After protesters spray graffiti, Kansas City gives them walls to vent their anger
Stupid idea amid angry and violent protests?
“It might be the worst idea I’ve ever had,” said Terry Rynard, the director of the Kansas City Parks Department. Or not, she figures. Maybe it will help vent some rage.
On Monday, following yet another night of violent protests in Mill Creek Park — spawned by the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, who suffocated beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer — Rynard came up with her idea to erect “expression walls” in the park as canvasses for protesters’ emotions.
Since Floyd’s death, hundreds of protesters have been gathering at the park east of the Country Club Plaza. The demonstrations have begun peacefully in the mid-afternoons, but by late night, they have ended in violence, with police hurling tear gas at protesters who have hurled water bottles and sometimes rocks at police, smashed windows and spray-painted graffiti across buildings.
On Monday morning, following Sunday night’s protest, profanity-laced graffiti aimed at the police marred the limestone wall on the east side of the park. It was scrawled on stone, brick, the white stucco of the Community Christian Church and the thick plywood planks used to protect the windows of businesses up Main Street.
“As I was looking around at the graffiti, you could tell they needed to vent,” Rynard said Monday afternoon, as workers drilled the plywood planks into the eastern stone wall. “They needed to express themselves. We’re going to try these expression walls. We put them up over the stone. We put one up here in the open space. They will be painted white with the words, ‘express yourself’ on the top, just to encourage people to draw, or write or say whatever it is that’s on their heart, and hopefully give people one more way, one more outlet, how to express the pain they’re feeling.”
Rynard said she came up with the idea Monday.
“The park provides a great venue for a protest,” she said. “But how do we give the venue and not destroy property?”
Asked if she thinks the expression walls, themselves, might be destroyed, she responded.
“I hope not. I have faith that, you know, 98% of the people are down here for all the right reasons. I don’t know if it’s 2% or 3% of knuckleheads ruining it for everyone, but I do think that the people who are here for all the right reasons, they were peaceful.
“Seems to be that we ought to do something different than to just expect a different result. We’re going to try it. If it works, we may see more of these pop up in the park, and hopefully people will recognize that it is something that is semi-permanent, like graffiti, but we are encouraging it, as opposed to pressure-washing it off the very next day.”
As Rynard spoke, protesters had already begun to arrive in the park, carrying signs such as, “No More Police Brutality,” for another night of expression.
