The vandal very deliberately cut out the word "Black" from the church sign. pic.twitter.com/gCccbqjwiE
— mollenbeckWTOP (@mollenbeckWTOP) July 29, 2015A church's "Black Lives Matter" sign has been vandalized. The word "Black" has been cut out. @WTOP pic.twitter.com/TczVubjxwO
— mollenbeckWTOP (@mollenbeckWTOP) July 29, 2015
BETHESDA, Md. — A vandal has cut out the word “black” from a congregation’s “Black Lives Matter” sign in Montgomery County.
The River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, put up the sign on the edge of its property July 9.
A Montgomery County official notified the congregation Wednesday afternoon that the sign had been vandalized.
“It was disbelief,” says Ana Lim, the congregational administrator. “There was a lot of sadness in the office.”
Lim said the congregation had heard of complaints about the sign, but nothing that would rise to the level of vandalism.
“The statement of our values as a religious community has been vandalized, willfully excising the lives of black people from our message,” said senior minister Nancy McDonald Ladd.
While a replacement sign is on order, the tattered one will remain in view.
“Our hope is that from the ashes, something good would happen,” says Lim.
