Protestors have recently fixed signs that they carried with them to the White House’s temporary fence, turning it into a roughly 1.7 mile-long memorial for racial justice.
The recently erected fence around the White House is around 8-feet high and measures some 1.7 miles in length.
The fence has been reinforced with concrete barricades by workers over the last few days in order to prevent entry from places such as Lafayette Square in repose to recent protests, according to The Washington Post .
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Protestors have since turned the fence into a memorial for Black Americans killed by police.
When confronted with the barricade, some of the protestors began to attach the signs that they had been carrying to the fence. Over time, more and more protestors began to join in and have since turned the fence into a powerful memorial.
The peaceful protestors have managed to create what was described by some as a “crowd-sourced memorial wall”.
Many took to Twitter to share striking images of the incredibly moving scene.
Hannah Natanson, a reporter for The Washington Post tweeted a video of the scene, writing, “The fence outside the White House has been converted to a crowd-sourced memorial wall — almost like an art gallery — to black men and women who lost their lives at the hands of police […] Hundreds are strolling, looking, adding names and paintings and posters.”
The wall contains many images and memorials to specific Black Americans who have been unjustly killed.
George Flloyd’s face and name can be seen along the wall, as well as flowers and birthday wishes for Breonna Taylor, the EMT who would have been 27-years-old earlier this month had she not been gunned down in her home by police.
Also found on the wall can be found paintings of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched after being falsely accused of offending a white woman back in 1955, CNN reports.
Messages to defund the police, fund Black communities, and vote Trump out of office can also be seen.
President Trump, something which to this very day still feels wrong to say, published a letter last week calling peaceful protestors “terrorists” after having them forcibly removed from the Lafayette area by police using flashbangs and tear gas, as CNN reported earlier this week.
Many people have been moved by the memorial.
Thousands have taken to social media and Reddit to share images of the wall, writing the likes of:
“This beautiful art around [The White House] counters the ugliness inside.”
“Turning Trump’s wall of failure into a two-mile-long billboard for civil rights? That’s absolutely brilliant.”
“Between this and the mayor painting, ‘Black Lives Matter’ down the street outside the WhiteHouse, I’m loving these peaceful power moves. Way to go DC!”
This memorial comes shortly after the plaza outside of the White House was renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza”.
Last week, Muriel Bowser, the Washington D.C Mayor, renamed the plaza outside of the White House as, “Black Lives Matter Plaza”, as Evening Standard reports.
This decision has been seen as a critique of Trump’s handling of the current situation.
It is uncertain how Trump will respond to the memorial.
This memorial will help to keep the names of Black Americans who have unjustly lost their lives in the minds of the American people.
You can still help support the Black Lives Matter movement in a variety of ways, some of which being to donate to their movement and to rally against the systematic racism that exists not only in the US, but across the globe.
h/t: CNN
