How the Black Lives Matter memorial wall was resurrected after Trump supporters tore it down
Source: Washington Post
How the Black Lives Matter memorial wall was resurrected after Trump supporters tore it down
By Katie Mettler
10/30/2020, 9:23:00 p.m.
Nadine Seiler stood before the memorial fence at Black Lives Matter Plaza feeling defeated.
She had spent months outside the White House advocating for Black people like her, and she watched as the fortressed fencing around Lafayette Square went up, then down, then up again. Seiler, 55, watched as the barrier collected protest signs and transformed from a symbol of separation to a space of community healing — a living art gallery to honor those killed by police.
Nearly every day since August, Seiler had driven 45 minutes from her home in Maryland to tend to the wall, becoming an unofficial curator of the memorial. When protest signs fell down, she picked them up. When they became damaged, she repaired them with tape. She organized the mementos there into three exhibits: police accountability, social justice, faces of the dead.
But by Monday night, just days before the bitterly contested Nov. 3 presidential election, her museum was gone.
Twenty-four hours earlier, as newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was being sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the South Lawn of the White House, three people who said they were acting in the name of Jesus stormed the memorial wall, according to Seiler and video posted on social media. The group — led by a White conservative activist from Texas and two antiabortion Black women from New Jersey — worked for hours in the darkness, pulling away sign after sign.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-lives-matter-plaza-signs-removed/2020/10/30/e5dc3f1a-1947-11eb-aeec-b93bcc29a01b_story.html
