Reprinted from World BEYOND War:
“Peace” seems to be permitted in subway stations in Washington, D.C., as long as it doesn’t appear to mean anything. World BEYOND War has a project to put peace billboards up around the world. It has had lots of successes and met lots of censorship. Success (that is, getting companies to be willing to take our money and put up our ads) is easiest if “peace” can be imagined to mean something acceptable like “a warm smile” and not anything like “the absence of war.”
For example, in November and December 2022, a holiday season, we persuaded Outfront Media, which handles the ads in the Metro stations in Washington, D.C., to put up ads reading “PEACE ON EARTH.” We snuck in a quasi-mention of war through the URL of our website in fine print at the bottom: WORLDBEYONDWAR.org.
But on January 5, 2026, Outfront Media censored a proposed billboard that added the words “Including in Venezuela,” emailing me: “The ad review panel has determined that the attached proposed advertisement is prohibited by Advertising Guidelines 9 and 14.” Those guidelines come from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which says they were adopted in 1972 and amended in 2003 and 2015. In other words, they haven’t changed between 2022 and 2026, even if the war-culture zeitgeist may have.
Guidelines 9 and 14 read: “Advertisements intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions are prohibited,” and “Advertisements that are intended to influence public policy are prohibited.”
Such rules, even if consistently upheld, would be incredibly anti-democratic.
And it makes little sense to accept the idea of peace on the whole Earth but not in one corner of that same Earth.
But, just as importantly, the DC Metros are simply full of advertisements intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions, and intended to influence public policy. An exception is being made for peace, possibly because many of the ads blatantly violating the guidelines are ads for war machinery.
Look at these ads in the Pentagon Metro station:
People even put up ads in DC Metros blatantly aimed at violating rules 9 and 14 and then publicly blog about having done so.
In 2010, Stephanie Westbrook wrote about all the weapons ads in the Metros at In These Times.
In October 2023, Brett Heinz wrote about all the weapons ads in DC Metros for Jacobin and Responsible Statecraft.
Heinz notes that the weapons ads, which focus on the Pentagon and Capitol Hill stations and the periods of time prior to votes on military spending, don’t just violate the Metro’s guidelines, but also federal law, because the money for them is taken as taxes from all of us:
“Further complicating matters is a federal law banning contractors from spending public funds on ‘influencing or attempting to influence’ government officials toward providing them with additional contracts.”
So, what’s the difference between an ad for peace intentionally funded by numerous small donors, and an ad for weapons of war funded without our consent by our tax dollars? The main difference may be size. We can only spend a tiny fraction of what the merchants of death can spend. Outfront Media’s job is to maximize its own profits, no matter how much blood that leaves on its hands.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBEYONDWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. This originally appeared at WorldBEYONDWar.org.
