What the Capitol Hill Business Improvement Association has called "blight" and what the Seattle Police Department would deem illegal has now become a national and international poster-art resistance movement. And its birthplace is Capitol Hill.
Replacements Needed, a loosely knit peace collective, began modestly enough in March 2004 during a brainstorming session of "hair farmers," as co-creator, current head and graphic designer, Thomas Hays called them.
"We were watching the news one night and a couple of the older guys were sitting there talking about Vietnam and how the body counts and visuals really helped influence the public against the war," Hays recalled.
They debated on how best to reenact this experience in 2005, Replacements Needed was born. But the end result of that meeting and the current state of the group could hardly have been envisioned by anyone present.
Its physical manifestation in Seattle is most apparent on Capitol Hill, though Hays and his crew have plastered their work throughout King County. Eight-by- 11 posters with the words, "Join the Military. Replacements Needed" are pasted on neighborhood light and telephone poles.
Every one or two weeks Hays, who also lives on Capitol Hill, creates another poster. But each poster uses the same wording. The images as do the body counts: an up-to-date tally of American and Iraqi deaths that resulted from Operation Freedom.
Hays paired this simple concept with a website and e-mail list. On the website, he makes each new poster available for download. This allows anyone in the world to become an active participant in the group and its mission - to discourage military service and end the Iraq war.
Hays and his group quickly found a national following. "We weren't six weeks into it and we were getting attention already," he said.
Thanks in part to the Internet and in part to Hays' sharp design work, the posters have found their way to California, Nicaragua, China and Greece. Hays emphasized, however, the do-it-yourself quality of the posters. While he designs each work, those that download are free to do what they will. "It's completely up to them what they want to do with it," Hays said.
Therein lies the beauty of the Replacements Needed concept. While Hays makes the media available to anyone, the medium for that media is up to each individual. For instance, one participant faxes each new poster to President Bush.
"Somewhere there's a file with all these posters in a filing cabinet at the White House," Hays boasted. "I'd love to see George [Bush] get a hold of one of these."
Path to posters
Hays'activism began just a few months earlier at an anti-War protest downtown. The police arrested Hays for pedestrian interference and disobeying a flagger. He spent three nights in jail, though both charges were dropped.
Not five days after his release, Hays was the victim of a mugging on Beacon Hill. He found the police relatively unconcerned about the crime even though he suffered a disconnected upper palette, and doctors needed to insert five titanium plates into his face as a result. His case remains inactive.
When Hays weighs the difference in police response, he sees a disturbing inequity.
"That told me right there that my voice at the rally is scarier to them than if me and two of my buddies were to start jumping out of bushes at people," he said. As a result he places the responsibility for his activism squarely at the feet of the Seattle Police Department.
Hays' studies at Seattle Central Community College similarly affected his latent activism. In fact, then-Governor Gary Locke mentioned Hays and his academics by name during a 2004 speech lauding the All-Washington Academic team.
"Many of your stories are courageous. Thomas Hays overcame a childhood in group homes, and a period of addiction and homelessness to attend Seattle Central Community College and major in Social and Human Services and excel in student leadership," Locke said. Hays won the Distinguished Chapter President award for his work with Phi Theta Kappa, an international honor society.
Given his experiences, education and worldview, Hays seems like a natural for community activism. His current efforts continue to garner attention. Internationally known Seattle artist Selma Waldman noticed Hays' work on the street and described herself as "amazed" - a major compliment coming from an artist with permanent exhibits in Berlin, Washington, D.C. and South Africa.
"Most work of this sort is indulgent," Waldman said. "[But] in my judgment these images and these fliers are well done. Clear. Simple. Profound."
In fact, Waldman compares Hays' work to that of the anti-Nazi, German artist John Heartfield. Like Hays, Heartfield created photomontages with imagery he recycled from pro-Nazi political propaganda to, in turn, protest the rise and philosophy of the Nazis. Not surprisingly, the Third Reich banned his work.
Waldman went so far as to send copies to a colleague at Ithaca College where they have now found yet another home. She even plans to include the posters as "testimony and text" to complement an exhibit she's been commissioned to create at The Hague.
Yet the success of Replacements Needed may have even more to do with Hays' unintentional utilization of advertising technique, more specifically, branding. Each poster contains the same motto and logo. Coupled with the ubiqituousness of the posters, Replacements Needed created a street presence many businesses would envy. It takes little more than a quick glance for Hays' work to be recognized.
No holds barred
The imagery that accompanies the work is often jarring. Hays refuses to shy away from that which the news media refuses to show - war-injured children, mutilated corpses and flag-draped coffins. When he's not employing patriotic imagery with irony, one theme consistently asserts itself: the consequences of war.
Hays extends those consequences far beyond his notation of American deaths. His design pairs the American death toll with the Iraqi death toll. This reveals a key underpinning of his philosophy as he asserts an important equivalency: no life is inherently worth more than another. Therefore, every Iraqi death deserves witness, as does every American death.
Hence, it's no surprise that some people can find his work disturbing. "I catch hell from various people for various posters," he said. But Hays remains undaunted. "Regardless of what I do, someone's not going to like it, so why should I care?"
Pavlos Nelson, a fellow member of Replacements Needed, agrees and sees their mission as something more than ensuring viewers enjoy or agree with the artwork. "It's less about people agreeing or disagreeing with you, and more about people seeing it - as long as they're looking at it and having some kind of reaction," Nelson said.
Given the growth of Replacements Needed, it's not surprising that negative reactions aren't limited to Seattle. Angelene Gallini attends college at Texas State University San Marcos and recently discovered a Replacements Needed poster nearby.
"No matter what your feelings on the war may be, showing mutilated bodies of our brave soldiers fighting for your lazy asses is absolutely unexceptable [sic]," she wrote. "Do me a favor, and just leave the country as soon as possible because you are a disgrace to the men and women who have died to make this country what it is today."
The content of the posters is not the only thing riling Hays' detractors. Many see the group's plastering of poles as a sign of urban blight. In fact, a recent letter to the editor in the Capitol Hill Times complained about their work, but Hays remains nonplussed.
"People are saying that it's bringing down the value of the neighborhood and ugling things up, but what about the crackheads and the hookers? What about the guy sleeping in the bushes? Are you going to worry about him? There's bigger [stuff] to worry about than whether or not I'm putting a poster on a phone pole," he said.
At times the Replacements Needed crew have found themselves challenged during their work on the street. A hammer-wielding man on Broadway threatened one, while others have been followed and menaced. Still, not all the reaction is negative.
"When I was on the [University] Ave., a cabbie pulled over and told me I was fighting the good fight," Nelson recalled.
Likewise, Hays and his crew have little intention of throwing in the towel, that is until the war finally ends and the troops come home:
"The ultimate goal is not to do this anymore," Hays admitted.
Freelance writer Mario Paduano lives on Capitol Hill and can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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