Writing “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on the sidewalk is illegal in Saleh, Washington. Charges could include 364 days of jail time and a fine up to $5,000. A video posted on July 6, 2020 showed a sanitation worker pressure washing the chalk on a sidewalk outside the city hall as youths with face masks lay on it, holding protest signs. I have sprayed my foot before with a pressure washer and that can really hurt. The children remained seated as the worker, who was not wearing a face mask, pressure washed around them. The chalk they had used to create the sidewalk art was sprayed into the street. This of course reminded me of the civil rights protests in Alabama when fire hoses were used to blast Black children protestors.
Saleh is a quiet rural town with a conservative mayor. The city administrator refereed to the 10 children as a mob. Chalk art has long been a tableau for social activism, a form of instant commentary that takes political expression quite literally onto the streets. Cities have at times targeted it, such as in San Diego, where a man was charged with 13 counts of vandalism in 2013 for writing anti-bank messages on a public sidewalk. A jury acquitted him.
Selah’s chalk activism began with Gabriel Fabian, 20, who was not politically active until after seeing the video capturing the arrest in May that led to George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Mr. Fabian, who is Latino, decided he needed to play a role in halting the oppression of Black people, and that it would need to start at home. He began by writing Black Lives Matter on his dead-end street. A street sweeper wiped away this messages the same week. Fabian’s friends repeatedly wrote messages on the concrete, all of which were repeatedly removed by officials.
Since the chalk art keeps appearing, police chief Richard Hayes has threatened punitive damages saying the chalk art is graffiti. The family’s attorney, Joseph Cutler, has argued that erasing the Black Lives Matter chalk art is in violation of the family’s right to free speech. The city claimed that they always remove chalk art although, Fabian’s mother Ms. Perez said she had seen no efforts to remove recent chalk art tied to school graduations. It would seem the message is what is being targeted. Courtney Hernandez has been organizing Black Lives Matter events in the area, said it was clear to her that the city was attempting to silence protest.