesting, considering how unclear the statement.

[old guy]

Personally, I find the postage of the sign revolting. I thank the people that removed it. Art, possibly. Thought provoking, possibly. Gutless people that don't have the courage to step forward and explain their intentions, an indication to me that their motives are suspect. Life is tough. But to equate anything that's currently occurring with the economy to the Holocaust is absurd, and if it is art, it is of an extremely poor concept.

[Django]

Whoever put it up surely saw the knee jerk reaction in the next days paper and saw that the Jewish community saw them as a Nazi, I might not want to come out either.

Im betting on the right to work theory. I hope thats right at least.

[mauser]

Maybe people get mad at you because you encourage vandalism. You're a fanboy and nothing more.

well, a few unbalanced people on here definitely get in a snit...the same few people.

if my name wasnt "dropped" you would be crapping your pants right now because i was anonymous. bottle the acid and moveon.

[mauser]

The Motorcity Muckrake continues to collate recent news about the Packard Nazi sign maker.

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/wp-con...ard-plant1.jpg

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2013/0...signs-removal/

[mauser]

“ARBEIT MACHT FREI” was cruelly placed at the entrances of the labor camps in irony, with the knowledge that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope, only death,” the alleged artist, Penny Gaff, said, dismissing claims that the sign was anti-Semitic. “A parallel can be drawn with the current corporatocracy we are subjected to today. The illusion that one day we will be rich and successful is similarly misleading, but we swallow it and live in this false sense of hope. We whore our lives away day after day for corporations and the empty promises of the powers that be. We have become wage slaves, with no alternative, essentially reinstating forced labor.”

“I placed the sign on the overpass, the gateway to Detroit, the heart of a once booming industrial America, full of capitalist promise and hope,” the alleged artist wrote. “Once, it employed thousands of people, but now lies in ruins and is dead, as are the dreams of those who sacrificed their lives in the form of labor. All that remains is a war torn cityscape, an economic genocide and GHETTOIZATION of ethnic and socioeconomic groups.”

[mauser]

I guess since we are reading the Muckraker here, I should point out an important error of omission - the article states that detroitfunk took the sign down, in reality it was two people who took the sign down. [[as well as at least two people who put it up) It is a lot easier to sensationalize this if people focus on detroitfunk and not the other gentleman.

Roni's story is available in last weeks edition of the Jewish News. His 94 year old grandmother survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He also is a professional in the automotive industry. Did HE have a legitimate reason to remove such a sign ?

Is THAT enough of a reason for people ?

Probably not, but just sayin.

[jerrytimes]

I find it funny that this is a story. Who really thinks that this is an attack against Jews?

[Django]

Mauser, you know I respect you, absolutely love your photography and what you do, but I cant help but think you jumped the gun a little on removing the sign so quickly. My first thought was that it was not some skinhead who put it up there but someone trying to say something. I like the relation with the current Right To Work slogan. I dont know if Penny had that in mind but I wish I had a chance to photograph it before you took it down, I wish it had become something of interest other than the common anti-Semite conclusion.

IMHO "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" should be put on every entrance to every privatized prison.

Take your lumps and learn from them. Lord knows Ive taken mine here, from me talking about my days scrappin metal way back, to me opening up a fire hydrant to cool off the kids in my hood. Ive never been the sharpest spoon in the toolbox but this site has guided me to right and wrong, something Ive always had a hard time understanding but I try my best to swallow my pride and go with my peers here, the people I look up to [[for the most part)

.

[KJ5]

Whoever put up the sign must've known it would be taken down. It would have gotten more views had they put it up on the other side of the bridge, but I would bet they put it up on the side where it would gather less views in the hopes that it would stay up for longer. That's the only reason I can think of why they would put it up on what looks like the back side of the bridge to me.
And there's photos of it on the Internets, one I believe put up by Mauser.

[canuck]

This is a pretty delicate topic. I think that the artist's intentions are laudable and that harm to jewish prisoners' memory was not intended here. In fact, who is to say that Auschwitz is a place of interest nowadays; to be visited by the children of survivors or tormentors alike. There, the banner is still to be seen, and the context of violence is undeniable.

I think that the idea of equating misery with the lies served by corporate advertisers, the false promises of a better tomorrow has a meaning beyond that of death camps. Political correctness will always stand between perception and intention.

The words taken out of the context we all recognize as Nazi opprobrium, does indeed call into question the ghettoization, and the ongoing need for companies to find ever cheaper sources of labor, down to slavery practically.

This reminds me of the song Working Class Hero by John Lennon. If anyone thinks Lennon meant these words as a monument to freedom of the proletariat, they need a shake of awakening...