Thanks to a CHS reader for the pictures
CHS has received a lot of worried inquiries around the presence of a work crew at the E Pine Black Lives Matter mural. Don’t worry. They’re just sprucing it up.
Thanks for the questions and reports from the scene. Crews are cleaning and touching up the pavement artwork as part of Seattle Department of Transportation work across the city.
The Vivid Matter Collective shepherds the long-term responsibility of maintaining the Black Lives Matter mural created by artists and activist in 2020 in the first days of the protests in Seattle. The “A Collective Thought” work was adopted by the Seattle Department of Transportation in the months following the July 2020 clearance of the Capitol Hill Occupied protest zone to make the big block-lettered mural a permanent part of the street to help memorialize that summer’s protests that came in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
CHS was there for the summer 2023 work party to touch up the letters.
While SDOT will regularly maintain the mural like it maintains and repairs the nearby rainbow crosswalks, the long term involvement of the artists and Vivid Matter Collective will need to be funded. We’ve asked SDOT for more information on the status of that work.
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Can they get rid of those ugly yellow plastic rods. You can’t even see the mural, and the barriers cause leaves and debris to get trapped inside. It’s like warping a beautiful painting in caution tape – it’s intended to protect it, but it just makes it look ugly!
The mural isn’t beautiful. It isn’t really a mural either it just says “black lives matter” in paint. I think they should put an actual mural there though and change it up every year or so. I see no reason to have it the same year in an year out. Or put some planters with some greenery. The neighborhood did not vote to have that as a permanent installation or even a temporary one.
It is a mural actually. But opinions are like assholes…
While they’re at it, strip the whole thing off the street.
I and many others would like it to stay though, so I guess we’re at loggerheads. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yelling at clouds
“The Vivid Matter Collective shepherds the long-term responsibility of maintaining the Black Lives Matter mural created by artists and activist in 2020 in the first days of the protests in Seattle.”
If this is true, why is SDOT doing the maintenance work? Has the collective abrogated its responsibility?
It’s looked like garbage for a long time. I’d say they should either hand it off to someone who will take care of it, or return that part of the street to all of the people of Seattle. Murals belong on walls, not streets.
Agreed. It’s technically a crime that was left simply because of fear of repercussions. How about commission something in a proper place instead of where this is.
The bike lanes were removed here and, also, emergency vehicles now get stuck behind cars that can no longer pull to the side of the road in that stretch. We would not design a road like this. For many, the symbolic value is worth it.
Also lost important bus stops here, now there’s a large gap on Pine Street inconveniencing riders to accommodate this virtue signaling. If Black lives really mattered here, the CHOP/CHAZ fiasco wouldn’t have been allowed to fester on resulting in the deaths of several Black lives during the Summer of Love.