https://rvahub.com/2021/10/21/patriot-front-deface-arthur-ashe-mural/
Little babies throwing a fit.
The mural was part of the U.N.I.T.Y. program to design street art in Richmond.
From a Richmond.com article shortly after the mural was completed in the summer of 2017.
“We wanted to come to Battery Park because the tunnel was such an eyesore and it was honestly the perfect formula for what U.N.I.T.Y. Street stands for,” said Hamilton Glass, one of the five U.N.I.T.Y. artists. “Doing projects in communities where we can highlight the history of the community.”
Thornhill, who’s from Jackson Ward, added: “The city’s changing, the world is changing, and unfortunately we are forgetting some of the heroes and she-roes that came through the area.”
For those not familiar with the Patriot Front, read this summary from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Patriot Front is an image-obsessed organization that rehabilitated the explicitly fascist agenda of Vanguard America with garish patriotism. Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country.
In its own words
“The time of the Republic has passed in America as the system grows too weak to perform its duty. … The damage done to this nation and its people will not be fixed if every issue requires the approval and blessing from the dysfunctional American democratic system. Democracy has failed in this once great nation.”
— Patriot Front manifesto.
Patriot Front (PF) is a white nationalist hate group that formed in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, of August 12, 2017. The organization broke off from Vanguard America (VA), a neo-Nazi group that participated in the chaotic demonstration. PF’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, led VA members during “Unite the Right,” including James Alex Fields, Jr., the young man accused of murdering anti-racist protester Heather Heyer after fatally driving his vehicle into a crowd of protesters.
Rousseau and his loyalists broke away from VA after a months-long feud with VA’s leader Dillon Irizarry.
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