A Broken Window in Silver Spring

I understand American Apparel is a hip and happening clothing store, and that's good for them, I think I may not be their target demographic, you might say. Actually, now that I think about it, I did take my daughter there once in high school, to the one in Silver Spring. She didn't buy anything, chip off the old block. Apparently American Apparel has a line of clothing that says "Legalize Gay" on it. See their catalog page HERE. The text on the side says:

In the fall of 2008, Proposition 8 passed in California, striking down the legalization of same-sex marriage. Now the decision rests in the hands of California's Supreme Court, with state lawmakers declaring the vote unconstitutional.

Equal rights for all – repeal Prop 8.

It's bold of them to take a stand, and I think they know their market. "Legalize Gay" is going to sell clothes to cool young people.

But some people seem unwilling to let the free market flourish. They have to regulate commerce, illegally, by trying to interrupt the delivery of desired products to consumers.

Here's the City Paper telling you what happened in Silver Spring.

A local vandal may have found an antidote for the “Legalize Gay” T-shirts that have popped up in American Apparel window displays around the D.C. area—eliminate the window.

When Kassandra Powell arrived for work at the Silver Spring American Apparel store yesterday morning, she was met with a crowd, a police car, and a broken window. “I was told that the [security alarm] went off at 5:15 a.m.,” she says.

Powell, a store manager, had reason to believe that the early-morning glass-shattering was more than your average retail break-in. Nothing was stolen from the store—including the anti-Prop-8 t-shirts prominently displayed on the opposite side of the glass. Gay T-Shirts In Windows A Problem For American Apparel

It seems that lots of times I end up commenting on headlines. They're important. The headline puts the frame on the story, it tells you what the story is about, you look at the headline and decide whether to read further, and you read the text within the context of your expectations, as created by the headline.

"Gay T-Shirts" were NOT a problem for American Apparel. Morons throwing rocks were a problem. Vandalism is a problem, not t-shirts with messages on them.

Ahem.

There's a little bit of a twist to this:

This morning, the Georgetown American Apparel location experienced its own attack from an upset window shopper—this time, over the telephone. Around 10:30 a.m., visual merchandiser Walter Reed fielded a call from a male who was “enraged for no reason.”

“He was like, is this the Silver Spring location? And I said, ‘No, this is the Georgetown location, ‘” says Reed. “He said, ‘You have some Legalize Gay shirts in the window there.’ He said that he and his friends found it offensive, and that if we didn’t take them down, they were going to break it—the window,” said Reed. “I said, ‘Is that a threat, Sir?’ And then he hung up.”

So a smart guy called the wrong store to complain, and by the time they got the message to the Silver Spring store it was too late.

We have been talking about hate crimes. I don't know if this would count as a hate crime, but it is interesting to compare this act to, say, a kid with a slingshot shooting out a window at a school. Do you think there is a difference between those two acts? In both cases, somebody broke a window, that's all. In one case they were trying to stop the dissemination of printed language that supported a group of people, in the other case a kid would rather play outside than sit in class. I doubt this will be prosecuted as a hate crime, well actually I doubt there is any way to catch the idiot who broke this window and I doubt the police will put much effort into it. But it does seem to me that the actor's intent has something to do with the way we interpret their actions.