A West Harbour resident who was quick to remove “hurtful” graffiti says such messages have no place in his community and he has a big bucket of paint to back that up.<\/p>\n
Jarrod Hodson and his brother spent about 40 minutes yesterday painting over graffiti in Ravensbourne which targeted United States President Donald Trump \u2014 “F… Trump” \u2014 and included an anti-Semitic slur the\u00a0Otago Daily Times\u00a0has chosen not to repeat.<\/p>\n
Mr Hodson said he believed it appeared early yesterday morning, following US and Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian retaliation.<\/p>\n
Speaking in his personal capacity, he said it was important to respond quickly to remove such displays.<\/p>\n
“It sends a really clear message to whoever\u2019s doing it \u2014 they might do it 10 other times, I\u2019ve got 20litres of paint, we\u2019ll just go down and remove it again.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re not going to tolerate that sort of s… in our community.”<\/p>\n
Mr Hodson, who is also chairman of the West Harbour Community Board, said he was contacted by residents upset by the graffiti, which appeared facing State Highway88, near Wanaka St.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s absolutely disgusting and I was quite upset myself.<\/p>\n
“[The] anti-Jewish sentiment side of it that was in that message [is] hurtful to a lot of people.<\/p>\n
“You know, Trump, take it or leave it, I\u2019m not too worried about that, but when you start actually separating out different cultures, that\u2019s a different thing.”<\/p>\n
He had not seen such messages around the West Harbour area before, but they were common on social media.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s a lot going on in the world, and we have to be mindful of anything that we say or do has ramifications on other people.<\/p>\n
“Especially if it\u2019s something like this, where you\u2019re putting 2m-high messages against any particular group in the public view on a road that probably has 20,000 cars a day on it.”<\/p>\n