\u201cThe point of the sign is to show that a higher percentage of Black and brown people are killed by police, and if we fix it, it gets better for everybody as a whole,\u201d said Artalejo, founder and former president of the Young Democrats of San Juan County, an organization that helped maintain the sign. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t exclude anyone. Once we fix that, it will get better for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the three months since then, the strip of land at the highly visible intersection became something of a free speech zone for sign makers, with dozens of signs expressing support for Black lives, all lives, police lives and signs in support of QAnon \u2013 a far-right conspiracy theory. But Wednesday morning, the New Mexico Department of Transportation removed all of the signs, saying they were in a public right of way.<\/p>\n
Artalejo said he chose to put up the sign on a strip of undeveloped land close to the intersection of Main and 20th streets because he understood the land as being owned by the state of New Mexico, \u201cso it\u2019s anything goes,\u201d he said, and for the area\u2019s history of being a place where local political candidates put up campaign signs.<\/p>\n
Artalejo said a few months ago, a large truck displaying a banner supporting the re-election of President Donald Trump sat parked a few hundred feet from the site where his sign stood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s up where it is so that it would get the most views when people drive by,\u201d Artalejo said of his Black Lives Matter sign.<\/p>\n
For a while the sign stood by itself, undisturbed, until the end of June, when it was vandalized a number of times, usually involving the word \u201cBlack\u201d being spray painted or painted over, and the word \u201cAll\u201d being etched or painted in its place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen it was just back and forth with people defacing the sign,\u201d Artalejo said, until August, when the vandalism slowed down, and new signs, almost all in opposition or commenting on the Black Lives Matter sign, began to appear. Other signs expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, one read \u201cPoor Lives Matters\u201d and recently, an elaborate steel-cut sign appeared in the free speech zone that read \u201cAll Lives Matter,\u201d with a prominent thin blue line flag flying above it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s to put up the other side of the story,\u201d said Jimmy Johnson, as he set up his \u201call lives matter\u201d sign Aug. 24, \u201cIt\u2019s my First Amendment rights, just like this one right here,\u201d he said, pointing to the Black Lives Matter sign.<\/p>\n
Johnson said he had passed by the Black Lives Matter sign a number of times while driving into Farmington from his home in Aztec. He said he was initially supportive of it, \u201cuntil I saw their movement get hijacked by Antifa,\u201d referring to a loose movement of anti-facist protesters and activists that have been a frequent target of both Trump and right wing conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n The weekend before, Johnson said he went to a local steel store, and after telling the owner of the store what he planned to carve, the owner gave him the material for free.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a political sign, but an American sign about how people feel, at least those that have values,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cEveryone\u2019s lives matter, especially the unborn.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmad Mughni, a salesperson at Horace Super Center, a car dealership directly northeast of the signs, watched the progression of the signs for several weeks. Mughni, who is Black, said he didn\u2019t feel any particular offense or connection to any of the signs. He described Black Lives Matter as \u201ca little crazy.\u201d But he said he understands the purpose of the movement based on his own experience with racism and discrimination.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just learn to live with it,\u201d Mughni said, \u201cbut I guess that\u2019s the point. You shouldn\u2019t have to learn to live with it. You should be treated equally. \u2026 We shouldn\u2019t be fighting each other like this. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Hinnat was killed while playing outside his home in North Carolina. The suspect in the case was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and held without bond. CNN, The<\/em>Washington Post<\/em> and multiple local media outlets in North Carolina reported on the story.<\/p>\n Nicole Brown, community relations liaison and spokeswoman for the Farmington Police Department, said a number of complaints had been filled with the city\u2019s Code Compliance department about one or more of the signs, although she couldn\u2019t say which ones, in the last few months.<\/p>\n The city and the New Mexico Department of Transportation both own portions of the land, and while the city has been receiving complaints about the signs, it has been forwarding them to the Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy now is it an issue?\u201d Artalejo said. \u201cI understand if it is an issue that needs to be cleared up, just as long as everybody gets treated equitably and fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Battling messages multiplied over 3 months, and are now gone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51753"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}