To the editor:

Recently a Black Lives Matter mural, with Marxist clenched fists, was painted on an inside wall in a courtyard at Mt. Hope High School.

To put up such a politically charged mural, complete with three Marxist clenched fists, in a public school which is town property defies logic and common sense. It becomes a slippery slope for other political messages. Who is to decide what messages are posted at our schools or other town property?

BLM was built on the egregious lies of police murdering blacks on American streets. as well as America being a systemically racist country. Two of the three founders were self-avowed Marxists.

The organization’s leadership has disgraced themselves ethically and financially and are under investigation. The BLM organization appears to be a scam designed to fool well-meaning Americans into donating funds being used for personal enrichment by the founders. The Indiana Attorney General has called BLM “an illegal enterprise whose house of cards is about to fall.”

Of course, black lives do matter, as do all lives. However, BLM is a divisive organization dividing our people in tribal groups of oppressed and oppressors and portraying all blacks as marginalized victims. It focuses on grievance and resentment, not solutions.

It is an organization that ignores the plight of black communities and the 10,000 blacks killed on the streets of America, mostly by other blacks. BLM is anti-police and has led many defund-the-police efforts, which harms those who live in high crime areas. It perpetuates black victimhood and as such is an ideology of despair rather than hope.

It opposed the nuclear family, much to the detriment of black communities. And more damning, BLM has done little if anything to improve the educational environment for our black and brown students.

There is much to celebrate in black history in the U.S. Let’s do a mural that inspires and gives hope to all our people. A mural of Frederick Douglas and Lincoln, or of the Tuskegee Airmen, of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, of George Washington Carver and his inventions, of Martin Luther King and his “I have a dream” speech.

This mural should be removed or replaced. It is inappropriate and wrong and never should have been allowed. We, as a community, should be focusing on providing our youth with an academic and social environment that fosters excellence and traditional moral values, not equity and divisiveness.

Michael Byrnes 
Walley Street