Source: Tom Williams / Getty
”Black Lives Matter” is a mantra that will live forever. Even as the tide has turned on some of the creators and shepherds of the BLM organization with accusations of financial impropriety, even as bad faith conservatives have attempted to put smut on the name, the phrase is bulletproof. Black lives matter, they always have, and they always will.
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Unfortunately, thanks to the folks to help reelect Donald Trump to a second term, America is living under a hateful administration that would like to silence Black and brown voices of protest by any means necessary. One form of silencing is the removal of the famous Black Lives Matter Plaza, a Washington, D.C. thoroughfare at the corner of 16th and H streets that is emblazoned with the revolutionary phrase in big yellow letters.
The street was first propositioned by D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser in 2020 and she was essentially giving then-president Donald Trump the middle finger for his violent rhetoric toward protesters seeking justice for the murder of George Floyd. However, in Trump’s second term, Bowser is much less radical and embarrassingly more deferential to the orange man. She was recently raked over the coals for going to Mar A Lago to kiss Trump’s ring in an attempt to find “common ground”. In reaction to the backlash for her decision to remove BLM Plaza, Bowser dropped this inflammatory reply while openly admitting that she caved under pressure from The White House…
Via NBCWashington
“We have bigger fish to fry than fights over what has been very important to us and to the history, and especially in our ability to keep our city safe during that time, that mural played a very important part,” she said. “But now our focus is on making sure our residents and our economy survives.”
She sounds a lot like Jay Z when he announced that Roc Nation was taking over over the NFL Super Bowl halftime show telling a room full of reporters “we’re past kneeling” when questioned about crossing proverbial the picket line on Colin Kaepernick.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Many gathered this past weekend to mourn the demolition of the plaza before work began this past Monday. APNews spoke to a 45-year-old Maryland woman named Starlette Thomas who says she was a daily protester at BLM Plaza and was heartbroken to see it go.
“I needed to be here today. I can’t just let this go away,” Thomas said, as jackhammers began tearing into the giant yellow letters in the street. Thomas discretely secured a chunk of pavement and said holding it made her feel conflicted.
Before leaving the scene, Thomas grabbed a piece of the broken concrete to take with her saying, “To walk away with a piece of that, it means it’s not gone…It’s more than brick and mortar.”
It’s much more than brick and mortar, it’s our lives and the fight that we still endure to keep them.
