Assault with a deadly sticker

Via StreetsBlog, Running Out of Space to Park, and Places to Walk – New York Times:

Mr. Panopoulos recently guided four new members, including a blind physical therapist and a surgeon in training, through a district awash with illegally parked cars, explaining the group’s rules.

“We’re not subversive. We’re not confrontational. And we don’t want to cause damage to anyone’s property,” he said, slapping a sticker on the windshield of a Jeep squeezed across a sidewalk on a narrow passageway called Arahovis Street.

The driver was nowhere to be seen. But a few feet ahead on Arahovis Street, they spotted a red Peugeot backing over a strip of ribbed paving that helps blind people with canes navigate sidewalks. The middle-aged motorist, who had just emerged from the car, was aghast when a pair of Streetpanthers swooped down, pasting a donkey sticker on his windshield.

“That same stunt cost my fiancée a broken rib cage over the summer,” the blind Streetpanther, Stathis Zachariades, said to the driver, as a handful of bystanders cheered him on before asking the Streetpanthers for some of their stickers.

Of course there are those people who will claim, often quite hysterically, that slapping a sticker on the windshield amounts to “damage to property.” The story reminded me of the “I’m changing the climate – ask me how!” SUV stickers from changingtheclimate.com. The site seems to be gone, though. Maybe someone should start slapping stickers on cars parked in bike lanes in NYC – or is someone doing that already?

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