Tuesday, June 2, 2020: As I toured the 1600 block of Monument Avenue with my morning coffee in hand I noticed the signs on front porches and in windows. Mostly, they supported Black Lives Matter and decried police brutality. There were plastic bottles of water on front steps still waiting to be picked up by demonstrators who were defying the curfew last night. I saw parked cars that had been painted with slogans.
As I stopped to shoot photos of the graffiti-laden Confederate memorials (Stuart and Lee), I decided to move in closer, to be better able to read the messages left for our consideration. As I live in the neighborhood, I've seen those same monuments decorated with outlaw art before.
Then it struck me how different the graffiti looks this time. This time many different hands did the painting. And, for what it's worth, the messages were varied, in terms of what they seemed to convey.
The first thing that came to mind, as far as what to compare the look with, is the way the graffiti-covered remnants of the Berlin Wall appeared in photos I remember seeing, once the hated wall had been dismantled, to no longer divide the city.
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Yes, the 1600 block of Monument Avenue has been established as an epicenter of the ongoing series of battles between mostly young demonstrators and various brands of cops. The stark difference between day and night has become routine. We're now living in Day 5.
During the daytime's beautiful weather, along the celebrated wide thoroughfare's grassy areas it's like a happening, out in the public way, during the long-gone hippie era. At night it's a tense conflict over who controls the turf adjacent to Richmond's most famous/most despised Confederate memorials -- Lost Cause monuments that in recent years have become magnets for troubles.
People running between houses and down alleys, with a soundtrack of yelling mixed with hovering helicopters. So far, so good: it seems nobody has been killed or hurt badly. But it's easy to believe that will change if it keeps going every night. There's a lot of frustration in the tear-gas-spiced air.
Monday night (June 1), just minutes after Trump's publicity stunt in which some sort of cops on horseback routed a gathering of peaceful protesters around the White House, in Richmond a few cops lost control and set off tear gas in order to run off a group of peaceful protesters that were gathered in the neighborhood.
The mayor has apologized. The explanation for why the cops did it – a half-hour before the mayor's published curfew for the city! – was that they came to believe some in the crowd were trying to topple the monuments.
To the pull bronze statues off of their pedestals?
Really?
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