Nov 142017
November 14, 2017
Show up Saturday! The community wants its mural back
Posted by Sarah Turner
Posted on November 14, 2017
THE COMMUNITY WANTS ITS MURAL BACK!
SATURDAY 11/18 12:00 – 2:00 pm
GUILD THEATER 35th & Broadway
A couple weeks ago, a beautiful mural commemorating Black community members who were killed by local law enforcement showed up on the side of The Guild Theater in Oak Park, a community that is rapidly erasing Black history and Black culture through gentrification.
The neighborhood and family members of those who were killed were quick to express praise and gratitude for the mural.
However, just days later the mural was scrubbed down and all that remains are red blotches.
Join Black Lives Matter Sacramento to let it be heard — the community wants its mural back!
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2 Responses to “Show up Saturday! The community wants its mural back”
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Certainly any person who does not agree with this protest rally should refrain from attending it. Our Racial Justice team has done us the favor to encourage us to show up at the invitation of Black Lives Matter, and in support of BLM’s work to raise awareness of state violence and other inequities. Raising awareness is my understanding of the purpose of the mural.
It’s really hard to get a lot of questions answered in a very brief news story. I think the most important story here is one of lives lost. It is newsworthy that a smaller city like ours has lost so many black men to police violence. I don’t watch enough TV news to know if they have covered every black man’s death with at least the same amount of time or clarity as they gave to the mural’s being painted and then removed. I will be grateful if the rally raises awareness of this ongoing crisis in our country and if it lifts the names of those neighbors whose lives were taken.
As a white person who inherited many things from our economic and social system, I am aware that I inherited the privilege not to ask the question more broadly, “Who is my neighbor?” I’ve had the privilege to not understand the experiences of people of color with law enforcement agencies and mass incarceration, the privilege to not have to mourn and grieve so many deaths of unarmed men, and even the privilege not to have to learn about those deaths in the first place.
So I am striving to be in a position of trying to learn what I didn’t know. This article by the late, great James Baldwin is one of the many things that have been helpful to me: http://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/
Blessings to all, and blessed be.
A mural was painted on private property, without permission, and when it was removed by the owners of the property BLM planned a protest. One news report containing details can be found at http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/11/10/mural-dedicated-to-black-men-killed-by-police-painted-over-in-oak-park/
What position is UUSS taking in supporting this protest? How would UUSS respond if someone chose to come in the night and paint a large memorial mural in a prominent place on one of the walls there?