You might have heard about the people arrested, and in one case charged with a “hate crime,” for trying to paint over the legalized Black Lives Matter graffiti defacing our streets. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as a California woman proved by getting a BLM message off a local street by cleverly using the law:
She announced that if the pavement was now a public forum, then she demands equal access for her message — “MAGA 2020.”
And that BLM graffiti was gone faster than you could say “I can’t breathe.”
If you’ve wondered why a pentagram, a “Festivus” pole, and even a Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster display may sit alongside a Nativity scene at Christmastime, it’s based on a First Amendment interpretation holding that the government may not discriminate among types of religious and political speech. It’s the Cloward-Piven strategy applied to culture.
Yet what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as KPIX reports:
Many communities across the country are displaying “Black Lives Matter” street murals. Redwood City was one of them until last week when the city quietly removed it.
… But, last Thursday, the city washed the sign away after being contacted by local real estate attorney Maria Rutenburg, who said that if the street was now a public forum, she wanted a sign of her own reading “MAGA 2020.”
“I saw ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign appearing on Broadway Street on the asphalt and I figured that’s gonna be a new public space, open for discussion, and I wanted to get my message out, too.” Rutenburg said.
… “MAGA” is, of course, short for Make America Great Again, a rallying cry for supporters of President Trump. Faced with the possibility of a political and/or legal fight, the city suddenly decided that … [the BLM message] was a traffic hazard that might cause accidents and they removed it in the middle of the night. [Video below.]
Ah, nothing like a lawsuit threat to separate the poseurs from the principled.
This could be replicated throughout the country, with requested messages ranging from “MAGA” to “All Lives Matter” to “White Lives Matter” to “Jesus Matters” and beyond. Moreover, if such cases were litigated and worked their way through the system, I consider a ruling in favor of “equal access” likely.
There certainly are many who want the BLM graffiti gone, as the acts of “democracy” (to use Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan’s terminology) against it evidence. For example, below is a video of Jesus Matters protester Bevelyn Beatty “augmenting” BLM graffiti in Manhattan.
As to this news report and others, the top commenter under the above noted some hypocrisy. “It’s hilarious how they say this is vandalism but say all of the vandalism done in Chop in Seattle is called ART,” he wrote.
Yes, and mobs destroying statues are called “protesters.”
(By the way, do you think the BLM boosters yelling “Why don’t you stop her?!” would have complained if the cops used a chokehold on Beatty?)
Moving on to more anti-BLM action, below is a video of an unknown man doing his part on NYC’s Fifth Avenue.
It’s good he was wearing a face mask. I mean, you wouldn’t want to contract the Wuhan virus, after all (cough-cough!). The NYPD’s determination in tracking down the culprit may be obvious, too: “Yeah, we’ll get right on that, Mr. Mayor…”
But if the police do, it can be no laughing matter, as a white California couple charged with a “hate crime” for attempting to beautify a BLM-scarred street learned (video below).
This is all the more reason to embrace Rutenburg’s legal strategy and, quite deliciously, use the Left’s own tactic against it.
This said, since it’s important to not just be a political animal driven by expediency, a deeper point should be made:
The equal-access notion, which has given us outrages such as Christmastime satanic displays, is bunk.
The First Amendment guarantees that government will not suppress speech or religion. It does not guarantee that government will equally showcase it.
Also note that the prohibition against establishing a religion doesn’t mean the state can’t showcase it.
Our history makes this clear. The Founding Fathers opened the very first Congress with exclusively Christian prayers, they remained exclusively Christian for most of our history, and even today are mainly so. And is it tenable saying the Founders didn’t understand what they meant when crafting the First Amendment?
Moreover, aside from the aforementioned silly “religious” displays, equal government showcasing of faith and “expression” could theoretically mean 100 other statues next to a state chosen statue (courts have ruled that symbolic speech is protected) and a multitude of mischievous and malevolent messages accompanying a state chosen message. Conceivably, this could give us a KKK-oriented statue next to one of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s silly thinking the Founders intended such an overwhelming of the system. Yet the subordinating of the ultimate precedent, the Constitution, to judges’ fictional precedents has brought us to this point. And if the courts can give us the public display of a phony religion’s symbols, maybe they can also give us a display of sanity next to a phony movement’s message.
Photo: AP Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
