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NY Times, July 14, 2020
‘A Slap in the Face’: N.Y. Town Rejects Black Lives Matter Painting
By Sarah Maslin Nir
CATSKILL, N.Y. — The street painting would stretch about three blocks,
from Village Pizza II to the stoplight at the southern end of Main
Street, spelling out “Black Lives Matter” on the pavement.
The proposal didn’t seem like too much of an ask; in the weeks since
George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis, the phrase has
been painted on streets from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C., and,
on Thursday, even in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan.
But village leaders in Catskill balked, offering several
counterproposals instead, including one that would have allowed the
painting, but in the Black area of town.
“I knew it was going to be a no,” said Shirley Cross, 31, a member of
the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition, which proposed the painting. “I
just feel like it’s a slap in the face for Black people.”
In cities across the nation, the civil unrest that followed Mr. Floyd’s
death has heightened racial tensions and, in some cases, led to
confrontations pitting protesters against the police and some community
members. It has also caused flash points in many smaller communities.
On Saturday, a Black Lives Matter march in Kinderhook, N.Y., about 20
miles northeast of Catskill, was interrupted by a white couple who
brandished a gun at protesters outside their home.
The couple were eventually taken into police custody, but no arrests had
been made as of Monday.
“Can you imagine if I pulled a gun on people protesting in front of my
house?” Kamal Johnson, the mayor of the nearby city of Hudson, said in a
Facebook video; Mr. Johnson was among those protesting on Saturday. “I’d
be arrested and all over the newspapers.”
In Saranac Lake, N.Y., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, the
director of a state-sponsored Adirondack diversity initiative said she
is moving because of racist graffiti that she believed was directed at
her. The graffiti, which included profanity, said “go back to Africa”
and was scrawled on a railroad bridge along a route she uses.
As more examples of “Black Lives Matter” art have spread on streets and
sidewalks, controversy has followed. In Chicago, one wording was painted
over to read “All Lives Matter.” In Palo Alto, Calif., artists blocked
the street around a freshly laid painting after officials moved
roadblocks, allowing it to be driven over.
And in Catskill, on the western banks of the Hudson River, the debate
over whether to allow a Black Lives Matter painting directly on Main
Street has only exacerbated racial tensions in a village where just over
a fifth of the population is Black.
Many Black residents live in crumbling public housing, in de facto
segregation from the pockets of rural retirees and transplanted
Brooklynites, an experience so starkly different they say they might as
well be living in two different towns.
And it has left some Black residents wondering: To Catskill, do they matter?
Ms. Cross, a supervisor at a shoe store in town, says she no longer
feels there’s a place for her in the village she has lived in since she
was 12. She is now looking to move. “I kind of gave up,” she said. “Even
with my voice, I gave up.”
She spoke from a stoop where she lives in the Hop-O-Nose Homes, the
public housing complex beside Catskill Creek, which runs southeast from
the Catskill Mountains, emptying into the Hudson in the village.
Nearly 70 percent of residents in public housing are people of color,
according to the Catskill Housing Authority; the housing complex is
close to where the alternate location of the painting was proposed to go
along Water Street.
The worn, low-slung red brick homes are just steps away but a world
apart from the rapidly gentrifying main drag. There, a turmeric latte
costs nearly $5, and “Black Trans Lives Matter” signs rest in the
windows of shops, some grasped in the arms of luxury bathrobes.
Catskill has had a sizable Black population since at least the early
1800s, when the village was a prominent Hudson River port; by the latter
part of the century, local historians said, the village drew Black
families from the South.
Nearly a century later, Catskill continued to attract Black residents,
drawn in part by the construction of new public housing like Hop-O-Nose;
in more recent years, a new wave of visitors from places like Brooklyn,
lured by the scenery and cheap housing stock, has given the village a
more trendy vibe.
“When you leave out of Hop-O-Nose, once you go out on Main Street, you
see the Black Lives Matter signs here and there,” Ms. Cross said. “But
there’s nothing Black on Main Street.”
On June 4, that seemed to briefly change when hundreds of villagers
marched down Main Street in a rally to denounce racism. Black residents
took the microphone and shared racist incidents they had endured.
It was one of a flurry of such marches that sprang up across the state.
The high turnout in Catskill surprised some here in Greene County, where
President Trump, who in recent days has called Black Lives Matter “a
symbol of hate,” won 60 percent of the vote in 2016.
The proposal to paint Black Lives Matter on Main Street materialized
around the time of the march, attracting more than 3,500 supporters on a
Change.org petition. But the village’s five-member board of trustees —
all of whom are white — rejected the painting proposal on June 30.
They initially offered the Water Street location instead; when the
organizers rejected that, the trustees offered the placement of two
large banners saying “Black Lives Matter.” One could be strung across
Main Street, stretching from the old 1920s vaudeville
house-turned-cinema to the law offices of Brown, Kelleher & Zwickel, the
other alongside the high-traffic New York State Route 9W.
Vincent Seeley, the president of the board, said the banners would get
more visibility and last longer than paint underfoot. He said the
village was attuned to its Black residents’ needs, pointing to strides
it had made on behalf of the public housing residents in recent years,
including revamping the lease agreements, bringing in a new director and
creating a position of a village board liaison for the housing complex.
“The fact that they are not willing to work with me and hear me out is
really upsetting to me,” Mr. Seeley said, “and does not feel like I am
getting the credit for what we have done.”
Since the proposal, the village has fielded requests to hold a “Blue
Lives Matter” rally on Main Street, and to post an “Unborn Child Lives
Matter” and an “All Lives Matter” banner, according to Mr. Seeley, who
added that the village board might need to reconsider whether to allow
any public messaging on its streets.
Mr. Seeley said his counterproposal offering the Black Lives Matter
banners was an effort to blend the wishes of the different
constituencies that make up Catskill: the younger residents and
transplants of all races who want the painting, and an older,
predominantly white population that doesn’t.
“It is my job to bridge that gap between the two. And we’ve been doing a
good job of that,” he said as he stood on Main Street wearing an
American flag face mask and holding an iced coffee from HiLo Catskill, a
cafe, cocktail lounge and gallery. “And then this ends up becoming the
divisive thing.”
For now, everything is on hold. The Black Lives Matter activists have
rejected the board’s offer of the banners; the village is still weighing
whether to go forward.
Along Main Street, where vintage Black Panther texts are displayed at
the counter of the Magpie Bookshop and anti-racism messages have popped
up on chalkboards outside restaurants, few people were willing to
publicly voice opposition to the Black Lives Matter painting. Dissent
has seemed to take place mainly under the cover of social media, where
rancorous debates run rampant in comments.
“I thought all people’s lives mattered,” said a man unloading pizza
boxes from a truck outside Village Pizza II. The man, who was white and
said he was against the painting, declined to give his name because of
the sensitive nature of the subject.
At the Mermaid Cafe on Main Street, Michelle Williams, the owner,
stopped dishing up tacos to denounce the trustees’ decision. Ms.
Williams, who is white, said she was deeply affected by the searing
stories she heard from her Black neighbors during the Catskill march.
“To just have a bunch of people in their folding-chair thrones telling
them ‘no,’ it’s just really shortsighted,” Ms. Williams said.
“You have people who are playing both sides here,” she added. “But
what’s the side? Either Black lives matter, or they don’t.”
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