Painting over "Black Lives Matter" on a street surface — that's a hate crime?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

08 July 2020

 

 

Even under Wokeness's nauseating reign . . .

 

. . . we will eventually have to forgive some 'whites', who think that some 'blacks' are (occasionally) dumb as shit.

 

 

In this regard

 

A news quote — with my comments in bracketed italics:

 

 

Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton [who is 'black'] on Tuesday charged the peaceful protesters seen painting over a city-approved Black Lives Matter street mural with a hate crime and is seeking to put them in prison for a year.

 

[The mural actually is not a mural in any conventional sense. It simply consisted of giant yellow letters, opining that Black Lives Matter, across a downtown street surface in Martinez, California.]

 

[In justifying her actions, the District Attorney essentially announced that retraining 'white' minds is an important part of government action:]

 

"We must address the root and byproduct of systemic racism in our country. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important civil rights cause that deserves all of our attention," stated Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton.

 

"The mural completed last weekend was a peaceful and powerful way to communicate the importance of Black lives in Contra Costa County and the country.

 

"We must continue to elevate discussions and actually listen to one another in an effort to heal our community and country."

 

In total, both defendants are charged for the following alleged offenses:

 

- Violation of Civil Rights, PC 422.6(b)

- Vandalism Under $400, PC 594(a)

- Possession of Tools to Commit Vandalism or Graffiti, PC 594.2(a)

 

If convicted, both defendants face up to a year in county jail.

 

© 2020 Chris Menahan, 2 face hate crime charge after allegedly vandalizing Black Lives Matter mural in California, Blacklisted News (08 July 2020)

 

 

You can see a video showing what the two defendants were doing . . .

 

. . . here:

 

 

Kerry Leidich, Trump Supporters Deface Black Lives Matter Mural in Martinez CA, YouTube (04 July 2020)

 

 

Let's consider the charges against the two culprits

 

As an attorney, I find it difficult to see that:

 

 

(ironically)

 

'blacking' out letters

 

that

 

are already painted on a street surface —

 

amounts to depriving someone else of his and her constitutional rights.

 

 

The letters themselves have no rights.

 

And the defendants probably did not know (or ever meet) the person who painted them.

 

Indeed, the municipal government that approved the writing of the original "Black Lives Matter" message was explicitly approving a highly politicized communication that it (very arguably) had no legitimate authority to promote.

 

 

Paint is (after all) long-lasting.

 

Its foreseeable duration of presence far exceeds that of a parade or demonstration permit.

 

 

Throw in the fact that the City of Martinez thereby essentially approved defacing taxpayer-owned property (meaning the street) with its Black Lives Matter message, and one sees why the defendants might have wanted to obscure it.

 

Simply as their own expression of the purported virtue of fostering Sanity in Governance.

 

 

Certainly, the City would not have approved a "Make America Great Again" street-painted slogan.

 

Thus, the City's permission to quasi-permanently write "Black Lives Matter" on a publicly owned street constituted a curiously discriminatory permission to deface what the Public itself owns.

 

 

Then, to make matters even more blatantly politically biased . . .

 

. . . the County DA charges the defendants with what she calls a "hate crime".

 

The "hate" part of her charge list seems (to my legal mind) to go substantially over the top of legal common sense.

 

In fact, I would go so far as to call it a knowing abuse of prosecutorial authority.

 

Thus, DA Diana Becton has (from one perspective) demonstrated herself to be an evangelizing law-idiot.

 

And she very probably deserves to be held in professional and moral contempt by at least some reasonably clear-thinking people.

 

 

The moral? — Woke Government should not burden others with its illogically rickety mounds of poorly constructed self-righteousness

 

Wokeness is going to so irritate the majority of motivated voters in this country, that Trump — or someone like him — will occupy the Presidency again.

 

A backlash to the current reign of Woke Stupidity is almost certainly coming.

 

If one is going to poke "deplorables", effectiveness probably demands that one do so with measured common sense and very visible traces of fairness in application.

 

Otherwise, one further discredits the System, whose alleged bias one is purportedly trying to fix.