A historically Black Church appears to have been vandalized for the second time in three years.
According to Fox New 5, on Wednesday police officers were called to Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Washington, D.C., after discovering that swastikas had been spray-painted on their Black Lives Matter sign. The vandalism would have been disturbing on its own, but this isn’t the first time the church and its sign have been attacked.
In December of 2020, members of the Proud Boys, the group primarily responsible for storming the Capital, tore down and burned the Black Lives Matter sign outside of Metropolitan AME in Northwest D.C. The church sued the Proud Boys LLC for $22 million. And in July of this year, the church was awarded over $1 million from the Proud Boys.
Rev. William H. Lamar, the pastor of the Metropolitan AME Church, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, excoriating the Proud Boys for tearing down the sign.
A sign came down on Saturday. The Black Lives Matter banner in front of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, where I am privileged to serve as pastor, was removed and destroyed on Saturday evening. I am deeply disturbed by this incident (one of several incidents targeting houses of worship), but I am more disturbed by the continued mythology of imperial America. This mythology supports those who commit violence against human beings for political ends, deny citizens their right to vote, denigrate sacred spaces, and claim as their own whatever they survey.
It mattered not that the land was ours. It mattered not that the sign was ours. The mythology that motivated the perpetrators on Saturday night was the underbelly of the American narrative — that White men can employ violence to take what they want and do what they want and call that criminality justice, freedom, and liberty.
It’s not clear if the two attacks are connected. According to Fox News’ local D.C. affiliate, police still don’t have a suspect in the vandalism.