This editorial is about noticing something that is small and ugly — and trying to do something about it.

Chapter 1

For more than a year, islander Peter Ray has been on a mission: he wants islanders and visitors to Vashon to stop throwing cigarette butts out of their cars on Vashon Highway.

Since February 2022, Ray has not only picked up but also photographed more than 1000 butts he has found on his weekly walks along the same one-mile stretch of Vashon Highway.

For Ray, what started out as a concern about potential wildfire grew into a general concern for the environment.

According to the World Health Organization, tobacco products are one of the most littered items on the planet — roughly 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, and beaches each year.

Plus, of course, they are flammable, which is why there is a $1025 fine in Washington for throwing a cigarette out of a car.

In July, Ray exhibited his photos, documenting the butts he had found on Vashon roadways, at the Penny Farcy Building, and invited Mike Lasecki, from King Conservation District, to answer questions about wildfires and fire prevention assessment to those who stopped by the one-day exhibit. Attendance wasn’t great, he said.

Ray’s crusade has also included writing a Beachcomber commentary, published online last September, and repeated emails to the county, asking for more signage on Vashon to alert islanders not to throw their butts out of the window.

Last November, the emails to the county paid off, when Ray was told that Roads would add two additional “don’t flick your butts” signs on the north and south end of the island.

Ray didn’t particularly like the signs, though — they were small, and didn’t warn of the $1025 fine for littering. Rather, the signs depicted a graphic of a hand shaped in a “flicking” gesture, and also showed the trajectory of a cigarette butt sailing through the air.

But something else bothered Ray about the signs, which he wrote about on Facebook and in a letter to King5 News earlier this year — they reminded him of the now-infamous “okay” hand gesture, used by white supremacists as a signal for white power.

The hand on the signs — as Ray showed in photos both on Facebook and in his email to King5 — was shaped with the index finger and thumb in a closed circle — signifying “power,” with three other fingers raised in the air, forming a “w” — just like the white supremacist gesture.

Since 2019, that index-finger-to-thumb gesture has been included on the Anti-Defamation League’s “Hate on Display” database, showing symbols that have proliferated in some corners of the internet that are now associated with white supremacy and the far right.

Ray’s Facebook post about the similarity between the two graphics didn’t get much traction, he said, and King5 never responded, he said.

Chapter 2

In April, another islander — who we aren’t naming here — began to email King County Roads, pointing out that the signs also reminded her of the white power gesture, and also included graphics of the hand signal in comparison to the signs.

After receiving several perfunctory and non-conclusive replies, the islander forwarded her email chain with the county to The Beachcomber last Friday, suggesting that it might be a possible story for the newspaper.

Ever busy, we did something fast — we shot her email chain back to the county, adding John Taylor, the Director of Local Services, to the list of recipients, asking if the county intended to fully address the complaint.

By the end of the day, we had received a response saying the signs would be taken down over the weekend — and that we’d receive a letter from the director of the county’s Roads Services Division, apologizing for the signage and lack of response to the islander’s serious complaint (see “Letters,” page 6).

Chapter 3

We’re not sure what to make of all this here at the Beachcomber, but we’re glad our email to King County got such a fast response.

It makes us realize, once again, that the press can truly help get some things done. Just think what might have happened if King5 had latched onto the problem with the county signage.

Cigarette butts are ugly and toxic and incendiary. So is white supremacy.

We can’t solve these huge, intractable problems. But like Peter Ray and the islander who wrote to the county and The Beachcomber, we can all help by pointing out dangerous things when we see them.

Paying attention to the small stuff matters.