The banner, which has been up since August of 2015 has caused a stir within the state and throughout the country, with the president of the Somerville police union Michael McGrath citing that the banner depicts police officers as “killers of innocent citizens of color”.
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“Those banners do not represent competing thoughts”, Curtatone said.
Harold MacGilvray, president of a coalition that represents about 1,500 officers in 26 communities, said a public building like Somerville’s City Hall is “no place” for political slogans to be displayed.
Mayor Joseph Curtatone has declined multiple requests from the city police officers” union to replace the sign with one that instead reads “All Lives Matter’.
Mayor Joe Curtatone, a white Democrat, said it’s “OK to disagree” and the only way to resolve the impasse is through an “open dialogue” about race.
Curtatone says that the city should be able to support both the Black Lives Matter movement and the police. At the time, he said it was meant to recognize that “structural racism” exists in society and stressed it was not a criticism of his police department.
“What our residents and our officers made clear is they reject the notion that there are two sides to pick here”, Curtatone said.
A giant sheet reading “White People Say: Black Lives Matter” hangs over I-676 this morning as delegates and other attendees pour into the city for the third day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. For now, we can only be grateful that increasing numbers of people understand that the safety of young black men and police officers are bound up together, as they always have been, and both of these are bound up with other practices that reflect a deeply embedded legacy of marginalization.
As the police rally was breaking up, some Black Lives Matter supporters held signs saying “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter” or thanking the mayor for his stand.
However, after the police shootings and Baton Rouge and Dallas, which were in some ways tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, Somerville Police sent a letter to City Hall demanding the banner come down.
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Police Chief David Fallon supported the mayor’s decision during a press conference July 21.
