Volunteers with the community group Dresden Shines are trying to shine a positive light on hateful graffiti left on some colourful picnic tables in Stranak Park.
A number of local residents and artists painted over two dozen picnic tables in Stranak Park before the Dresden Night Market, including one with a rainbow theme.
Since then, the rainbow table has been vandalized several times, most recently including threatening comments against the LGBTQ2S+ community.
However, one of the artists who worked on the tables, Sarah Steele, says Dresden has shown time and time again, the answer to hate is not more hate, it’s love.
“The community bands together, even just to combat this general instance, we have people who come and volunteer their time tirelessly to repair the vandalism,” Steele says. “I think it’s a small pocket of people and these small pockets of people weren’t born hateful and they weren’t born angry, they were taught it. We need to take those small pockets of people and bask them in love. The only way is to treat them with kindness because I don’t think that more hate is going to help.”
A video of Steele and fellow volunteer Morena McDonald repairing the initial damage on social media platform TikTok has gained over one million views.
Steele says the rainbow on the table wasn’t originally intended to be an LGBTQ2S+ reference, but since it’s gained so much attention, she’s happy to have what she lovingly calls “a big gay table.”
Once police had taken photos of the scene for evidence, Steele says community members rallied to clean up the mess, with the offending graffiti covered over less than 24 hours after it was made.
Volunteer Liz Kominek says they didn’t want to make a fuss or have any negative publicity over the community art project, but hopes something positive can come out of it.
“It’s something we don’t like to draw attention to, I think acknowledging the fact that there is this element in our society that by at least showing our support through things like the rainbow crosswalk that’s going to be coming and fighting back against the comments against the gay and lesbian community by this hatred on picnic tables, I think it’s a good step forward.”
