White Women Confronted by Protesters for Spray-Painting ‘Black Lives Matter’ on LA Starbucks

A video showing white women spray-painting a Los Angeles Starbucks with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” went viral on Twitter, as it shows a black woman telling the vandals to stop what they are doing. The video was filmed Saturday, a day that saw some of the worst lootings in decades in the city. Los Angeles officials have already put a curfew in place for Sunday night into Monday after more protests took place Sunday.

The video at the Starbucks location has now been seen more than 3.5 million times. It starts with the store already covered in graffiti, including “BLM” already on one side of the building. The woman who made the video approached two white women, both wearing masks and all-black clothing, who were vandalizing the property. “This is not a black woman who is putting ‘Black Lives Matter,’” the woman who filmed the clip said. She then turned to one of the women to tell them, “Y’all doing that for us, but we didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Don’t spray stuff out here when they’re going to blame black people for doing it,” the woman behind the camera continued, still addressing the white women as they left the scene. “If we wanted you to do it, we would have asked. They’re not going to show your faces when they see that on HBO. They’re gonna blame that on us! Y’all are part of the problem!”

The woman who filmed the video then turned the camera on herself and said an incident like this is “not right.” She noted that she and other black people were protesting peacefully and the people spray-painting “black lives matter” on buildings are not them. “You got police officers coming to a peaceful protest and spraying gas on us” when they are not doing anything, she said. “Don’t let the media fool you.”

Following more protests during the day, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a curfew that will be in effect from 8 p.m. Sunday until 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. He also closed all COVID-19 testing centers as a safety concern and they may not re-open on Monday, reports KABC. The largest testing center, located at Dodger Stadium, will stay open. Los Angeles County later announced its own curfew, which starts at 6 p.m. and ends at 6 a.m. Monday. There were 398 arrests in Los Angeles Saturday night, reports the Los Angeles Daily News. Two police officers were hospitalized.

The protests began after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. A police officer pinned Floyd to the ground with his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd complained he could not breathe. The officer was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.