Oakland, CA: Survivors, Graffiti Writers and Antifascists Come Together to Confront a Sexual Predator

Report from the Bay Area of California about a campaign of community self-defense.

For the past few days, we’ve been involved in a campaign calling out a graffiti writer that goes by Deuce7. This person has a large following on social media as well as in the art and graffiti world, which can become leverage used to prevent accountability for his actions. During the call-out, Deuce7 and one of his friends began attempting to silence us by threatening physical violence.

This has been an ongoing issue with Deuce7 as he abuses women and then convinces his friends that he is not at fault by blaming the victim or talking about his mental health issues. Together they intimidate the people speaking up by confronting them either online or in person. There was a serious attempt to urge Deuce7s friend to not exacerbate the problem by allowing it to continue but instead hold Deuce7 accountable and getting him whatever help he needs to stop hurting people.

These attempts ultimately failed and they continued to ask us to fight. We agreed to meet them at a park in Oakland. We came as an organized group of graffiti writers, antifascists, and anarchists with an intention to show that we as a community will not tolerate abusive behavior and we will not be intimidated into silence. It is unclear whether they showed up and left because of how many of us there were, or they never came at all.

This is one in a series of coordinated and proactive responses to abusive, predatory behavior in the Bay Area graffiti community. It is important that whatever community we’re a part of, we discuss patriarchy, sexual abuse, and how we will respond when we find out someone is abusing and/or raping people.

For those of us that are organizers: we must not limit community self defense solely to the political sphere, people are affected by patriarchy in their daily lives and this must be addressed if we are really about our shit. Do not let the voices of survivors go unheard. Ask for insight, amplify them and have their backs when they need it.