They shall not be moved!
Thieves stole “Black Lives Matter” banners from a Brooklyn Heights church on two separate occasions last month, church leaders claim, but members of the flock say they won’t be censored, and will keep putting the signs up as fast as the burglars can take them down.
“If you’re going to take our banner, you’re silencing us on religious and political grounds,” said Garnett Losak, who is the director of congregational life at First Unitarian church on Pierrepont Street and Monroe Place. “But we will not be silenced.”
News of the theft was first reported by the Daily Eagle.
The church bought the banners for $100 apiece with donations from its congregants last month, after they voted to support the movement that protests police violence against black people, and wanted a way to display their solidarity with the activists, Losak said.
They put the first sign on the church’s fence on June 19 — a holiday celebrating the emancipation of black slaves in 1865 — and someone pinched it sometime between June 26 and June 28, according to Losak.
The parishioners had anticipated something like that happening — that’s what the second sign was for. So they put the back-up banner out on July 10 — using zip-ties to make it more secure — but it was gone the next day, she said.
Losak said she hasn’t reported the theft to police because she isn’t convinced they could do much to find the filcher — even she admits she can’t be sure whether the crimes were racially motivated or just the work of a knucklehead who wants the signs for themselves.
“It could be anybody,” she said. “It could be someone in the neighborhood who is uncomfortable with the sign or just disagrees with us. Or it could be a teenager who thinks it’s cool and it’s hanging up in some kid’s bedroom.”
The members of First Unitarian have now printed out 25 smaller “Black Lives Matter” cards and have tied them to the fence in place of the missing signs — and Losak says they’ll just keep printing them out again and again.
“If anything gets stolen, it will be replaced and we’ll keep going,” she said.
