‘Stop Black Hate’ rally to be held in Flatbush after defacement of George Floyd statue

By Duncan Freeman

Flatbush residents woke up Thursday morning to find that a statue of George Floyd, installed only five days earlier, had been vandalized overnight by members of a white supremacist group. Locals and city workers cleaned the statue throughout Thursday and are hosting a “Stop Black Hate” rally on Friday at 5 p.m at Flatbush Junction to demand justice for those who vandalized the statue.

Floyd family spokesperson Courtney Nelson, in statements to ABC News, said that seeing the statue defaced was “very disheartening… disgusting and it’s sad and it’s cowardly.” Investigators have identified four suspects in surveillance video approaching the statue around 3:30 a.m who are allegedly responsible for covering parts of the 11-foot statue in black paint and stenciling “PATRIOTFRONT.US,” on parts of the statue’s base.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defines Patriot Front as an “American white supremacist, neo-fascist, and American nationalist group” that has been growing steadily since its founding in 2017. Members of the group vandalized another statue of George Floyd in Newark early Thursday morning, covering the statute in black paint and spray painting their group’s name onto the statue in similar fashion to how the Brooklyn statue was vandalized

City council member Farah Louis, who spoke at the unveiling of the monument told News 12 that the vandalization was “absolutely disgusting,” showing that “Racism is still alive in America… and they stamped it for us to see.” The artist, Chirs Carnabuci, told the New York Times he was “saddened by it [but] not completely shocked.”

The statue, now clean, will remain in Flatbush Junction for the next few weeks before moving to its permanent home in Union Square and will be joined by similar statues of John Lewis and Breonna Taylor.

Security footage of the alleged hate group vandals, courtesy of the NYPD