A few days ago I reported on the media freak out that ensued after video emerged showing a white couple painting over a Black Lives Matter scrawling on a public street. Apparently, the city had allowed the supposed “mural” in a show of solidarity with protestors.
(see Media Freak Out and Decide Vandalism Is Bad Again After Woman Paints Over BLM ‘Mural’)
Calling racism a “leftist lie,” white vandals target California Black Lives Matter mural https://t.co/MA6nNPjPE1
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 6, 2020
The sudden obsession with hunting down these specific “vandals” was enough to give a person whiplash. After all, these were the same media outlets and government officials who had previously sanctioned, or at the very least made excuses for, acts of destruction toward monuments, statues, and various classifications of property. Now, all the sudden, they were against free expression of angst.
Now, things have escalated into absurdity. The local DA in Contra Costa County has decided to charge the couple with a hate crime, which means instead of what usually amounts to a ticket, harsh jail sentences are on the table.
BREAKING: The #Martinez couple caught on video painting over the approved #BlackLivesMatter mural on #FourthofJuly are being charged with a hate crime, according to a release from the #ContraCostaCounty District Attorney’s office. pic.twitter.com/9L21byNsE1
— KCBS 106.9 FM/740 AM (@KCBSRadio) July 7, 2020
In the spirit of learning something new everyday, apparently the autonomous entity of a street painting qualifies as a race, whereby tampering with said painted letters constitutes a “hate crime” against said race.
You may be asking how any of this is supposed to work. How do you prove racist intent when the target is not a person, but a “mural?” Who was the victim here? Wouldn’t it be the city who sanctioned the painting on the street? How can a city be the victim of a hate crime?
I can’t answer those questions for you because there aren’t any good answers. This entire thing is absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps you could charge the couple with simple vandalism, even though that itself would be political given the lack of prosecutions toward supporters of BLM. But at least you could justify such a charge legally. In this case, we are talking about someone who lost their cool and rolled paint onto what is essentially street graffiti. To be clear, Contra Costa County had riots in early June. This DA is going harder after this couple for painting over some letters on a street than he did after those who committed far worse crimes during the mass “protests.”
It also shouldn’t be lost on anyone the veracity with which this city is seeking to protect a few week old street painting, which probably took someone an hour to do, compared to the allowance of the destruction of statues and monuments across the country. You can repaint BLM in yellow on a road. You can’t replace a 100 year old statue of Christopher Columbus.
Justice is no longer blind, if it ever was. These DAs are getting more brazen with their political prosecutions. It’s now clear why the left dumped so much time and money into these local races. The impact they are able to have far outsizes the national profile of these offices. It’s a slow tearing down of the system from the inside.
While I’d normally dismiss these charges as easy dismissal bait for a judge, I can’t be sure of anything anymore. We’ll see where this goes.
