On June 19, 2021, a brand new statue made in honor of the late George Floyd was unveiled in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. Citizens who reside in the neighborhood of Flatbush came out to support the monumental movements their city has been continuing to create ever since the tragic passing of Floyd. Most people are on the side of justice when it comes to this specific scenario, involving the murder of this man and a local Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, but there are still a few people who seem to be misleading.
An innocent George Floyd was viciously murdered at the hands of ex-officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. Chauvin held a choking Floyd on the ground for eight minutes as he kept pleading that he “could not breathe.” The officer refused to take these words into consideration and continued to press down on the neck of Floyd, inevitably leading to his unfortunate death. Over a year later, Chauvin’s sentencing is still yet to be determined, but people everywhere are praying that the murderer never sees the light of day.
Less than a week after the statue had been left alone for the public to admire and remember the incident that would inevitably ‘change the world,’ a group of people took it upon themselves to vandalize the statue. Caught on camera, a group of four white males was seen putting a layer of black spray paint over the whole face of the statue early in the morning on June 24th. According to the New York Police Department, they also wrote, “PATRIOT FRONT.US,” in white spray paint over the original writing that was carved into the base of the sculpture. Based on the response given from the Southern Poverty Law Center, ‘Patriot Front’ is an unpopular “white nationalist hate group,” clearly being the reason the statue was targeted in the first place.
A similar situation would also take place in Newark, New Jersey on the same day. In which a separate group of people would again spray the statue’s face entirely black while “a website written for a fascist neo-Nazi group” was spray-painted in white on the body of the 700-pound bronze figure. Seeming to become a trend in defacing these meaningful statues, it is not right for opinion-based people to take action into their own hands when not fully understanding the whole situation.