Man caught on camera erasing little girl's Black Lives Matter chalk drawings
'It hurt a lot. As a black community we are heartbroken by everything done against us every day'
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Your support makes all the difference.A man in California has been caught erasing black lives matter messages drawn on the pavement by a three-year-old girl.
Manette Sharick and her three-year-old daughter, Zhuri, had been drawing messages in chalk across the pavement outside her house including "Black Lives Matter".
Ms Sharick said that she had been hoping to “teach [her] daughter that black lives matter”.
After Ms Sharick realised that the word black was continually being erased from the drawings she caught a man on her security camera washing the chalk away with water.
“I just wanted to teach my daughter that black lives matter, black culture matters, black communities matter, and that we are the movement for Black lives,” Ms Sharick, who is black, told CNN.
“I was shocked that someone could be purposefully doing this. It hurt a lot, it made me extremely upset.”
In the clip Ms Sharick films a man identified only as Jim on a bike in front of her home stopping to erase splash the word black. She confronts the man for washing it away.
"Racist a**. You are racist and you’re on my camera too," she says. "And I will call the police. Go! Go!", she adds, urging him to leave.
"As long as you keep on doing this I’ll keep on coming," Jim says refusing to move.
Speaking to ABC7, Jim insisted that he is not a racist saying: “the only reason I did that because I thought someone was tagging his house with racist thoughts.”
“I was only pouring across the word black because I believe that all lives matter. I don't care what nationality, sexual orientation or any of that, we are all human beings,” he said.
Ms Sharick said that whether or not they disagreed it was unnecessary for him to stop and remove her daughter's message from outside her house.
Warning: this video includes language that some people might find offensive
“Writing with chalk on a sidewalk is causing no harm or damage to the community. If you disagree that's fine but don't damage what was written on a sidewalk on somebody else's home. All you have to do is keep walking,” she said.
The three-year-olds mother shared the video of the incident on Facebook, and an outpouring of support from her neighbours followed.
Members of the community left the sidewalk covered in positive messages in support in the days following, encouraging love, hope, and kindness, and support for Black Lives Matter.
“People need to stand with their black neighbours in support. All lives can't matter until Black lives matter. Right now, Black lives are being harmed, murdered by police, and they are constantly living in fear,” Ilana Israel Samuels, one neighbour, told CNN.
Ms Sharick thanked her friends and community for support. She told the broadcaster that this was the first time she has experienced “such a blatant display of racism” in her neighbourhood.
“My family and I are grateful for the help and support we have received from the community," she said.
She told CNN that she is “heartbroken” over the injustices black people face every day.
"He had that much time and energy to take time out of his day, every day, to bring water and come to my home and erase 'black' from 'Black Lives Matter,'" she said.
“It hurt. It hurt a lot. As a black community we are heartbroken by everything done against us every day. We just want change."
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