Different Day, Same Shit.

Graffiti means a lot of different things to different people and how it's used - or even its mere placement - brings out a wide variety of reactions from people.

Graffiti, at its core, is vandalism, since it involves defacing a public or private area without permission. The presence of graffiti marks an area as run-down and unkempt. The longer it stays on a surface, the further that image is embedded into the conscious of passersby.

In hotly-contested gang areas, it's a demarcation of territory to be respected on pain of conflict and possible death. Crossing out another gang's "tag" with your own is grounds for deadly retaliation.

Graffiti is also an art form, as evinced by the colorful, ingenious and expressive works found throughout countless urban environs. Some graffiti artists manage to gain national and global fanfare for their works. Kobra, Banksy and David Choe, for starters.

Graffiti is also a way for the traditionally voiceless to voice their opinions and vent. Whether it's frustration with law enforcement, an impromptu and brief eulogy for friends and family passed, or to reaffirm one's identity, it's often done with a can of spray paint and a fleeting moment.

If the graffiti happens to be of the sort the likes of Banksy would produce, it's often admired and photographed by passersby. Otherwise, it's often ignored until the property owner or another graffiti artist or tagger covers it up or tags over it.

Sometimes, the underlying dynamics surrounding graffiti and assumptions about those who are most likely to do it...makes people uncomfortable.

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Grant Henry is an Atlanta-area artist and owner of Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium, a church-themed bar and lounge located in the Old Fourth Ward, not far from Ebenezer Baptist Church and The King Center.

Henry and a fellow patron at his bar covered up the above graffiti posted on a building located on the corner of Irwin and Randolph Street, after it had, in his words, "brought fear to the core of my being."

"Brought fear to the core of my being." As a gentleman of color, I pondered this statement. Exactly what does Grant Henry have to fear from a simple tag left behind by someone obviously affected by the outcome of the Zimmerman trial?

In Henry's own words:

Last night around 10:00pm I drove up Randolph and at the corner of Irwin saw the graffiti that brought fear to the core of my being, fear that riots could change the face of our neighborhood in the shadow of The Martin Luther King Center.

Many thoughts went through my head:
1: Who owns the building?
2. Could I be arrested for covering it up?
3. Is covering evil graffiti justified?
4. Should I call the city?
5. Should I get permission from someone?

Out of fear that this evil message would spread like wildfire, I got home and grabbed a can of black spray paint,went to CHURCH and grabbed a witness, then went back to the scene and painted over the graffiti.

I was running to my car after blacking out the hate...then bolted back to add the (heart symbol) to justify that my graffiti was not compounding the message of evil.

When the adrenaline ceased from the fear that I felt, I found out that at the exact moment of adding the (heart symbol), the Zimmerman NOT GUILTY Verdict was announced.

Whoever owns the building, i am willing to pay to have the wall painted over the graffiti.

I apologize to whomever, but I would probably do it again to try to nip danger in the bud and to ensure that the positive we are trying to build In our City is not lost to the ignorance of a few.

"The ignorance of a few."

In light of the turmoil and trauma surrounding the Zimmerman case, people have chosen to vent in their own ways, many of them extraordinarily productive, others in the most destructive way possible.

I don't condone graffiti done in public or private venues without permission. However, I do understand a person's need to vent, especially after an emotionally charged event like this. The individual who left the message "Fuck APD RIOT 4 TRAYVON" was venting.

With a bit of black paint, Mr. Henry, in effect, silenced that individual's voice.

That's what gets to me. The fact that someone's voice can be silenced wholesale by someone else who hasn't shared any of the trials, tribulations and experiences of that person, after invoking an international black icon for peace and equality to justify his own actions, gets to me.

Black voices are constantly silenced, muffled, moderated and curated by others who simply don't feel comfortable with these voices ringing loud and unfiltered. Apparently, Mr. Henry just didn't feel comfortable with that so-called "message of evil" being left behind in his neighborhood.

I'm sure like so many others in his position, Mr. Henry's intentions were rather noble. While many of history's major issues are resolved through the hot fires of violence, many of history's issues have also been settled through peaceful means. Many people have clutched their pearls over the possibility of violent riots, but people who chose to stand in solidarity with Trayvon Martin and others like him have chosen the route of peaceful protest. I'm sure Mr. Henry did not want to see the Old Fourth Ward or any other neighborhood die in the white-hot fires of anger, frustration, misplaced vengeance and hatred.

With that said, that doesn't justify speaking for another by censoring that person's message. In fact, the only "message of evil" I see is one consisting of three black bars...and a heart symbol. I'm not feeling the love, here.

- Muammar Gaddafi is dead, after being wounded and captured by Libyan rebels in his hometown of Sirte.

A spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined the fallen strongman in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen. Jerky video obtained from Sirte showed a man looking like Gaddafi, with distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.

The brief footage shows him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive", he disappears from view and gunshots are heard.

"They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. "He might have been resisting."

- If you plan on attending an Occupy Wall Street protest, you might want to find out if it'll get you canned from your day job. Because that's what happened to Lisa Simeone, producer and host of NPR's "World of Opera" after attending an "occupation" at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.

That same day, NPR persuaded a company for which Simeone worked to fire her, cutting her income in half and purging from the so-called public airwaves a voice that had never mentioned politics on NPR.

About three and a half hours after the above email was sent, Simeone had been fired by a show called Soundprint as punishment for having been "unethical." Here is her bio on that show's website. And here she is on NPR's.

Soundprint is a show that does touch on politics and includes political viewpoint in Simeone's ledes, but it is not an NPR program and not distributed by NPR. It is, however, heard on public radio stations. Despite the title "NPR World of Opera," that show is produced by a small station called WDAV for which Simeone contracts. Simeone was not an NPR employee. WDAV has not expressed any concern over Simeone's "ethics."

Simeone told me: "I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen -- the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly -- on my own time in my own life. I'm not an NPR employee. I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

It makes you wonder why NPR would take such drastic steps to have a freelancer on a show that was merely broadcast on some of NPR's affiliate stations given the boot just hours after she attended the protest. The whole thing reeks of an over-reactive legal department -- or someone who had a grudge and found the perfect excuse to give her the boot.

NPR hasn't done much, if anything at all, to cover OWS. It seems NPR feels more comfortable staying in the good graces of corporate donorship than covering one of the most important and game-changing events in the history of the United States.

BTW, when conservatives parrot claims of how "50% of Americans don't pay taxes," remember that those claims are just that. Over 86% of Americans pay their taxes, a damn sight better than what the Wall Street boys are doing.

The most notable aspect of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it didn't come pre-approved from the loins of mainstream media. It didn't seek permission from the scions of print and television media or wait for the online pundits to bestow blessings upon it. There wasn't any need for protesters to patiently wait their turn until "Very Serious People" decided the movement was worth bothering themselves with, if at all. It took a while for the MSM to finally take full notice of Occupy Wall Street, whether they really wanted to or not.

Yet there are those out there who are still keen on dismissing OWS outright, as though it were some sort of aberration among the masses that fails to reflect upon the rest of America, despite how Americans across the country are standing in solidarity with their brethren in Zuccotti Park. Apparently, David Brooks of the New York Times feels this way about the movement.

Similarly, if you look only at the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements that have been getting so much coverage in the news media, you know very little about the wider America. Most Americans seem to understand this. According to data from the Pew Research Center, they are paying less attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement than any other major story — less than Afghanistan, Amanda Knox, the 2012 election, the death of Steve Jobs and far, far less than news about the economy.

This, despite the amount of solidarity shown across the nation. The above isn't an accurate reflection of the news stories Americans believe are important to them, so much as it's a telling reflection of what Brooks and other "Very Serious People" believe should be worthy of America's collective attention.

Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values.

There's more than one way to dismiss OWS. In this instance, all one has to do is separate the protesters from "ordinary Americans" who are piecing together their shattered financial security, then contrast the "camera-hungry" protesters against other Americans who are "quietly working" behind the scenes. Al-Jazeera, the news outlet that conservatives and "Very Serious People" wanted Americans to dismiss throughout the War on Terror, has a great piece on how the media marginalizes dissenting movements such as OWS.

America went through a similar values restoration in the 1820s. Then, too, people sensed that the country had grown soft and decadent. Then, too, Americans rebalanced. They did it quietly and in private.

The main point driven home is Occupy Wall Street's lack of necessity when it comes to rebuilding the country's shattered finances, as it will be done by ordinary Americans who will surely pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get back to work. Brooks goes so far as to pat Americans on the back for disavowing credit cards and debt without realizing how many Americans had to rely on debt instruments just to survive, and without realizing that being flat busted broke is the biggest reason Americans are ditching credit cards in the first place.

No mention is ever made about the financial sector playing a role in America's economic meltdown or how it encouraged the finance of expensive lifestyles with dubious debt instruments. The role of corporations in shedding jobs as a method of inflating their own worth and executive bonuses goes unmentioned. As far as Brooks and other "Very Serious People" are concerned, these entities weren't responsible for the current economic crisis, therefore such discussions aren't necessary. Instead, fault lies with ordinary Americans who should have known better and a government that constantly gets in the way of "job creators."

The "Very Serious People" are vexed how OWS continues to stand outside of "Serious" influence and ignore "Serious" advice given by "Very Serious" pundits and opinion-makers, most of whom themselves are ridiculously disconnected from the lives and ordeals of ordinary Americans. Brooks himself probably wonders at times why the rabble in Zuccotti Park couldn't just stop being such mindless hippies and piss off elsewhere, so the "Very Serious People" can once again represent America's clearing house of great minds when it comes to solving America's most pressing issues.

Occupy Wall Street represents a method of bringing important issues to light without relying on mainstream media to green-light their voice and without seeing the media repackage said voice for further acceptability among center-right and conservative interests. Not being able to role-play as the arbiters of the angered American voice scares guys like Brooks, because otherwise they'd be paid hacks consigned to the margins of genuine American free speech and political action.

Today, Occupy Wall Street passes the one month mark of making the voice of the American people heard or being whiny, hippy crybabies who need to get back to work, depending on who you ask. As the fall weather slowly degenerates into winter blues, I'm wondering if any of the Occupy protests, let alone the one in NYC, will keep going in spite of the cold. As a southerner largely unaccustomed to cold weather, it's a question I gotta ask.

Meanwhile, the NYPD's shelled out over $1.9 million to cover the costs of patrolling Zuccoli Park and other protest areas, largely for overtime pay. Considering the $4.6 million pick-me-up graciously donated by J.P. Morgan and other Wall Street firms, the NYPD shouldn't be hurting none, financially speaking.

Too bad the average American can't get sweet donations like those. At least the President is trying to do something to give the folks out there a bit of hope. If you want to pin the blame on your being laid off or inability to find a job, you can blame the Senate Republicans and the two Democrats who effectively brought the American Jobs Act to a standstill. Or you can do as the conservatives want Americans to do and start blaming themselves and their own laziness. After all, you can always pull up stakes, move to Alabama and get one of those farming jobs being vacated by the illegal immigrants. Good, honest work....

And to the fine folks at Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and others, having your customers arrested is never a good look for your business, even if they no longer want to do business with you.


And as an added bonus, here's the pre-OWS story of a man who was arrested at a Chase branch for...having his bank-drafted check cashed. See, even the checks drafted by the banks themselves start looking suspicious when they're in the hands of black American and African men and women.

So while the #occupyatlanta folks rename a park to make a political point, let me remind them that the billions in chartible gifts from the Woodruff family and foundation, that have benefited all of Atlanta’s citizens, would not have been possible but for the system they seek to dismantle.

"Dismantle?"

There's this issue over what some people see when they look at the overall "Occupy_____" or "99 percent" movement, and granted a lot of these people see it through the prism of radical leftist movements that sought to "destroy" and "dismantle" the current system, because these groups saw such systems as problems and impediments to progressive policy and the betterment of America's general well-being.

Personally, I think "dismantle" is the wrong word to use concerning these movements, because no one's looking to "destroy" or "dismantle" anything, even if they themselves are using those words for provocative effect. The key word is "reform."

99 percenters want to reform how government responds to those in need. They want to reform the financial industry so that it no longer fleeces ordinary citizens and then go on to make reckless decisions with their money. They want to reform the way home mortgages are handled, so people aren't led around with promises of "modification," only to have their homes foreclosed on anyway. They want reform on student loans to not only keep it from being a lifelong debt created out of sheer necessity, but also lower the costs of an college education. They want to reform politics so politicians start listening to the people more than they listen to corporations and lobbyists. They want "reform." The only things being "dismantled" are their livelihoods.

The contributions of the Woodruff family are appreciated and their place in the history of the city of Atlanta is respected by many. If you see protesters renaming Woodruff Park in honor of Troy Davis as a "stunt," consider that if Davis wasn't executed by the state despite next-to-nonexistent evidence and witnesses that recanted their testimony while citing police intimidation as their primary motivation for testimony in the first place, then no one would have any reason to "rename" Woodruff Park. No one is trying to "dismantle" Woodruff's accomplishments or the aspects of corporate America that actually benefit people.

If 2,000 Tea Party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street last Saturday. They weren't carrying the banner of the Tea Party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat "Don't Tread on Me". Yet their message was clear: "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.

Good point. For a group of mostly elderly, mostly white Americans with a distinct dislike of anything "liberal" or "Kenyan," they do know how to grab the mainstream media by the balls and lead them around like Katt Williams leading Terry Crews around with a pair of pliers on "Friday After Next".

But when it comes to a young and diverse group of Americans fed up with what they see as the hijacking (yet again) of America's wealth and well-being by extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected individuals and groups, the mainstream media didn't take much notice. Most Americans were blissfully unaware of what was going down. At least until the arrests and abuses started happening. "If it bleeds, it leads," indeed.

At least this was all over the social media outlets from the get-go. Just take a look at the #occupywallstreet Twitter feed. People keep saying this event, which started on the 17th this month (and there's no telling how long it will last), has the potential of becoming America's very own "Arab Spring."

And to that end, the police have been very eager to move off and arrest protesters, despite little to no threats of violence on their end.

Just to be clear, it was the police who turned violent. Protesters were dancing, singing, chanting. No reports of violence from any source that I have. I know many of those people. I would be there if I were still living in NYC. I watched quite a bit of the live feed (up until the police confiscated the video and computer equipment, arrested the media team). I saw nothing even approaching violence from the protesters...

Think about damn-near every G-8, G-11 and G-20 summit held, where protesters were pushed off, beaten down and locked up on orders from the higher-ups. Nothing different here. It's all designed to make people so afraid of the idea of protesting that they'd be loath to do it, plus it inoculates a "healthy" amount of fear-dressed-up-as-"respect" for the LEOs. Some of them relish the opportunity to swing the baton every once in a while.

There's a live feed of the protests, provided by AnonOps. Take a look.