New York City workers, with the help of the mayor, painted the words "Black Lives Matter" on the street in front of Trump Tower.
Bill de Blasio, the New York mayor, attended to help protesters paint the large yellow letters outside the Trump Organisation’s headquarters on Thursday. Due to the action, Mr de Blasio tweeted, “Our city isn’t just painting the words on Fifth Avenue.
We’re committed to the meaning of the message. #BlackLivesMatter.”
Trump and Blasio’s opinion on Black Lives Matter mural
The mayor helps paint the wall that was defined by Trump as a “symbol of hate“.
Last year, Donald Trump refused to apologise for saying the men should be executed in 2014, having taken out four full-page ads in four New York City newspapers demanding the death penalty be reinstated.
Mr de Blasio announced the plan for this mural amid widespread disapproval at Trump administration inaction over both Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Mr Trump said New Yorkers would be “denigrating this luxury Avenue” with the mural. He turned hard against the tear-gassed protesters outside the White House who in recent months were demonstrating violently for the death of George Floyd.
The US president also pushed New York’s police department to block the mural’s installation, after Mr de Blasio and New York City council passed budget cuts on the department last week.
Trump wrote on twitter “Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!”
Because of Mr Trump’s comments, Mr de Blasio told the president that “the fact that you see it as denigrating your street is the definition of racism. Here’s what you don’t understand. Black people BUILT 5th Ave and so much of this nation. Your luxury came from THEIR labour, for which they have never been justly compensated. We are honouring them.”
New York’s Black Lives Matter mural comes after Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser painted the same letters on what was renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza amid demonstrations last month.
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