Nearly every week since “Black Lives Matter” was painted in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan, someone has unloaded a bucket of paint on the giant yellow letters.
In one incident, two women shouted “All Lives Matter” as they ran across the three words while pouring paint on them. Another time, a woman yelled, “Bill de Blasio doesn’t care about Black people!” as she smeared the street art with paint while on her hands and knees.
As of Monday night, the words had been defaced by paint at least five times. Most of the paint throwers were swiftly arrested, the police said, and city workers repainted the letters.
The defacing has come as many New Yorkers continue to protest against systemic racism and police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.
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The first incident happened just four days after the painting’s unveiling on July 9, the police said. A man walked to the street — the block of Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets — with a paper bag, took out a bucket of red paint and poured it mainly over the word “Lives.” Workers from the City Department of Transportation quickly cleaned and repainted the letters. No arrest has been made.
Four days later, the police said, two women and one man arrived with blue paint; a video showed one of the vandals wearing a shirt that read “All Lives Matter.”
The next day, a Times reporter saw a group of women throwing black paint on the words as they screamed phrases including “Refund the police” and “Jesus matters.”
The two most recent incidents occurred on Saturday and Sunday, when a man from Rochester cast paint over the street art, the police said.
Source: ‘Black Lives Matter’ Mural Outside Trump Tower Is Vandalized Multiple Times
