The Black Lives Matter murals painted on streets all over the country were not built to last for one road in Redwood City, Calif. located in San Francisco’s Bay Area. A member of the community made a request that caused city officials to hurriedly erase the bright yellow eyesore after she asked the city to paint “MAGA 2020” in the same style to share the road with the BLM painting.
Dan Pease of Redwood City is an artist who was granted permission from legislators to emblazon Broadway Street with the words “Black Lives Matter” for a Fourth of July art exhibition, reported local news outlet KPIX 5. The city even provided the artist with the cost of the yellow paint on the dime of taxpayers.
“Because we were using the poster board paint that would eventually deteriorate over time, my understanding from them was that the mural would last as long as the paint lasted,” Pease mentioned.
The inner artist in local real estate attorney Maria Rutenberg was inspired. She deduced that if the city was willing to endorse Black Lives Matter on a public street, then the street was now a public forum. Rutenberg submitted her own request to paint “MAGA 2020” on the same road.
“I saw the ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign appearing on Broadway Street on the asphalt and I figured that’s gonna be a new public space, open for discussion, and I wanted to get my message out, too,” Rutenberg explained.
City officials were not as accommodating. They gave Rutenberg no formal response, but quickly sent a team to eliminate the Black Lives Matter mural.
Pease justified that he did not see Black Lives Matter as a movement with political ties, but recognized the city was in an awkward position.
“I have no hard feelings to the city council,” Pease stated. “I am disappointed but, at the same time, I am very grateful that they allowed me to put that message on Broadway.”
The current Black Lives Matter movement to “defund” police and intimidate any dissenting voices has caused cities, mostly run by Democrats, to not only let people paint BLM murals in streets themselves, but in many cases officials make the cities foot the bill for the murals.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City authorized a large yellow BLM revenge-mural outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, along with four others in each borough. The murals quickly became a target for outraged members of the public who had to watching their fall apart due to dangerous riots caused by BLM. Residents took it upon themselves to deface the painting three times in the first week it was displayed.
First, one anonymous protester threw red paint on the yellow letters. A few days later, it was smeared again with blue paint by four suspects who were taken into custody.
Over the weekend a black Christian female Trump supporter named Bevelyn Beatty then defaced multiple murals in New York with black paint while demanding the city should “Re-fund the police,” referencing the recent $1 billion budget cuts to the NYPD.
De Blasio, whose own daughter was arrested during the riots, responded by assigning 27 NYPD officers to guard the murals round the clock.
Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. also approved a Black Lives Matter mural on the road leading to the White House. Not believing it went far enough, BLM supporters added the words “Defund The Police” to the painted letters.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, implored Bowser and D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine for the city’s blessing to add “Because No One is Above the Law!” in the middle of another D.C. street near Capitol Hill.
“Mayor Bowser made a decision to turn D.C. streets into a forum for public expression. Judicial Watch seeks equal access to use this new forum to educate Americans by painting our organization’s motto and motivation, ‘Because No One Is Above the Law!,’ on a Capitol Hill street,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. Fitton and his group are now suing the city on the grounds of viewpoint discrimination.