Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

DC Comics continues to circle not only the creative drain, but the moral drain as well with their latest Batman comic, Batman: Fortress #1, which sees Batman flee from an Antifa and Black Lives Matter style riot.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

The comic written by Gary Whitta with art work by The Boys Darick Robertson sees Batman investigating an alien interference that causes global blackouts.

As Batman attempts to figure out what is the cause of the blackouts, he is also called on to protect Gotham City after the entirety of the prisoners in Arkham Asylum are unleashed upon the innocent citizens.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

RELATED: Renowned Batman Writer Chuck Dixon Reveals How He Would End Batmans Story

Batmans first stop is to a rooftop overlooking an electronics store that is being looted with neighboring buildings, some of them appearing to be apartments, being set on fire. The rioters are even shown waving blunt objects in the air.

Batman rationalizes that he shouldnt put a stop to the rioters because there are more than likely bigger fish to catch out in Gotham City, despite having no knowledge of where these big fish might be, given the power and communication black outs.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

Whitta writes Batmans interior monologue, Havent seen a night like this in a while. Last time it was this bad was with that damn fear gas in the water supply. Only so much I can do. Need to prioritize. Hunt the big fish. Protect the little fish.

These places all have insurance. Not my job to protect their profit margins. In my fathers day, the American Dream used to mean something. An honest wage for honest work. Food on the table. Liberty and justice for all. Now its an illusion, a carrot on a stick, attainable by a few, dangled just out of reach for everyone else.

A bigger TV. A faster car. Shiny objects to keep the masses distracted, while the world burns. You want to blame them for grabbing the carrot when the lights go out? Go ahead. But dont look to me to stop them. Thats not why I do this, he concludes.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

While Batman leaves these looters and rioters to burn down the city, he does randomly track down a number of Joker thugs who are threatening to kill an innocent family.

He also randomly shows up at Gotham Harbor and stops Penguin from drowning a blonde woman.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

From there, he also stops Joker who has hijacked a school bus in the middle of the night. Batman stands directly in front of Joker on a bridge as Joker seeks to ram him with the bus.

As Joker closes in, Batman deploys a giant flash that blinds Joker and sends him and the bus nearly careening off the bridge, putting the childrens lives in danger. Joker, not wearing a seatbelt goes flying through the windshield.

While the children are saved, Joker dangles from the bumper of the bus about to fall into the water below. Batman grudgingly rescues him rationalizing that if he let Joker he wouldnt be able to explain his actions to the children who are watching him.

Its unfortunate there werent any children watching him allow the electronics store and the neighboring apartments, more than likely filled with innocent citizens, get burned to the ground.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

Nevertheless, Batman ends his night by heading to Crime Alley where he beats up a criminal who appears to have shot and killed a couple and has begun to loot their bodies.

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

While prioritizing certain crimes over another is practical, the way the story actually plays out, the rationale doesnt make any sense. Batman has no idea where these big fish are because of the power and communications black outs.

He might have one of his satellites up and operational, but he tasks Alfred with using it to scan for exoterrestrial activity. He does offer Jim Gordon a way to counteract interference disrupting the communications, but he makes it clear he will be using it to contact the GCPD so they can bring in the criminals he captures.

Source: Batman: Fortress #2

Batman chooses to ignore this mob in favor of seeking out other possible crimes. Instead of stepping in and stopping crime that he sees happening in front of him, he chooses to ignore it in the hopes he will find other more horrific crimes being committed.

On top of that, he actually sits and ponders the crimes being committed and justifies ignoring them when he could have actually been putting a stop to it.

Source: Batman: Fortress #3

However, the comic also depicts the crimes being committed by the Antifa and Black Lives Matter-like mob as worse or could be arguably worse than the crimes committed by Joker and Penguin. The mob isnt just looting an electronics store, it appears to be burning down apartment buildings too. Its also unclear if theres any staff in the building that have already been brutalized by the mob.

Penguin is attempting to murder one woman and Joker has a bus full of kids. How many women and kids are in these apartment buildings that the mob is burning down?

Source: Batman: Fortress #3

Not only can you look at Batmans rationalization for ignoring the crime, but his decision to not put a stop to these criminals also shows that hes a hypocrite. The beginning of the book actually opens with Bruce Wayne and Alfred beating down a bunch of thieves who attempt to loot his manor believing that hes not home.

If Batman actually believes the rationalization that Whitta gives him in his interior dialogue, why isnt he allowing these thieves to loot his home. After all, Bruce Wayne surely has insurance, right?

Source: Batman: Fortress #1

Nevertheless, the biggest crime of the book is the fact that Batman didnt find a way to not only stop the crimes being committed by the Antifa and Black Lives Matter-style mobs, but also round up Joker, Penguin, and other criminals attempting to take advantage of the black outs in Gotham City.

Batmans smart enough to figure out how to put a stop to the mob and move on to the next criminals. Instead, Whitta and Robertson sacrificed Batmans character in favor of lecturing readers about the American Dream and trying to paint a violent, angry mob as sympathetic.

This is just the latest piece of evidence that DC Comics no longer actually tells stories about heroes, and they go out of there way to disrespect their own characters.

Source: Batman: Fortress #4

What do you make of Batman ignoring and fleeing the scene of a crime without attempting to intervene?

NEXT: Ethan Van Sciver And Jon Del Arroz Rip to Shreds Tom King Batman Comic That Implies He Is a Scared Child

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Batman Flees Antifa And Black Lives Matter Style Riots In New Comic: "These Places All Have Insurance, Not My Job To Protect Their Profit...

Three defendants were held to answer Wednesday to charges they violated the civil rights of a Black Lives Matter supporter during a November 2020 incident in Bakersfield.

Kevin Connell, Kristi Stewart and Timothy Stevens were charged with violating civil rights, conspiracy and misdemeanors of fighting or challenging a fight in a public place. Connell was additionally charged with second-degree robbery and possessing tear gas. Each defendant was held to answer on every charge. The arraignment is scheduled for June 6.

Erika Harris, who clashed with the defendants during the 2020 protests, testified at a preliminary hearing that she was blocked from leaving a Black Lives Matter gathering by the three defendants, had bear mace sprayed at her and called racial slurs.

Judge Michael G. Bush said it was no coincidence these people ended up in the same location protesting, adding he was not suggesting Harris was 100 percent truthful during some of her testimony.

There's obviously bad blood between the two groups, Bush said. That in and of itself doesnt make it a crime.

Bush added it is unclear if bear mace was sprayed, though Connell said it was during the incident. But, the chemical was certainly a tear gas, he said.

Dustin Marion, the fourth person charged in this incident, took a plea deal that resulted in him pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of fighting or challenging a fight in a public place. Allegations of violating civil rights, conspiracy and stalking were dismissed.

Marion was sentenced to 14 days in jail on May 17.

You can reach Ishani Desai at 661-395-7417. You can also follow her at @idesai98 on Twitter.

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3 held to answer on charges of violating civil rights of BLM supporter during 2020 protests - The Bakersfield Californian

24 May 2022, 14:51

The Daily Wire's documentary will see Candace Owens revisiting Minneapolis following the tragic death of George Floyd.

Marking the 2-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, a new documentary will see Candace Owens revisiting Minneapolis following the aftermath that fuelled BLM's global rise..

The documentary will see Owens a Conservative political commentator navigating and exploring the political landscape in Minnesota's major city following George Floyd's case.

She will also delve into the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Here's everything we know about the documentary...

The Greatest Lie Ever Told: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM will air on Monday May 23rd 2022.

The documentary will be hosted on The Daily Wire an American conservative news website and media company founded in 2015.

The documentary will be available to stream for members of The Daily Wire on their official website.

It will become available to watch on Monday (May 23rd 2022).

The documentary is available exclusively to members of The Daily Wire's website, so sign up is required.

New members can get 25% off their membership by using the code CANDACE.

The code refers to Candace Owens who is at the centre of the documentary.

The documentary will not be available to stream on major services such as; Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock etc.

It is strictly only able to be watched on The Daily Wire.

Watch the official trailer on YouTube linked below.

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The Greatest Lie Ever Told George Floyd and the Rise of BLM: Air date, trailer, how to watch & more - Capital XTRA

Just days after the deadliest mass school shooting in Texas history, the National Rifle Association (NRA) Americas leading gun lobbyist group will meet a few hours away in Houston on Friday.

Ashton P Woods says they are not welcome in his home town.

These people are coming into our community. The city of Houston needs to kick them out, said Woods, an activist and founder of Black Lives Matter Houston. We have to be just as tough about these things as they are.

Woods is helping organize one of several protests planned just outside the George R Brown Convention Center, where NRA members will browse through exhibits of firearms and gun paraphernalia and hear speeches from key Republican leaders.

The goal of the Black Lives Matter protest, Woods said, is to get loud outside while powerful speakers including the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, Texas senator Ted Cruz and former US president Donald Trump take the podium inside. Woods said the issue of firearms was particularly important to the civil rights group that primarily tackles issues of police brutality in America.

Whether it be death by suicide, death by cop, death by mass shooter, we need to control the access people have to deadly weapons, Woods said. These things are interconnected.

The NRA is a powerful lobbying organization in American politics, spending nearly $5m in 2021 to pressure lawmakers to oppose measures like universal background checks for gun sales and bans on powerful assault weapons.

About 55,000 NRA members are expected to attend the event in Houston. The annual meeting is often a draw for activists and counter-protests as members inside discuss firearms policy often the need for expanding access to guns.

Outside the convention center, multiple counter-demonstrations are expected in Houston especially in light of a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Houston police are also expecting crowds at the convention center. Jodi Silva, a police spokeswoman, said the department does not share details of its policing strategies, but that there would be a visible presence of officers.

We always are aware of the demonstrations and/or counter-demonstrations and staff accordingly, Silva said. We staff accordingly to make sure that everyone can participate and be safe.

Megan Hansen and the Rev Teresa Kim Pecinovsky watched the news updates from Uvalde on Tuesday in shock. When they found out the NRA would be in Houston Friday, they decided they also needed to take action.

We live in a state full of people who love their guns more than they love the lives of the children in their community, Pecinovsky said. I had to do something with that amount of rage and lament.

Hansen and Pecinovsky have organized an interfaith gathering that will include a silent march and a moment of reflection when organizers will read the names of those who died in Uvalde.

While Texass politics are staunchly conservative, the Houston area has become a bastion of progressivism. Harris county, which includes Houston, voted for Joe Biden by 56% in 2020. Hansen said she wants others to know that the NRAs message does not reflect that community.

Houston is the most diverse city in the United States and we have people from all over the world who do not agree with the rhetoric of the NRA, Hansen said. We want to just say, remember the people who we lost and how can we take this feeling and turn it into action?

That action specifically legislative measures to restrict access to high-powered firearms is unlikely to come from Republican lawmakers in the state. Yet activists in Houston want the shooting in Uvalde and protests this weekend to spark more pressure on political leaders to prevent the next tragedy.

Im hopeful this will not just be something people attend and then leave, Pecinovsky said. It needs to be a catalyst for real and tangible change.

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Outrage as NRA to gather in Houston just days after Texas school massacre - The Guardian US

A Hells Angel who was caged for his part in a violent riot while opposing a Black Lives Matter protest has died just 15 days after being sent to prison.

Colin Green, who was leader of a region of the motorbike group, died just over two weeks into his 29-month prison sentence on Tuesday.

During his sentencing hearing on May 9, the court heard how the 58-year-old was among a mob who gathered at Greys Monument in Newcastle. They were opposing a group demonstrating in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The court heard how shocking scenes unfolded as the counter-protesters attacked police and the other group by throwing cans, bottles and smoke grenades. Police officers, horses, dogs and members of the public were injured in the June 2020 riot, according to Chronicle Live.

Although Green didnt throw anything, Judge Edward Bindloss said he was an influential figure as the leader of the local Hells Angels in Tyne and Wear.

Judge Bindlosssaid: My assessment of him is of him walking around in a cool, calm arrogant manner, walking up to the police and behind them, striding around in a way that made me assess him as thinking he was untouchable. He is highly influential and it was open to him to say we are leaving the scene, lets go. He chose not to do so.

Nick Lane, defending, said he has no previous convictions, didnt throw anything but is significantly ashamed and embarrassed by his behaviour. He said he was bitten by a police dog during the disturbance and was taken away in an ambulance.

He added that he was in a paid role with the Hells Angels and has done a lot of charity work via the group. Green provided references to the court, including from a former police officer.

Green, of Church Street, Sunderland, pleaded guilty to violent disorder and was jailed for 29 months. He was joined behind bars by a number of other rioting louts, which including other members of Hells Angels.

HMP Northumberland in Acklington, Northumberland, holds 1,348 male offenders and is run by Sodexo Justice Services. The prison said an investigation will now take place into Greens death.

A spokesperson for the category C prison said: We can confirm that a prisoner sadly died at HMP Northumberland on Tuesday 24 May 2022. The next of kin have been informed and our thoughts are with the family. As with all deaths in custody, there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and therefore we are unable to comment further at this stage.

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Hells Angel who took part in violent riot while opposing Black Lives Matter protest dies in prison - Daily Record

This article was originally published here

PLoS One. 2022 May 25;17(5):e0267889. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267889. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

This study uses an experimental audit design, implemented both before and during the heightened unrest following the murder of George Floyd, to gauge the impact of Black Lives Matter and associated protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism on racially disparate hiring practices. We contrast treatment of fictitious Black and White job applicants in the labor market for service-related job openings, specifically applicants with prior experience as a police officer, firefighter, or code enforcement officer. Results reveal that the White advantage in employer call-backs and requests for an interview receded during the protests and unrest following the killing of George Floyd, even to the point of producing a Black advantage.

PMID:35613116 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0267889

See the article here:

Do black lives matter to employers? A combined field and natural experiment of racially disparate hiring practices in the wake of protests against...

May 25, 2022

Tianna Arata standing on a highway barrier

By KAREN VELIE

Three appellate court judges will determine early next month if San Luis Obispo County Judge Matt Guerreros ruling to recuse the entire district attorneys office in cases regarding Black Lives Matter protesters followed legal requirements.

During a July 21, 2021 BLM march, Tianna Arata allegedly led approximately 300 protesters onto Highway 101, blocking all lanes in both directions for nearly an hour. While on the highway, protesters ran after vehicles attempting to drive off the freeway and yelled profanities at some of the drivers.

Prosecutors charged Arata with one count of unlawful assembly, one count of disturbing the peace, six counts of obstruction of a thoroughfare, and five counts of false imprisonment all misdemeanors.

The district attorney also filed two misdemeanor charges against Jerad Hill, three misdemeanor charges against Sam Grocott, a felony charge of vandalism and a misdemeanor charge against Robert Lastra, four misdemeanor charges against Marcus Montgomery and one misdemeanor charge each against Joshua Powell and Amman Asfaw.

During a Dec. 10, 2020 hearing, defense attorneys argued that District Attorney Dan Dows personal political opinions jeopardized the seven defendants rights to a fair trial, and that local prosecutors should be replaced by the California Office of the Attorney General.

In opposition to the defense, local and state prosecutors argued against the disqualification, noting the defense is required to show an actual conflict of interest and not a perceived conflict.

Judge Matt Guerrero

Judge Guerrero then ruled that the District Attorneys Office had a clear conflict of interest based on the wording of an email Guerrero said District Attorney Dan Dow and his wife sent to supporters seeking donations. The email asks Dan Dows supporters to help him lead the fight against the wacky defund the police movement and anarchist groups that are trying to undermine the rule of law and public safety in our community.

In early Jan. 2021, the California Attorney Generals Office and the SLO County District Attorneys Office appealed Guerreros ruling to recuse the entire district attorneys office because it fell well short of the statutory standard.

The trial court abused its discretion by ordering disqualification of the District Attorneys Office based upon unsupported factual findings and incorrect legal conclusions, according to the Attorney Generals Office. Respondents failed to establish that there was an actual and disqualifying conflict of interest.

The Attorney Generals Office argues Guerrero relied on newspaper articles and a patchwork of unreliable hearsay, which even if reliable does not qualify as a conflict of interest.

It must be emphasized that these exhibits do not constitute competent evidence under section 1424, according to the states brief. And the trial courts reliance on incompetent evidence is emblematic of the flawed nature of its decision.

Prosecutors also challenge Guerreros determination that Dan Dow participated in sending or was aware of his wifes email.

Critically, the record is devoid of affidavits from District Attorney Dow, Wendy Dow, or anyone else who might have personal knowledge about whether he knew of or approved the email, according to the states brief.

Even if Dan Dow was aware of the email, the state argues the allegations would still fall well short of the legal requirements because even as an elected official, Dan Dow is permitted to hold strong, and even controversial, views, including views that do not align with BLM.

Attorneys for the alleged rioters argue that Guerrero properly considered the email they claim Dan Dow sent.

The email established a disabling conflict of interest because District Attorney Dow asked for campaign donations so he can keep leading the fight in SLO county and to ensure he will continue, according to Aratas brief. Thus, District Attorney Dow effectively promised his supporters that if they contributed to his campaign for re election, their money would ensure he would continue prosecuting Black Lives Matter protesters, like Arata.

Aratas attorneys also argue that Dan Dows attendance at an event in which Candace Owens spoke shows he is biased against the BLM movement.

At the event, Ms. Owens called Black Lives Matter one of the most racist movements that ever existed in this country, according to Aratas brief. When questioned, District Attorney Dow wrote a letter to the SLO Tribune stating, Candace Owens is a bright and intelligent, fearless woman and a role model for young women everywhere.

Following multiple investigations, law enforcement agencies sought charges against the BLM protesters, who argue the driver of a BMW hit one protester. Investigators determined the protester jumped on the hood of the car, and was not hit.

The back window of the BMW broken by a protestors skateboard. The glass fell on a 4-year-old child in the backseat.

However, in his brief Lastra argues that the real potential for unfair treatment is demonstrated by the failure of the District Attorneys Office to charge motorists who weaponized their automobiles against nonviolent demonstrators.

Prosecutors argue Lastras claim of selective prosecution is not relevant to the appeal, because Guerreros ruling was based solely on Wendy Dows email. Also, that allowing defendants to disqualify district attorneys based on Dan Dow and his supporters political views could weaponize the ability to disqualify.

Defendants would be permitted to disqualify district attorneys for the opinions of the elected district attorneys most intemperate supporters, according to the state. But district attorneys and their offices may not be disqualified for the views of their alleged supporters or even for their own views.

The appellate court is scheduled to hear oral arguments at a hearing on June 9.

More:

Validity of SLO County judge's ruling on BLM activists headed to court - Cal Coast News

The Black Lives Matter foundation has revealed it received more than $90 million in donations last year despite the movement being splintered by ongoing feuds about the lack of funding.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation announced the massive influx of money late Tuesday the very first time BLM has disclosed its finances in its nearly eight-year history.

With $8.4 million in expenses and $21.7 million committed to local chapters, the group ended 2020 with an approximate balance of $60 million, it stated in an impact statement.

We are no longer a small, scrappy movement. We are an institution, the foundation boasted.

We are entering spaces previously unimaginable.

The financial disclosure came amid heightened tensions in the network of activists with group of 10 chapters, called the #BLM10 and including ones in New Jersey and Hudson Valley, splitting in November while publicly ripping the main organization over financial transparency, decision making, and accountability.

To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013, the 10-chapters insisted in a public demand for accountability.

That lack of funding came despite BLM getting donations from A-list celebrities such as Beyonc, Jay-Z and prior to his death in 2016 Prince, The Associated Press noted.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors the foundations executive director insisted that the financial boost in 2020 was radically different than previous years, however, without releasing further records.

Because the BLM movement was larger than life and it is larger than life people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like, Cullors told the AP.

We were often scraping for money, and this year was the first year where we were resourced in the way we deserved to be.

The donations exploded following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, whose death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the US and around the world, the foundation said.

That was matched by online interest, with the BLMGNF website getting a record 1.9 million visitors on June 2 an almost 5,000 percent increase over the most trafficked day in March, the report said.

BLM vowed to use the money to be more active.

Black folks have waited over 400 yearsto be seen, to be heard, to live in a world where their lives are fundamentally valued, the report stated.

Despite the strength of our movement, this has yet to happen. Our demands continue to go ignored. As the organization supporting this movement, weve decided that we will wait no longer.

Cullors told the AP that a key focus was now on a need to reinvest into black communities.

One of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution weve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years, she said in an interview.

With Post wires

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Black Lives Matter received over $90M in donations last year

Wednesday will be the second anniversary of the lurid street murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The killings of Black people had become almost banal in their incessancy and redundancy, but something about this one captured during an advancing pandemic that had forced people apart and inside, watching the world through windows and screens drew thousands of people out into the streets, where boarded-up storefronts produced the tempting tableau of a country strewn with canvases.

Some saw in the uprising the potential for revolution. They talked about the protests in the lofty language of a racial reckoning, an inflection point, a fresh start on Americas path to absolution from its original sin.

But flashes of guilt, outrage and shame often stir fleeting fealties, and the heavy gravitational pull of racial privileges and power can quickly draw mercurial allies back into the refuge of the status quo.

Some good came of the protests, to be sure. Some states and local municipalities passed or instituted police reforms. Money poured into Black Lives Matter, as well as other racial justice organizations and Black institutions. Individuals began personal journeys to become more egalitarian and more actively antiracist. And artists produced hundreds of murals and thousands of pieces of other street art that, for a time, transformed this country.

In the end, transformative national change proved to be an illusion. Inflation, a war in Ukraine, public safety, abortion and even a baby formula crisis have overtaken the zeitgeist. Support for Black Lives Matter has diminished. Federal police reform and federal voter protection both failed to pass the Senate. And the founders of Black Lives Matter have been drawn into controversies about how they handled its money.

Ive learned not to expect much from America; it has a deep capacity for change but a shallow desire for it. I have embraced the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, as James Baldwin put it. But I worry about young people in all of this. It is their faith thats most vulnerable to damage. They were the ones who most believed that change was not only possible but imminent, only to have America retreat and retrench.

Now not only are their allies reversing course on issues like police reform; the country is also facing a full backlash toward protest itself. Dozens of states have passed laws restricting the right to protest (just this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida barred citizens from protesting outside private homes), and more than a dozen have now criminalized teaching full and accurate racial history.

The Great Erasure is underway, not so much an attempt to erase the uprising itself as an attempt to blunt its effects.

There is no example of this erasure more striking than the continual destruction, removal or slow vanishing of much of the street art produced in the wake of Floyds killing.

According to a database compiled by three professors at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota Heather Shirey, David Todd Lawrence and Paul Lorah there were once approximately 2,700 murals, graffiti, stickers, posters affixed to surfaces and light projections created in response to Floyds killing, mostly in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Shirey and Lawrence called it the largest proliferation of street art around one idea or issue or event in history. But many of those pieces have disappeared, sometimes because of exposure to traffic or the elements and sometimes because of deliberate attempts to erase them. Business owners quietly removed the graffitied planks from their storefronts. Some of the murals have been defaced.

For this project, my colleagues and I looked at 115 murals created after Floyds death and tried to determine how many had been maintained. (It is not a comprehensive list, although it is hard to imagine any such list could be.) Only 37 were fully intact. In cities from Oklahoma to California, few vestiges remain of what were once vibrant murals, painted on asphalt and walls.

In 2021, six police officers sued Palo Alto, Calif., because it had commissioned this mural, which included aportrait of Joanne Chesimard, a former member of the Black Liberation Army convicted of killing a state trooper in1973. The lawsuit was dismissed, but by that point,the city had already removed the mural.

This mural, designed by Avrion Jackson, was one of six that an army of some 1,000 volunteers paintedaround Kansas City in 2020. Last fall, the organizers said they planned to raise funds to restore the murals, but work on this one has not yet begun.

In spring 2020, city officials teamed up with local organizations to commission variousartists to design and paint each letter of this eclectic colorful mural. The city reopened the street to traffic that fall, and the paint has since worn away.

When this mural first appeared on Fulton Street in June 2020, the districts council member said he would seek to turn the street into a permanent pedestrian plaza. But it soon opened to traffic, which erased the lettering.

Over the past two months, I talked to art historians, museum directors and curators, activists and artists who had created murals. The picture that emerges is of a group determined to preserve as much of the art as possible while understanding that it cant all be saved, and an acknowledgement of the inherent, ephemeral nature of street art. This art was created in a moment, for a moment. Permanence was often not its central consideration. But to lose it would be to lose a cultural record of the time, a record of the profound significance and magnitude of what transpired: A generation of young people and young artists found their voice and used it, creating an arts movement that sits in the canon alongside the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Harlem Renaissance. You might even say it mirrors on an enormous scale the Wall of Respect mural first painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture in Chicago.

What may have been different about this movement was the outlook of the generation that created it. Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual anthropology and contemporary history at the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture, described it to me as a sense of entitlement. These activists and artists believe they have an absolute right, and even a responsibility, to express themselves, he told me. They arent necessarily a generation that was raised to be silent.

The art produced during and after the uprising was powerful, emotional and energetic, like a lightning storm. But like lightning, the illuminated contours of the way it split the sky soon dimmed and vanished.

The art tapped into something and provided a language for it. As Franklin Sirmans, director of the Prez Art Museum Miami, put it, Some of the best art is created under situations of not only duress but of immediate response, and that is part and parcel with this sense of collective identity that I think many of us felt in that moment, and to see it visualized was really heartening.

For me, it was transcendent. It brought a fresh, abounding energy to a standing tradition.

Murals as instruments of memorial have long been a feature of Black grief and remembrance. They are what Amaka Okechukwu, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at George Mason University, so eloquently describes as gravestone murals or wake work haunting the urban spaces where Black lives have been lost.

By no means are these murals the expression solely of African Americans. They can be found in many communities and in many cultures around the world, where the tradition of producing them is centuries old.

But in a way, Floyds murder globalized gravestone murals in service of a singular subject. Perhaps the most iconic of these murals were thoses with the words Black Lives Matter written in large block letters down the middle of streets. The first was painted by the District of Columbia and was so large that it was legible on satellite images.

People like Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University, saw it as a powerful testament symbolizing the precarity of black life in open terrain. But activists soon pointed out that the politicians who supported the art often resisted policies designed to rectify the historic injustices Black Lives Matter had highlighted. When the District of Columbia painted its mural, the local Black Lives Matter chapter called it a performative distraction from real policy changes designed to appease white liberals while ignoring our demands. Mayor Muriel Bowser was on the wrong side of history, they said. Black Lives Matter means defund the police.

These tensions stretched beyond Washington.

In Minneapolis, at the intersection where Floyd was murdered now called George Floyd Square the George Floyd Global Memorial project has taken on the Herculean task of preserving all protest objects, items the group calls offerings, including art and murals, in the square. So far it has collected over 5,000 artifacts, preserved them with the help of art conservators and stored them in cardboard boxes in a small room in a community theater. The group has ambitions to one day build a museum to house it all. Some of the murals in George Floyd Square were being repainted when I visited this month, ahead of the observances of the second anniversary of Floyds murder. New ones have been added featuring other Black people killed elsewhere, some lost to community violence rather than state violence.

This level of ambition makes Minneapolis both the epicenter of the preservation efforts and an anomaly. Governments in cities across the country, like Tulsa, Okla. and Redwood City, Calif., have erased the murals, reflecting the reality that many lacked the true, sustained commitment to Black lives.

Activists painted this mural on what was once "Black Wall Street," the wealthy community ravaged in Tulsa's 1921 race massacre. City officials later removed themural because it was never officially approved, but before they did, protesters erected paper tombstones on the siteto memorialize Black lives lost to violence.

A married couple worked with volunteers to paint this mural on the fence outside their home in 2020. It was painted over the following year to comply with city ordinances that prohibit fences from being more than one color or from displaying words, pictures or signs.

Further complicating the preservation efforts is the degree to which these pieces of art were politicalized from the moment of their creation: Murals were going up as Confederate monuments in cities like Montgomery, Ala., continued to come down. It fueled the fears held by white supremacists that white people and white culture would eventually be superseded.

In their zero-sum worldview, BLMs pro-Blackness was inherently anti-white. President Donald Trump called a Black Lives Matter mural to be painted in front of Trump Tower in New York City a symbol of hate. Historical revisionists held fast to the lie that Confederate monuments were about history, rather than racism. The fight was over which art representing which points of view was more deserving of public display.

Its perhaps also no coincidence that much of the artwork created after Floyds death is vanishing as the public embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement is waning. Polls last year by the Pew Research Center found that support for Black Lives Matter, which peaked in the immediate aftermath of George Floyds death, had fallen back to its 2017 levels, pre-George Floyd. Black support had remained high; it was the support among white people that fell.

Activists chafe at the notion that the BLM movement itself is waning.

Every off year we write Black Lives Matters obituary, and we eulogize it and we talk about the waning Black Lives Matter Movement, Frank Leon Roberts, creator of the Black Lives Matter Syllabus, a public curriculum for teaching BLM in classrooms and communities, and newly appointed assistant professor of English and Black studies at Amherst College, told me.

The movement actually is not waning, he said. The movement from its inception has operated in waves. He predicts that there will inevitably be another heinous event of police violence which will once again incite something in the people, and then well be having this same conversation.

But police killings have continued unabated. In fact, last year saw a record number of police shootings, the most since The Washington Post began keeping count in 2015. The police killed 1,055 people across the country in 2021. And yet, there were no nationwide protests.

In my life I have arrived at the conclusion that real liberation equity, safety and the pursuit of happiness is not rooted in feelings and personal evolutions. Only a change in the parameters of power political, economic and cultural, who has it and who gets to exercise it, who is benefited by it and who is harmed by it can transform this country.

Passions flare and subside; power endures. Like the art, broad-based, transracial interest and energy to support the Black Lives Matter movement are fading. I mourn the loss of that energy, but I also mourn the loss of the movements art from public space. In the streets it was both declaration and confrontation, brazen and assertive. It was forcefully in your face.

Now, even among the artifacts that can be or have been saved, the context will change from the urgency of in-situ to the sterility of institutions or the impersonal distance of digital space.

The art that once shouted and demanded and documented the movement is being culled and reduced to the dulcet-toned advocacy of a few heroic curators.

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Opinion | George Floyd and the Fading Signs of Black Lives Matter - The New York Times

A new inscription will be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park on Wednesday 25 May 2022 at 5pm with a ceremony that is open to the public.

25th May is the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event which was instrumental in the development and spread of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Following a public consultation exercise in 2021, a new pillar inscription at the Milton Keynes Rose will mark 25 May and Black Lives Matter.

The wording on the inscription refers to George Floyds death and states:

No person should put their knee, chain or noose

on anothers neck because of their colour

Revd Edson Dube, who led the campaign to have the inscription on behalf of the MK Council of Faiths, said: "25th May is a date which globally will forever be commemorated and remembered for the crime that was committed against Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis.

"This date is one of deep importance to both the city and the people of Milton Keynes as the date stands as a consistent reminder of the need to eradicate hate, racism and prejudice from our community and the world."

Debbie Brock, Chair of the Milton Keynes Rose Trustsaid: "The Trust is grateful for the considered and helpful nomination it received in favour of the Black Lives Matter pillar and welcomes the day being commemorated for many years into the future to remind us of the horrific murder of George Floyd and to affirm that in Milton Keynes Black Lives Matter."

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New pillar honouring Black Lives Matter Movement to be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose - MKFM