Have the Balls to Save Your Country

A friend of mine found this street art for me. The art has very positive messages and is created by school kids.

Make Jakarta more artistic

ENVIRONMENT

Have the balls to save your country

Recycle your rubbish

Fresh without pollution

Create an environment that is neat and clean

Clean environment, clean heart. Life is also peaceful

 Clean it beautiful

Want it pleasant okay...orderly

Fresh/clean in chest (lungs). Unfortunately the messages are not heeded by everyone

EDUCATION

Education...improves generations

Plenty of reading, plenty of knowledge

Study the internet wisely - ethical downloading and ethical uploading 

 Lots of reading is smart

SAFETY

Wear a helmet. Don't do it because of police but for your safety

Be careful on the road

Preserve the safety of the city so that they (kids) smile

Your Voice, Your Weapon

The most captivating side of the street art here in Jakarta comes from a social movement that goes by the name of Citizen Journalism. Also known as participatory journalism and grassroots journalism, Citizen Journalism is proclaimed not only on the underpasses of Jakarta, but also by amateur journalists through online social networking sites and blogs.

Born out of the oppressive Suharto-era and baptised in the 2004 tsunami disaster in Aceh, Citizen Journalism aims to shift control of information from business empires who own the major mass media organisations to more widely distributed networks of independent journalists.

Although this type of undertaking is open to a flood of personal biases and uninformed opinions which lack in-depth analysis, the idea as I see it is a democratisation of the media, a kind of open-source wikinews.

 

                        Remind you of something? 

Indonesia has been called "one of the world’s worst places for the press to operate in because of alarming rates of repression suffered by journalists" and has a democracy index lower than East Timor’s. I won't go on about it as it has been covered in two interesting articles, here and here.

Much of the street art expresses a sentiment of justice, a discontent with political and celebrity corruption and degeneration. As far as I can tell, the graffiti pieces aim to expose or criticise the unethical affairs of public figures and corporations, as well as give a voice to the young people in Indonesia.

Not everyone appreciates street art as much as me :(