District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser announced this week that the Black Lives Matter mural that defaces what used to be called 16th Street NW leading up to the White House will be obliterated this summer. However, she did not commit to renaming the space or returning it to its previous condition. Any movement by Bowser away from official municipal endorsement of the radical and fraudulent BLM movement is welcome, but replacing one mural with another would be the wrong move. There are too many ugly and crude daubings already besmirching Washington, and one should be able to expect a dignified aesthetic, especially in the area around the White House.
Painted in the middle of the night just days after law enforcement officers were forced to use tear gas to disperse a violent crowd in front of the White House, the yellow block “BLACK LIVES MATTER” lettering on a black background, never satisfied anyone, least of all the BLM movement, which denounced Bowser’s theatrics as a “performative distraction from real policy changes.”
BLM activists expressed their displeasure and identified the policy changes they wanted by painting their own “DEFUND THE POLICE” message on the street. That graffiti was eventually removed, and Bowser spent an additional $5 million increasing pedestrian access to the space, calling it a “permanent monument.”
Now that Trump and the Republicans are back in power, what Bowser once treated as a permanent monument is now being used as an expandable pawn to be sacrificed by the mayor to keep Congress from stepping in to take control. “We have bigger fish to fry,” Bowser told constituents about the BLM mural decision Wednesday night, a reference to her fight to keep Republicans from ending home rule for the district altogether. Earlier that same day, Trump rescinded an executive order extending federal control over the city. He said Bowser can avoid a federal takeover if she promises to remove more homeless encampments around the White House and State Department.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) also introduced legislation that would withhold federal transportation money from the district unless the mural is removed and the space renamed “Liberty Plaza,” a move Bowser has not yet embraced. While the removal of the mural is a good first step, extirpating “Black Lives Matter Plaza” is essential.
From its inception, the Black Lives Matter movement was built on the explicit lie that a violent teenager, Michael Brown, was shot while peacefully surrendering to police and the more general but equally pernicious falsehood that unarmed black men are shot in disproportionately high numbers by police. After the death of George Floyd, what had been just an online hashtag became a hundred-million-dollar grift that, at best, did nothing but buy mansions for the movement’s corrupt founders and, at worst, got thousands of black men murdered as police departments were defunded and police stopped enforcing the law.
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Corporate America and localities including Washington eagerly embraced Black Lives Matter rhetoric for cynical and selfish reasons. Corporate America wanted to sell more soft drinks and sneakers, and cities wanted to boost tourism. After her $5 million worth of civic desecration was finished, Bowser prominently displayed Black Lives Matter Plaza on the city’s Visit D.C. tourism website. Bowser’s promotion materials for Black Lives Matter Plaza included a list of over 20 black chefs and black-owned restaurants and bars in DC, but there was no policy page or any information about what Bowser was doing to improve law and order in black communities.
As long as the mural is being removed and the space renamed 16th Street, there is no need to rub salt in Bowser’s wounds by making her rename it Liberty Plaza. The space was great when it was called 16th Street, and it will be great if its old self is restored and conserved.
