COURIER LIFE, JUNE 19-25, 2020 37
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY TODD MAISEL
Brooklyn got its own Black Lives
Matter mural over the weekend — similar
to the one painted near the White
House in Washington, DC.
Residents and elected offi cials
were led by local artists on Saturday
in painting the words along Fulton
Street, across the street from Restoration
Plaza in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
State Attorney General Letitia
James, fi lmmaker Spike Lee and Reverend
Al Sharpton were among those
who helped bring the mural to life —
Sharpton adding that he would move
to rename the block “Black Lives Matter
Way.”
The fi nished piece was showed off
on Sunday, during an unveiling at
which Councilman Robert Cornegy
took it a step further, announcing that
he would seek to create a pedestrian
plaza, stopping traffi c on that portion
of Fulton Street.
“I want to keep this closed as a
plaza forever and ever — the Department
of Transportation has already
agreed,” said the pol, who is one of several
City Council members calling for
$1.2 billion in cuts to the Police Department
that would help fund other programs.
“The movement around the country
and the demonstrations have evoked
these emotions, so what we wanted to
do in Bed-Stuy — which is the last bastion
of Black homeownership, Black
small business, Black ecumenical
power, and Black political power — is
to have this as a place that we can converge,”
Cornegy said, noting the volume
of demonstrations that take place
nearby at Restoration Plaza.
And so, Cornegy said, area electeds
teamed up with the Billie Holiday Theater
and its Artistic Director Dr. Indira
Etwaroo to make the area a “focal
point.”
“We really wanted to begin to
change the narrative,” he said, marveling
at the community involvement.
“While the painting was going on, people
were lining the sides and would quietly
ask, ‘can we paint,’ and they were
given the opportunity to grab a brush
and paint. The idea is for communities
like this and those across the country
to take ownership of their future.”
Twenty Brooklyn artists came together
for the project “in the midst
of two pandemics,” Dr. Etwaroo said.
“The pandemic of COVID-19 and of racial
injustice.”
The artistic director said the mural
is not art — but rather protest — in a
neighborhood that “has historically
forged pathways forward for the Black
community and Black artists.”
One passerby, 25-year-old LaClaire
Robinson, called the creation a “symbol
of hope.”
“It might not be a law that’s passed
or a new policy or bill, but this is
something on people’s minds and a
reminder of what people have gone
through,” Robinson said. “That change
really needs to come and it gives hope
that change will come and people are
looking to make that change.”
A spokesperson for the mayor’s offi
ce confi rmed in an email to Brooklyn
Paper that Fulton Street from Brooklyn
to New York avenues will be open to pedestrian
only traffi c for the summer.
Word on the street
Fulton Street gets block-long Black Lives Matter mural
MESSAGE DELIVERED: Local artists and
elected offi cials painted the words “Black
Lives Matter” on Fulton Street across from
Restoration Plaza in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Photo by Paul Frangipane