And what about painting political messages on public streets?
The phrase may seem innocuous on its face, but as explained here, is burdened with racial prejudice because it’s being used as a slogan by those opposed to the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, as this video vividly illustrates. If you truly believe “all lives matter,” doesn’t that also include black lives? And if it does, then why would you paint over the words “black lives matter”? Well, this couple may get to explain that to a judge after the police find them; read story here.
You could question the city’s decision to give permission to activists to paint a message not everyone agrees with on a city street (whether anyone should be offended by the idea that black lives matter is a discussion I’ll leave for another day; suffice to say some people clearly are), but the proper recourse is to complain to city officials and ask for its removal, not take things into their own hands.
But that being so, what about people painting graffiti on monuments they deem racist, and in some cases pulling them down? Again, that’s a discussion for another day. But the street art vigilantes in this video certainly could argue, “if they can do that, we can do this.” The answer to that, of course, is that two wrongs don’t make a right. But let’s not forget that the rules have to be the same for everyone.
The real issue here may be whether anyone should be allowed to paint messages on public streets. That’s problematical. And, as this incident shows, it opens a can of worms. It has already spawned at least one lawsuit against a city government.
Update: David Nelson. 53, and Nicole Anderson, 42, were each charged with three misdemeanors, including a civil rights “hate crime” count, for defacing the mural, and could get up to a year in jail; read story here and here. Police arrested another man, as yet unidentified, for pulling a gun on a protester near the mural; read that story here.
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One question should be is Black Lives Matter racist? There are racist blacks. It also matters if the movement is political. Is it a political party? If it is it cannot use its slogan as a shield and as a weapon. As a movement what its goals are is a bit unclear or some of the goals are ephemeral.
The answer to speech is more speech. Especially ugly speech as that is he speech that is protected. And when a government entity allows one group to paint they better allow the KKK to do the same. Frankly as the cities tend to make such streets closed to traffic there are not enough street for all the potential speech and it maybe distracting. Placing driver and the public at risk. I do support the painting of male genitalia around pot holes as local government tends to repair those pot holes.
You make a good point, i.e. if a city lets BLM activists paint messages on public streets, how can they deny the KKK the same privilege? That puts the city in the position of both sponsoring and censoring political speech. It’s troubling. I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this issue; it’s probably headed for the courts.