Black Lives Matter street mural unveiled in New York City
Volunteers in New York City came together to paint the city's first Black Lives Matter mural, CBS New York reports. Big bold yellow letters form the words "Black Lives Matter" along Fulton Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
"I just felt a very strong sense of hope. It had a very emotional significance for me," resident LaClaire Robinson told CBS New York on Sunday.
Robinson recently traveled to Washington D.C. to protest police brutality. She said she was moved by a similar mural painted near the White House.
Now, she has inspirational art blocks from her home.
"Things aren't going to change immediately, but it's still going to give hope for the future," Robinson said.
Dozens of artists and local volunteers worked together to paint the Bed-Stuy piece Saturday into Sunday. Dr. Indira Etwaroo is the executive artistic director of the Billie Holiday Theatre, which helped coordinate the project.
"We are putting in over four pages of names of men and women who have been killed due to racial violence in the United States," Etwaroo said. "You are going to see everyone from Emmett Till to Freddie Gray to Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor … it's heartbreaking the amount of names we're going to be embedding."
In their honor, City Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. is also pushing to make the several-block zone along Fulton Street car free.
"We would hope that this would be a plaza where we can come and gather, and really have conversations about the future. And really just a focal point for the change that we seek," Cornegy said.
The corridor along Fulton Street has been turned into an art canvas indefinitely. Organizers hope there will be similar works of art for racial justice around the city.
The @BHolidayTheatre honors & celebrates all the artists who came out in solidarity to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Tayler, Ahmad Arbery, and so many others, exercising their First Ammenment Constiitutional Right, in chorus with protests across the globe. pic.twitter.com/W44TcEY22R
— BillieHolidayTheatre (@BHolidayTheatre) June 15, 2020
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