Message of hope for yob who defaced picture of George Floyd
The defaced image of George Floyd – and the church’s message to the perpetrator
FOR more than a month, the board outside of Chorlton Central Church has displayed a picture of George Floyd.
Along with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr and the phrase ‘take a knee: and may God’s kingdom come,’ the board has been a crucial reminder for local residents of the racism and inequality still faced around the world.
But late last week, a neighbour contacted Reverend Mike Walsh to tell him the photo had been defaced with blue spray paint. Rev Walsh said: “They messaged me to tell me they’d seen the person who did it. They went out to challenge them and got a mouthful of abuse before the guy ran off.”
Refusing to let the act of vandalism deflect from the initial reason for the sign, the church congregation decided to work out what they could do in response.
Rev Walsh said: “We’ve actually been talking recently about how the church sometimes struggles to respond creatively and we have a bit of a reputation for saying what people expect us to say.
“We thought about how to turn things around and came up with a message saying how the vandalism was sad but we would be praying for the person who did it.
“They obviously have a lot of anger that has come from somewhere and we wanted to try and help them find peace about that. We decided we wanted to do something a bit bolder and visible to those passing by. We’ve got a huge curving wall outside of the church that’s usually plain red and used to hang banners up. We thought it’d make a big statement if we painted over it to say ‘Black Lives Matter.’”
Mike, along with another member of the church, spent three hours on Sunday evening painting the wall black and a further three hours on Monday morning writing the text on the wall.
He said: “I deliberately sat outside the church once it was finished to talk to people about it. There were lots of people taking photos as they walked past. We put an image of the wall up on our Facebook page and we have been inundated with such a positive response. It would have been easy for us to clean the graffiti off and say no more about it. But we felt that it was important to make an issue out of it and gain more publicity about the issue at hand.” He added: “We hope it continues the debate – that is our intention.”
Mr Floyd died while being arrested in Minneapolis, US, in May. One police officer has been charged with his murder and three with aiding and abetting his murder.