In feud with Trump, D.C. mayor emblazons ‘Black Lives Matter’ on road near White House

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday renamed a street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had the slogan painted in huge yellow letters on the roadway in an apparent rebuke of President Donald Trump’s militaristic response to U.S. protests over police brutality.

Bowser tweeted footage of the street painting on a section of 16th Street in the U.S. capital with a message to Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police who has inspired nationwide protests along with George Floyd, a black man who died on May 25 in Minneapolis police custody.

“Breonna Taylor, on your birthday, let us stand with determination,” Bowser wrote. “Determination to make America the land it ought to be.”

Bowser and Trump are at odds over the president’s use of federal law enforcement agencies and military police to break up a protest on Monday night so he could have a photo op outside a church near the White House.

“We want troops from out-of-state, out of Washington, D.C.,” Bowser said at a news conference on Thursday.

On Friday, a U.S. official said the Pentagon would be sending back the remaining 900 active-duty troops who had been sent to the Washington, D.C., area to potentially respond to civil unrest.

The city also installed a street sign for Black Lives Matter Plaza at the intersection of H and 16th Streets, site of the St. John’s Episcopal Church where Trump, holding a Bible, stood for his Monday night photo op.

Using rollers and buckets of yellow paint, with brushes to finesse the edges of the letters, a group of people – men and women, of different races and ages, some wearing roller blades, some work boots – painted the street. Many were sweating under the warm sun.

 

Trump used his favorite medium Twitter to deliver a barbed response to Bowser. “The incompetent Mayor of Washington, D.C., @MayorBowser, who’s budget is totally out of control and is constantly coming back to us for “handouts”, is now fighting with the National Guard, who saved her from great embarrassment… …over the last number of nights. If she doesn’t treat these men and women well, then we’ll bring in a different group of men and women!”