A subway car full of New Yorkers came together to erase Nazi graffiti with hand sanitizer
Michael Semensohn / flickr
On Saturday night, New York based-lawyer Gregory Locke posted on Facebook that, earlier in the night, he had entered a New York City subway car with advertisements covered in Nazi imagery.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, a fellow passenger took action.
"One guy got up and said, 'Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol.' He found some tissues and got to work," Locke wrote.
Other passengers quickly joined in, with tissues and hand sanitizer of their own. According to Locke, within two minutes all of the graffiti had been cleaned away.
"'I guess this is Trump's America,' said one passenger," Locke wrote. "No sir, it's not. Not tonight and not ever. Not as long as stubborn New Yorkers have anything to say about it."
Other Twitter users appear to have confirmed the incident.
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/828085899338584064
On the subway today. My friend Jared cleaned it off w/borrowed hand sanitizer. #NYC #swastika #hate #nazi #TheResistance @ShaunKing @PURELL pic.twitter.com/G2XV3VK2dR
Locke's Facebook post quickly went viral, racking up more than 300,000 likes by Sunday morning. The story spread to Facebook, where a screenshot of the Facebook post by a Huffington Post editor was favorited 124,000 times, and retweeted by 87,000 users.
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/828098079719096320
Meanwhile, in New York City. pic.twitter.com/2OiArRm1HU
Hundreds of people have commented on Locke's post and posted about the incident on Twitter, including former first daughter Chelsea Clinton.
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/828138634649833473
This is how you make America great again.
Fighting Nazi's on the Subway https://t.co/jHqsIf83bS
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/828118741728759809
We will not let hate win. And, another reason to carry hand sanitizer. pic.twitter.com/bgrAJf7SCv
"Props to the person who finally stood up and did the right thing by getting people motivated to get it off," reads one such comment. "The important thing to remember is that the person who wrote that is outnumbered by the people who took it down. Solidarity people!"
Others, however, dismissed the photos as "propaganda" and took issue with Locke connecting the incident to Trump's election.
"Racists have been writing hateful things in public spaces forever," one person commented on Locke's Facebook page. "Stop blaming Trump."
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