Quick Take
The Walnut Avenue Family and Women’s Center saw its Black Lives Matter banner stolen for the third time last weekend, and for the second time this year. The organization’s leadership believes that it is being targeted, and that the current political climate has emboldened hate.
A downtown Santa Cruz nonprofit that serves women, children and families struggling with poverty, housing stability and domestic violence saw its Black Lives Matter banner stolen last weekend — the third time in the past 18 months that someone has stolen or vandalized the banner.
“I think, at this point, we’re being targeted,” said Lynn Boule, the Walnut Avenue Family and Women’s Center‘s director of advocacy and prevention. “And it’s obviously racially motivated.”
The center at the intersection of Walnut Avenue and Chestnut Street, founded in 1933 as the YWCA and renamed in 1994, serves about 1,000 victims of domestic violence annually.
Boule said that its banner has been up since at least 2020, secured with grommets to the building’s facade facing Chestnut. The center displayed the sign for a number of reasons, including to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and convey that the organization is a place for everyone. She added that Black clients make up a larger share of the center’s patients than they do of the county’s overall population.
In a statement about the banner theft, the organization said it will continue to replace the banner as often as needed to symbolize its commitment to supporting Black domestic violence survivors and their families as they often face “unique systemic and individual barriers.”
Boule said the banner has been pulled down three times in total, twice this year alone. After the first time and the most recent time, she arrived at the center to find the sign gone. However, after the second theft from earlier this year, someone left a note that read “white lives matter.”
“We have other banners up on our building, and those are never touched,” said Boule. A Pride flag and queer youth support sign are just two of the other conspicuously displayed banners and fliers on the building’s exterior. “And it’s not easy to rip these things off.”
The destruction or vandalism of social justice symbols in Santa Cruz County has made headlines in recent years – most notably in 2021, when two men drove a truck over the Black Lives Matter mural in front of Santa Cruz City Hall, leaving skidmarks over the letters. The same mural was vandalized again in summer 2023, when a man threw blue paint over the letters. The vandalism has affected not only to racial justice signs, either. In 2023, Capitola Village’s Lumen Gallery saw its Pride flag stolen on two separate occasions.
Boule said that, in some ways, she hopes it’s the same person stealing and defacing the Walnut Avenue Family and Women’s Center’s signs, rather than a trend of more people feeling emboldened to target racial justice symbols.
However, the fact that the theft and vandalism has begun only within the past two years is concerning, Boule said. “It’s heartbreaking. I think the political climate is more permissive,” she said, fearing that political rhetoric at the national level could be negatively influencing people. “We’re getting it from the top, and if they can act in their worst behaviors, they’re giving permission to everyone else.”
Boule said the organization did not file police reports following the first two incidents, believing that there would not be much action for generally small, possibly isolated incidents. However, staff filed an official police complaint after the third and most recent vandalism: “This is starting to really piss me off.”
She hopes that more officers can patrol the area and said the center will be installing a camera for the first time. It did not have any cameras previously, she said, because the organization provides services for domestic violence survivors, and confidentiality is of the utmost importance.
Boule said a silver lining is that the organization’s Instagram post about the latest incident received only supportive comments, and that a member of the community donated $250 to the nonprofit as a result. Still, she said that it’s imperative to be aware that incidents of this nature can happen anywhere.
“We like to pride ourselves as progressive and inclusive, and this is still happening right here,” she said. “We’re not a real public walkway like Pacific Avenue or Front Street. This is a few blocks down, so someone has made an effort to do this.”
For better or for worse, the organization is prepared for future thefts and vandalism. It ordered three new banners instead of just one, and will be displaying it higher up on the wall.
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