{"id":56947,"date":"2026-01-05T08:54:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=56947"},"modified":"2026-01-05T08:54:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:54:54","slug":"washington-d-c-censors-peace-on-billboards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/05\/washington-d-c-censors-peace-on-billboards\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington D.C. Censors Peace on Billboards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from World BEYOND War:<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPeace\u201d seems to be permitted in subway stations in Washington, D.C., as long as it doesn\u2019t 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<\/a>. Success (that is, getting companies to be willing to take our money and put up our ads) is easiest if \u201cpeace\u201d can be imagined to mean something acceptable like \u201ca warm smile\u201d and not anything like \u201cthe absence of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, in November and December 2022, a holiday season, we persuaded Outfront Media<\/a>, which handles the ads in the Metro stations in Washington, D.C., to put up ads reading \u201cPEACE ON EARTH.\u201d We snuck in a quasi-mention of war through the URL of our website in fine print at the bottom: WORLDBEYONDWAR.org.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But on January 5, 2026, Outfront Media censored a proposed billboard that added the words \u201cIncluding in Venezuela,\u201d emailing me: \u201cThe ad review panel has determined that the attached proposed advertisement is prohibited by Advertising Guidelines 9 and 14.\u201d Those guidelines<\/a> 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\u2019t changed between 2022 and 2026, even if the war-culture zeitgeist may have.<\/p>\n

Guidelines 9 and 14 read: \u201cAdvertisements intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions are prohibited,\u201d and \u201cAdvertisements that are intended to influence public policy are prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such rules, even if consistently upheld, would be incredibly anti-democratic.<\/p>\n

And it makes little sense to accept the idea of peace on the whole Earth but not in one corner of that same Earth.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Look at these ads<\/a> in the Pentagon Metro station:<\/p>\n

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People even put up ads in DC Metros blatantly aimed at violating rules 9 and 14 and then publicly blog about<\/a> having done so.<\/p>\n

In 2010, Stephanie Westbrook wrote about all the weapons ads in the Metros at In These Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In October 2023, Brett Heinz wrote about all the weapons ads in DC Metros for Jacobin<\/em><\/a> and Responsible Statecraft<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019t just violate the Metro\u2019s guidelines, but also federal law, because the money for them is taken as taxes from all of us:<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther complicating matters is a federal law<\/a> banning contractors from spending public funds on \u2018influencing or attempting to influence\u2019 government officials toward providing them with additional contracts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s 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\u2019s job is to maximize its own profits, no matter how much blood that leaves on its hands.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll keep trying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBEYONDWar.org<\/a> and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org<\/a>. Swanson\u2019s books include<\/i> War Is A Lie and<\/i> When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org<\/a> and WarIsACrime.org<\/a>. He hosts Talk Nation Radio<\/a>. This originally appeared at WorldBEYONDWar.org<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from World BEYOND War: \u201cPeace\u201d seems to be permitted in subway stations in Washington, D.C., as long as it doesn\u2019t 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[927],"class_list":["post-56947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56952,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56947\/revisions\/56952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56947"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=56947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}