"In a county that Donald Trump won by just 255 votes four years ago," according to the NPR report, "in a state he unexpectedly and narrowly won, the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the protests and violence that followed are likely to influence election results from Kenosha's city hall to the White House."
And it did!
Out the window was something unexpected in this city. It wasn't red; it wasn't blue. Could it have been Black and Latinx and white?
On every single boarded window and door was a message to the viewer:
Black Lives Matter and Justice!
Justice for Jake!
All Black Lives Matter!
Here Comes the Sun!
On the boarded up entrance to the Joe McCarthy Transit Center, spray painted in black, is the abbreviation, "BLM."
And on a good many of the boarded up buildings, the message read, Peace! Love! Unity! Kenosha Unity!
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, in this most deadly year of the pandemic for people of color, these monuments of graffiti testify to the truth of resistance: That those infernal blocks of red on a map of the United States have met their match! Black Americans, Black woman, Latinx women, Indigenous women are rising together, standing, alive, resisting! Here's a glimpse of an empowering vision for the next coming years. On those monuments of graffiti is a recognition that those blocks of red diminishes the possibility of ever building a country dedicated to democracy and to freedom for all.
Yes, we've seen it; we don't like it! And it won't be acceptable any more!
Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!
And then the whitewashing ! This is America, it has to come! One step forward, two steps back. Whites, who don't live in the Uptown area, began painting over the message about justice. Black Lives Matter covered over becomes, Unity! Love! Kenosha Strong!
And who or what represents Kenosha! It's a divided America in miniature, willfully nodding to a narrative that erases pleas for justice, for democracy.
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