New Yorkers Are Taking It Upon Themselves To Scrub The Subway Of Swastikas

NEW YORK, NY — Sometimes a mess on the NYC subway is just too ugly to wait on an MTA cleaning crew. In two separate instances in the past week, New Yorkers who noticed anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled in the subway system took it upon themselves to scrub away the hate, according to photos and stories posted online.

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First, last Thursday, an unidentified passenger sent a photo to New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office of "a swastika drawn in green marker in the center of a United States flag affixed" to a northbound B train, Cuomo's office said.

But the swastika was a swastika no more. It had been "boxed out in a black marker and altered with the letters 'L-O-V-E,'" Cuomo's office said.

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The governor has since turned the small gesture into a movement: He's asking New Yorkers to do their part to "turn hate into love," then document it on Twitter using the hashtag #TurnHateIntoLove.

A group of dozens of passengers aboard a northbound 1 train did just that on Saturday night, after they noticed their subway car was "covered" in swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti. (Including the phrase "Jews belong in the oven," jotted onto an MTA map.)

"I got on the subway in Manhattan tonight and found a Swastika on every advertisement and every window," Harlem resident and local attorney Gregory Locke, 27, wrote on Facebook. "The train was silent as everyone stared at each other, uncomfortable and unsure what to do."

But the awkwardness quickly turned to action.

"One guy got up and said, 'Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol,'" Locke wrote. "He found some tissues and got to work."

"I've never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purel," Locke wrote. "Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone."

One of the passengers who helped, Manhattan chef Jared Nied, told a CBS reporter that the group effort made him feel "unified. Which is one word I would not use to describe America today. Unified, and just powerful."

UPDATE: In an interview with Patch, Locke remembered that everyone in the subway car "was just sort of dumbfounded, and felt sort of powerless" — until Nied came up with the hand-sanitizer idea.

"He was the one that provided an outlet for everyone's discomfort," Locke said. "And once everyone realized it wasn't a powerless situation, they all pitched in."

Locke added: "People think of New Yorkers as cold and uncaring, but I don't think that's true. New Yorkers have a harder shell to crack. ... But something so blatantly wrong will crack that shell and expose the warmth."

Lead photo courtesy of Gov. Cuomo's Office