Overlooked No More

Tracking Traffic-Related Rat Violence in the District

Tracking Traffic-Related Rat Violence in the District

Disregarded as anomalistic incidents, many still don’t believe the onslaught being experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of rats across the District. With this site, we will provide publicly accessible resources for visualizing the data associated with these attacks to tell the stories of the remarkable lives we have lost and to help spearhead actionable change.

The Facts

Each icon represents a rat death in our community. Click on an icon to learn more about each rat's story.

THE VICTIMS

Data are 311 requests for rodent removal from dcopendata.gov. Names were generated randomly. Bios are from NYT wedding announcements. I wanted to vent frustration with two things: 1. These kind of NYT-wedding-announcement-posting people generally suck and don't do much for our society other than take--like rats. But as a society we celebrate the kind of people that they are and when bad things happen to people like them, their deaths somehow matter more. And because they matter so much, others take it upon themselves to "raise awareness" or do something in their honor, like making a website or some dumb shit like that. But in reality, they're just rats and don't deserve much more than a 311 call request for removal. 2. I wanted to point out how meaningless online petitions, hashtag trends, etc. are at affecting real change. Most of this content was taken from other online campaigns with only minor changes to the subject.

TLDR: RICH PEOPLE ARE RATS AND DON'T DESERVE MEMORIALS--THEY DESERVE 311 RODENT REMOVAL CALLS