Skylar, the 21-year-old college student responsible for writing “Black Lives Matter” over local artist Scott LoBaido’s thin-blue line NYPD tribute outside the department’s 122nd Precinct stationhouse in New Dorp, said she stenciled over the line to push back against the “divisiveness” she says it stands for.
“It seemed like a direct response to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural, and it didn’t sit right with me,” said Skylar, who declined to provide her last name while standing outside the precinct on Tuesday with a small group of protestors.
After seeing LoBaido create the blue line on the Advance/SILive.com, Syklar said she went to her garage and began creating stencils to use — “and then I just did it.”
“Many people drove by, cursing at me, telling me to ‘get out,’ ‘get off the Island,’ ‘you hate America,’ but that’s not the case,” she said. “I did it because I love this country and I see the potential in this country, so that’s why I did it.”
The small group of protestors who gathered on Tuesday, some of whom held signs that read, “Black Lives Matter,” received verbal barbs from passing motorists. One driver said, “go home.” Others hurled profanities.
Skylar, however, said the “Black Lives Matter” movement “doesn’t mean that police lives don’t matter, doesn’t mean that white lives don’t matter. It doesn’t mean any of that stuff.”
“Black lives are not treated the same way,” she said. “If Black lives matter, we all win, because we all matter then. Then all lives matter. That’s the third step — we’re on the first step.”
LoBaido, who recently held a police rally at the 122nd Precinct, painted the blue line along the divider on Hylan Boulevard that runs from Bancroft Avenue to Lincoln Avenue. He said the tribute, “isn’t anti-BLM,” adding that the “subtle” and “simple” piece of art is meant to stand as a sign of support for the NYPD.
He re-painted the line on Tuesday — the same day he unveiled an anti-de Blasio banner on the overpass of the Staten Island expressway, which depicted the mayor wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt while holding up the seemingly-decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty.
The banner hung off the Fingerboard Road overpass of the expressway. LoBaido had to remove the artwork shortly after unfurling it.
While the thin blue line remained untouched on the Hylan Boulevard median as of Tuesday night, Skylar said her future plans are “to be determined.”
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