Mom finds racist graffiti on Lodi playground equipment
When Lodi resident Jennifer Garza decided to take her two children out for a day at Peterson Park on Sunday, she never thought she would find the playground equipment covered in racist graffiti, but that’s exactly what happened.
“I was just sick because it was just so much hate, and I couldn’t believe that someone would actually write that at a playground,” she said.
A swastika was drawn on the slide and other pieces of playground equipment were covered with racial slurs directed at Japanese and black people.
Fortunately for Garza, her children, who are 1 and 4 years old, are not able to read so they weren’t exposed to the hate.
Garza didn’t have the necessary supplies to clean the graffiti off the slide, so she took pictures and posted them to Facebook in hopes that someone living in the area would be able to help or knew of someone who could help remove the graffiti.
She and her 4-year old daughter attempted to remove the graffiti with baby wipes without much success.
“Most of the time we were there we were scrubbing. Even my 4-year-old was like ‘give me a baby wipe, I’m going to help,’ so she was scrubbing too.”
Garcia’s asking whoever did this to stop the hate.
According to Christina Belden, who works in the City of Lodi’s graffiti abatement division, the city received a call from a concerned resident on Monday and workers began cleaning up the graffiti. Belden said this is the first incident of racist graffiti that she is aware of in a long time.
Lodi Police Lt. Sierra Brucia said the department was notified of the graffiti on Monday but by the time they arrived on the scene the graffiti had already been removed. Brucia said calls for racist graffiti are very uncommon in Lodi.
Several residents and community activists were disgusted that such graffiti was found at a public playground.
“Lodi keeps getting uglier with its hatred and intolerance,” one person commented under Garza’s Facebook post. Other comments read “How sad, that’s terrible,” and “disgusting!”
Breakthrough Project for Social Justice President Lusandra Vincent was also offended by the graffiti.
“On behalf of Breakthrough Project, I would say that this is a sad reminder to all of us that we need to speak up whenever we hear or witness something that is harmful to our community,” she said. “These expressions of prejudice and ignorance do not represent the great majority of Lodians. I‘m reminded of what a political leader said recently: ‘whatever hurts one of us hurts all of us.’ ”
She said the Breakthrough Project is committed to working to make everyone who lives in Lodi feel comfortable and appreciated.
“What we want is for everyone to feel safe in Lodi, and if some of us don’t feel safe then none of us feel safe,” Vincent said. “We are one community and we are a great community when all of our citizens feel safe, included and respected.”