A street was also renamed.
6 min read
Just a few blocks away from the White House, in the heart of Washington D.C, big, bold, bright yellow letters reading “black lives matter” stretch along 16th Street NW between H and K streets.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also renamed the street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter PLZ,” she said during a press conference on Friday. A new street sign bearing the name has already been put up at 16th and H streets.
The art is located two blocks from Lafayette Square, where on Monday Park Police and other law enforcement agencies used flash-bangs and what protesters described as tear gas to make way for the president’s walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church. The next day, the U.S. Park Police said it and other agencies had not used the gas, but rather that it used smoke canisters and pepper balls.
Bowser tweeted an overhead video of the completed mural Friday morning.
She also tweeted video of the new street sign being put up.
BlackLivesMatter DC was not impressed with the mayor’s gesture, tweeting “This is performative and a distraction from her active counter organizing to our demands to decrease the police budget and invest in the community. Black Lives Matter means Defund the police.”
Earlier on Friday, Bowser tweeted a letter tweeted a letter she sent to Trump on Thursday requesting that the president “withdraw all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence from the city.”
“Our police and incident commands have cleared channels of communication and roles and it is important that these additional, unidentified units are operating outside of established chains of commands,” she wrote in the letter.
“This multiplicity of forces can breed dangerous confusion, such as when helicopters are used in a war-like tactic to frighten and disperse peaceful protesters.”