Updated on October 11, 2017.
A Burlington activist said he used graffiti Monday to make a political statement about a mural off Church Street.
Albert Petrarca, who describes himself as a member of the Off the Wall coalition, said in a press release that he and other members of the group defaced an identification plaque that accompanies the “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural downtown. Petrarca described the public art, which is 124 feet by 16 feet, as a “white supremacist symbol” that obliterates “First Nation peoples’ lives and history.”
The goal? “To reset the debate on why an undeniably racist piece of ‘art’ and ‘history’ occupies our town square,” wrote Petrarca, an activist who is outspoken on a variety of Burlington issues.
“Colorful and hyperrealistic,” Seven Days reported in 2012, “the mural unspools an eclectic cast of major and minor Vermont celebrities.” It’s located on the side of a building that houses Banana Republic along the pedestrian-only Leahy Way, which leads to the Marketplace parking garage. And yes, for those wondering, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is also depicted in the mural.
It also includes Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, who is seen waving to the parade-loving crowd with his daughter, Li Lin, sitting astride his shoulders and his wife, Stacy, standing at his side.
Petrarca’s coalition demands that Weinberger “immediately withdraw his consent to being on this mural and insist that his figure be removed from it.”
The mayor released a statement Monday evening:
The city appreciates the outreach regarding this public art. The city is deeply committed [to] inclusion and diversity, and I have directed Ron Redmond to review the issues raised by today’s protest and provide a report and recommendations within 30 days. While I appreciate the hard work and private resources that went into creating the mural, the issues raised today deserve careful review.
Redmond is the executive director of the Church Street marketplace, which commissioned the work.
The timing of the defacement appears not to be a coincidence. Columbus Day, declared by Governor Phil Scott as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Vermont, has long been controversial for its whitewashing of the explorer Christopher Columbus’ disastrous impact on the natives in the Americas. Statues around the country dedicated to Columbus have been defaced as the holiday neared.
“People all over the U.S. are reexamining the flags, statues and memorials in our public commons,” Petrarca wrote. “Racism and fake history have no place in Burlington.”
Petrarca later called police to report what he’d done, Deputy Chief Shawn Burke said Wednesday in a press release. Surveillance video footage showed Petrarca, alone, writing “Off the Wall” in spray paint, Burke reported. Petrarca was cited for unlawful mischief, according to Burke.
The Church Street Marketplace commissioned the mural in 2009 and it was completed in 2012, according to Redmond.
The $100,000 project, privately funded, was intended to celebrate the quadricentennial of Samuel de Champlain’s 1609 discovery of Lake Champlain. It includes Vermonty figures such as Trey Anastasio, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Grace Potter, John Deere, Madeleine Kunin and Maria von Trapp. There are also nonVermonters, such as Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln. A likeness of actor Edward James Olmos, who is also not a Vermonter, makes an improbable appearance, as Seven Days reported in 2016.
Featured businesses, including Ben & Jerry’s, Sweetwaters and Hotel Vermont, paid sponsorships and the mural includes their logo or storefront.
Before he finished the project, Québec artist Pierre Hardy* made several additions, including Weinberger, who’d been elected mayor just months before the mural’s August 2012 unveiling.
“We asked him if he wanted to be included. We just felt that was a nice thing to do,” said Redmond, noting that former mayors Peter Clavelle and Bob Kiss are also included.
The accompanying plaque, which Off the Wall members sprayed paint on, provides a legend of people pictured. The plaque does not explain the identity of one person depicted wearing Native American garb.
Yet the people included are overwhelmingly white. Redmond admits there were “lots and lots of more people we could have added.” In retrospect, he said, he would have included a tribute to the Buffalo Soldiers, a contingent of black military men who were stationed at Fort Ethan Allen in 1909.
“Church Street is a place that’s constantly evolving, and people feel a strong sense of ownership — and that’s a good thing,” Redmond said. “We love that people are engaged and we want to hear from people; we want to understand. We’ve been thinking about this, too. As we look at that mural, we’re thinking about, How do we add to this? How do we evolve? How do we use this as an opportunity to make it more dynamic, more inclusive, more robust than it already is?”
Updating the mural would likely be cost prohibitive, somewhere in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, according to Redmond. Alternatively, he said, there have been discussions about more murals along the marketplace, including one on the wall opposite “Everyone Loves a Parade!”
“Now we need to really take a look at what we created,” Redmond said. “It’s 2017. What did we miss, and what do we need to do now? And that’s OK. You can’t get mad.”
*Correction, October 9, 2017: A previous version of this story misidentified the muralist, Pierre Hardy.
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I didn’t read anywhere in this article that freakshow Petrarca was arrested or cited into court for vandalism and defacement of public property. If a conservative defaced public property — for whatever reason — she would be cited to court promptly. But because this caracature of an aging hippie, this crazy gramma, this living SNL parody of leftists, purports to act for politically correct reasons, will he be given the same penalty?
Mr. Petrarca is sooooo concerned about First Nations peoples. Is he one? Or is he a European imperialist? If the latter, he should put his money where his loud self-righteous mouth is and take the first boat back to Europe and renounce his US citizenship. Bye bye.
$100,000 for that cartoon of Burlington notables? Now $20-30,000 to add some diversity? Don’t throw good money after bad. Paint over it, it’s ugly.
Absurd, overcharged rhetoric from a vacuous busybody. Some cheesy mural didn’t “obliterate the lives” of the Vermont natives, the guys with flintlock muskets did hundreds of years ago.
I say we throw up a mural of Chief Joseph-Louis Gill because he was a real person and not some broad caricature of an Indian, and reading his biography can give you some insight into an interesting part of this region’s history. I’ll do it for just 20 grand, but you’ll have to buy me some paint.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gill_joseph…
I had to laugh when it said it listed the names of vermonters and included in that list is Bernie Sanders
He is a traitorous New Yorker out to destroy America
What an asinine protest. Find hobbies. Reminds me of an incident involving an NFL team and paper airplanes.
https://deadspin.com/5716038/the-greatest-…
Vandalizing a piece of art is, to Miro, a form of “outreach”? What a wimpy response to an attack on public property, which, one presumes, the mayor is sworn to safeguard.
Petrarca is acting out of the same self-righteous intolerance that motivated the Midd militants who shouted down Charles Murray earlier this year. Censorship should be firmly opposed, whether it’s coming from the left or the right.
Mullah Petrarca of the American Taliban has spoken
Weinberger is waiting for Don Sinex to tell him how to handle this.
“Weinberger is waiting for Don Sinex to tell him how to handle this.”
You lost on the City Center issue. Just can’t get over it, huh?
Why does John Deere have to be a white dude? People from all different backgrounds use lawn tractors. Make John Deere a Black man for once.
“You lost on the City Center issue. Just can’t get over it, huh?”
I’m happy for development of the city center. I just would like to see something that benefits the city and not just Don Sinex.
Anyone seeing the mural as a “white supremacist symbol” that somehow destroys “First Nation peoples lives and history” is a racist loon. People like this lower the level of the discussion of inequality and racial oppression to garbage. People like this also exemplify how intolerant and racist the so-called “progressive” left can be. Sheesh.
While the issues of racism, colonialism and understanding the complexities of our history are of central importance in a plural democracy, I can’t help but think that this is just a stunt by a talentless artist to draw media attention and notoriety to himself and his organization.
There’s a difference between an activist and a crank. An activist, if he has a case to make, would do so through local news media and through proper channels. It’s not as if the local authorities around here are deaf to the voices of activists; they bend over backwards for anyone with a cause, and especially so if they perceive the cause to be a liberal/progressive one. A crank, which is what this lunatic is, just takes matters into his own hands and then does something stupid like vandalizing public property. Seven Days should know better than to dignify this old coot with the label “activist.” He’s an unbalanced zealot, who does the cause he purports to support absolutely no good, as you can see by the right-wing commenters who are out in droves as a result of his lunatic actions. Why hasn’t he been arrested?
I think the wall is a tasteless piece of propaganda. Are there faces that have actually contributed to the history of Burlington and Vermont? Yes…
Is there much more shameless promotion and free advertising for some of Burlington’s biggest jerks? Most decidedly so.
It is time for the ego-wall to be changed to something that celebrates, not the conquest of our continent by greed, commercialism, genocide and arrogance, but the local natural environment the deep history that was usurped and destroyed by the dominance of Euro-centrism and Western greed, avarice and cultural hierarchy.
I think some people are taking this a little too seriously. I think it’s a pretty picture and an enhancement to Church st. I think there are bigger more important battles that this club Off the Wall can focus their energy on.
@ Lade:
“I’m happy for development of the city center. I just would like to see something that benefits the city and not just Don Sinex.”
In a city with a severe housing shortage — indeed, a housing crisis — additional housing units, including affordable units, benefits the city. A rejuvenated center of Church Street, where an unsightly, empty shell exists now, benefits the city. Jobs benefit the city. Property taxes benefit the city. It’s simply not true that this project doesn’t benefit the city. It’s just that you refuse to accept that it does, so you repeat your baseless talking point ad nauseum.
@ Hill:
You might be right or wrong in your politically-correct diatribe about the mural, but that doesn’t justify Crazy Grampa Petrarca defacing it.
Mayor Weinberger’s sensitivity is to be applauded.
But, even if the mural includes an objectionably disproportionate number of White people, I fail to see how that constitutes White Supremacy.
Images matter… and so do words.
Why wasn’t Albert Petrarca charged with vandalism?
As a 45-year-old native black Burlingtonian, the mural has always offended me and highlighted the fact I, black people, and people of color have NEVER been welcome here. In fact, I have a painful visceral reaction to the mural that does uphold white supremacy culture and erases the legacy and truth of people of color in VT. I do appreciate Miro Weinberger’s response and hope the mural is expeditiously eradicated.
In a city with a severe housing shortage — indeed, a housing crisis–more high end condos and student housing isn’t going to put a dent in it. Sure, there will be some “affordable housing” too so I guess we should be thankful.
Jobs benefit the city, of course, but what jobs are being created? Sure, we’ll need skilled labor to attend the parking garage, clean the building for the high end condo owners, and man the registers at all of the new retail space but those jobs won’t realistically allow anyone to actually earn enough money to live in any of the hosing being created.
As far as the mural, it’s a nice idea to have one. Maybe it is time to change the content of it and not because the former one was offensive. Weinberger can even have Sinex added to it if that’s what Sinex wants.
This is all a big load of performative outrage. If Petrarca truly thought that this was white supremacy that erased the lives of people of color, the he would have defaced the actual mural or tried to remove it. It would be the only reasonable action, if the mural were truly a white supremacist symbol. But Petrarca knows it isnt, hes just grandstanding for attention.
Well, I was happy to read that “Off the Wall” had been written on the ID plaque, instead of on the fifty-foot mural itself. I’m not for vandalism, but how many ways do people have of letting the City (and the residents of the city) know that a public mural raises issues? This reminds me of the controversy about Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster statue, in which a black banjo-player is depicted as poor – also smaller in stature. It is a beautiful statue, though, whereas this mural is…detailed and colorful. Norman Rockwell it ain’t. Last, I resent “old man” and “crazy activist” and “grandpa” jeering. Less bullying is better.
i find this mural ridiculous because it only shows folks who are in power, folks in traditional leadership, and of course those folks are mostly white in a state that has deep roots in segregation and racism. In a time when we need to name all the ways exclusion impacts all people’s, this graffiti is really important, because it hilights a mural that has no thought about who is receiving this community art. I think of murals as opportunities for people to see themselves reflected, to celebrate the powerful stories that don’t get shown in traditional ‘art.’ Murals are truly accessible, you just have to walk by. And a mural that is so accessible and yet so exclusionary of the powerful stories of communities of color is ultimately a failure of art and of community. Murals, as public displays of art for all, need to consider whose stories are being included, and whose aren’t. And if indeed this mural was purposefully made hilighting only one part of a complex history of growth, resistance, struggle, and injustice, meaning the colonizer or white folks part, then it is necessarily exclusionary and offensive. There are so many unifying and complex ways to tell truth in our histories. I consider this mural as a failure of imagination, and hope people will stop acting like public art has no meaning. For the child of color who walks by this mural day after day, seeing those public officials not reflect back her life, the message is clear– you are not on of us, and you are not part of this community art.
As someone who has recently moved to Vermont (I know, I know, I’m not supposed to express an opinion on anything until my family has been here for 7 generations), I’m surprised at the lack of genuine empathy for First People and other people of color apparent in these comments. I mean — a mural commemorating the “discovery” of Lake Champlain — and people don’t understand why that phrase alone erases the identity, legacy, and dignity of First People? The language of “discovery” was, in most places, changed DECADES ago. A mural that has minimal representation of people of color, and people commenting in this section seem to have little or no awareness of the violence it does to a person’s soul EVERY day to view representations in media and elsewhere without folks who look like you or are of a similar heritage? If you’ve always been from the dominant culture, try to imagine for a moment what it would be like if you were not. People don’t bother caring about the experience of others because they don’t HAVE to care, and that, in a nutshell, is the root of white supremacy.
The comments made by Mayor Weinburger and Ron Redmond are heartening, to say the least. Also reassuring and promising are the important questions that have arisen due to Albert Petrarca’s act of “unlawful mischief”, for which he was cited … by the by. What’s disheartening is the fact that some of the above comments are so rude and insensitive. The reality is that the mural depicts a white “history” and white businesses, how can it be welcoming to Native Americans, People of Color or New Americans and their children, especially when the one “Native American” portrayed is not even named on the identification plaque (which, by the way, is what was defaced, not the actual mural)?
this is what you get when a foreigner makes public art…. a Vermonter would have known about efforts of the Queen City for inclusion
I guess the Marginalized Coalition of Victims has arrived to be embarrassingly histrionic. I hope the slings and arrows of mild disagreement wont cause any lasting injuries.
It is long past time that Vermont stop patting itself on the back for not being racist. Racism here expresses itself in many ways ranging from clueless and insensitive murals to racist grafitti to outright nazis. Often the worst are liberals desparately trying to divorce themselves from racism without recognizing that their attitudes are deeply racist.
It is long past time that Vermont stop patting itself on the back for not being racist. Racism here expresses itself
in ways ranging from cluelessly racit murals to racist graffiti to outright nazis and racist attacks. Often the worst offenders are liberals who seek to divorce themselves from the racist history of the country and state without challenging their own deeply held racist views and actions.
Actually, what it’s long past time for is this, for white Marina Brown to stop patting herself on the back for calling everyone else racists, to stop using the word “racit”, to stop condemning liberals (of which certainly she is one), and to stop posting the same self-righteous rant twice.
And to stop running for every office in Vermont every 2 years.
“Covfefe”
I’m white, and the overwhelming whiteness of the mural was the first thing I noticed when the mural went up. It’s an embarrassment. Even in the present day section, where are images of our refugee populations? The population of POC in Burlington has more than doubled since the new millennium. How can we claim to be welcoming to newcomers when we make them invisible.
I think it bothers me more that someone paid $100K to have that mural painted than anything in it.
I’m not an expert on Burlington history, but I fail to see what’s wrong with the mural. If there were any prominent people who are not displayed here, I don’t see what the problem would be with adding them in. I’m all for inclusion but how far does it go? What makes someone important enough to be on this mural? Does it boil down to every citizen, present and past, of Burlington deserving to be on here? Where is the line drawn? Who are the people that should be added, and why?
20,000 to add in people to the mural seems crazy and an absurd way to spend money, but if it could please those who are dissatisfied with it, then what the hell.
Taking it down would be a really poor, one-sided, way to handle a conflict. Let’s keep talking this out as a community and try to compromise on a solution. Our country is already divided enough, let’s not push our awesome local community this way. We’re better than that.
I had a discussion a few days ago with a woman who was getting signatures on a petition to remove the mural. Suffice it to say I walked away with neither of us changing our opinions about it.
This is clearly a divisive issue that both sides feel strongly about and no amount of discussion will change either side’s opinion.
However, not being a resident of Burlington maybe I don’t have as much of a say in this as residents do.
I would like to apologize to her if I became overly strident in my defense of keeping the mural.
When an issue is based more on emotion than logic, no arguments will have any merit to the other side.
Im just stunned by this. Can we not spend our energy and time on more pressing issues? And lets not forget that while Vermont is very welcoming to minorities, we still are in fact the most white state- this is what the mural represents. Dont try to change the mural
Change your mind. And concentra on things that really matter. Heroin, opioid addiction, feeling safe. Work together not against. And who really sees this piece of art and thinks about diversity anyway? I see people I know and love- I see history. Ya cant change history. Wouldnt the act of trying to change this be considered fascism?
Petrarca and his band of white hating left wing nut cases should change their name to “Off our Meds”. Sorry, but he reminds of his fellow know nothings who attacked the movie “Dunkirk” last summer because it didn’t have enough wamen and dark skinned people. So now history is racist and needs to be dishonestly rewritten to satisfy the know-nothings and their delusions of Nazis and Klansmen everywhere.
Olmos has a Burlington connection. He is a good friend of the Bonfigli family (Earthy Cars and Dealer.con), and he was here for Eddy’s funeral.
OK…since nobody else seems to have asked here…why the #$%! didn’t the artist include any meaningful aspect of FN history in this mural? And why, in this day and age, would anybody use the term “discovery” simply to depict white people finding something in North America that the indigenous communities has already always known about? I’d like to call for ALL of the public figures depicted in the mural who identify as “progressive” to have themselves painted out of the mural, since it can only be right-wing and white supremacist without FN people being depicted in it…not just Bernie, but Leahy, Trey Anastasio and essentially anybody else in the mural that anybody has heard of. As to the cost of redoing it to be inclusive…Ben & Jerry’s and Trey himself could easily come up with the needed funds between them. Just make this right, already.
Albert had no choice but to do what he did. A lot of people there have been trying to point out the problem here, and, since it was going to be in a public space, the artist SHOULD have showed the community, in advance, what was going to depicted and who was going to be erased. The problem could have been corrected before it ever happened.
‘Albert had no choice but to do what he did.’
Did someone put a gun to his head?