The 140-foot mural stands next to a building in downtown Spokane, Washington, sponsored in part by Terrain, a local nonprofit art organization. Terrain, along with digital advertising agencies 14Four and Seven2, hired 16 artists to decorate and paint each letter on Black Lives Matter, according to CNN affiliate KXLY.
For some, however, it was insulting. The mural, completed less than two weeks ago, was destroyed on Wednesday.
But the community is not allowing the negative response to hinder the effort. A fundraiser to restore the mural has already raised more than $ 10,000.
“It took dozens of people working with love to make this project happen, and only one or two hateful people disfigured it,” Terrain said in a statement posted on Facebook. “We outnumber them, but we cannot be still or silent.”
Artist Nicholas Sironka designed and painted the “A” in “Black” on the mural, a letter that received the brunt of the white paint. He was not surprised that the mural had been smashed, he told CNN.
“I feel like the whole Black Lives Matter thing now has more meaning, unity of purpose. They are all tied to one purpose and that is eradicating inequality and injustice and all of those things together,” he said.
Kiantha Duncan, vice president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, said she had a gut reaction when viewing the photos.
“This is extremely scary,” Duncan said on the local KHQ news station. “When the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ are enough to annoy people in a city so much that they not only protest against it, but destroy the same words on the side of a building.”
Spokane Police spokesman Sergeant Terry Preuninger told local media The Spokesman-Review that the department had been informed of the vandalism through the media, but had not confirmed whether a formal complaint was filed.
This is not the only BLM mural that has been defaced in recent weeks. In Spokane, a George Floyd mural was defaced with white paint, though it has now been restored.
In Manhattan, the Black Lives Matter street mural outside Trump Tower has been defaced four times, despite being completed on July 9.
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