The street in front of the courthouse in Martinez, California was painted with a controversial message on July 4th, 2020, and not everyone in the community was happy about it. One California couple decided that they were going to do something about it and illegally decided to paint over it. The mural says “Black Lives Matter” in bold letters.
The couple went there with paint and rollers and started to go over the bright yellow words. The man, David Nelson, recorded the woman, Nicole Anderson, painting over the message, which is how they have been identified. The man spoke in the video, saying that he is sick of what is going on and that racism and police brutality are lies. The couple is facing charges for what they have done in destroying the mural, but they have not yet been convicted of their crimes.
The district attorney in Martinez, California, Diana Becton, said that Black Lives Matter is an important cause that deserves attention. She believes that painting the mural was a positive thing to do, and she is hopeful that her community and the country will begin to heal as people begin to listen to one another. She said that it was a peaceful way to get the message out there and that painting it on the street was also a powerful thing to do.
It took a good amount of time for the mural to be painted, and the couple quickly destroyed the work that was put into it when they went over a few of the letters with the black paint. It has been restored to what it was supposed to be since then, though, as the community has not given up on sharing the message of “Black Lives Matter.” Nicole Anderson, the woman who painted over the mural, said that she did not want this kind of thing in her town. She said in the video that was recorded during the incident that the message belongs in New York and not where she lives.
A bystander in the video told the vandalizers that what they were doing to the mural was racist. The police chief said that the couple showed up with all of the tools that they needed to paint over the mural and purposefully began dumping paint on it and destroying it. The police have been searching for the two individuals who did this since it happened. David Nelson and Nicole Anderson are being charged with hate crimes over what they did to the mural. They are also being charged with violation of civil rights and vandalism, and if they are convicted of all of these crimes, they may spend up to a year in jail.
