The city will paint its roadways and rename streets in each borough to honor the Black Lives Matter movement, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
“It’s time to do something officially representing this city to recognize the power of the fundamental idea of Black Lives Matter, the idea that so much of American history has wrongly renounced, but now must be affirmed,” de Blasio said during his daily City Hall press briefing as he was surrounded by a group of social justice activists.
The mayor said that the city proposal calls for the Big Apple to “name streets in each borough, and to paint the words on the streets of this city in each borough at a crucial location, one of which will be here near City Hall.”
De Blasio said his administration will work with city leaders, advocates and the City Council to identify the four other locations in the Big Apple to support the movement.
“What will be clear [is] the street name and on the streets of our city is that message that now this city must fully, fully deeply feel, and this nation must as well, that black lives matter,” said de Blasio.
The announcement comes after thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of the city for more than a week to protest the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, as well as police brutality.
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told The Post that she proposed the idea to the mayor about two days ago to paint the roadway in front of the municipal complex at 1 Centre St. with the words “Black Lives Matter.”
“We actually have the paint and we have people ready to paint. I called the mayor’s office and I said we’d like to do it,” said Brewer. “I said ‘I got paint, I got artists, I got architects, I got volunteers, I even got a picture of what it looks like.’”
Brewer said the painted street will look like the “Black Lives Matter” paint job that Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser had done last week.
Bowser had “Black Lives Matter” painted in large yellow letters on the street that leads to the White House, and also designated the square in front of Lafayette Park as Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Iesha Sekou, the founder and CEO of Street Corner Resources, an anti-violence organization, said during de Blasio’s press briefing, “We don’t want to have to name a street, but I’m glad that we are.”
Sekou added, “We also want to make sure that police are not allowed to act the way we’ve been seeing.”
“We’re looking very much forward to holding the police accountable for their behavior,” she said.