TAKOMA PARK, MD – Fearing for her life while clutching her pearls, a white woman most likely named Karen called the cops on a painting of a black woman on a picnic table for loitering at the Old Town Gazebo plaza.
“I asked her to leave several times and she just ignored my repeated requests,” said Karen, while claiming she was literally shaking right now. “I wanted to sit on the bench and she wouldn’t move. She kept staring at me with a smug look on her face. I felt threatened.”
Choosing not to wait around for the police to show up, Karen decided to stand her ground. Using a razor and paint thinner, items she carries as protection against Takoma Park’s several murals portraying people of color, she literally defaced the portion of the painted table top depicting the black woman’s face, rendering her, in Karen’s opinion, harmless.
“She’s clearly a Black Lives Matter protestor so I had to act swiftly,” said Karen, pointing at the word “justice” and the images of fire painted around the woman. “She’d been loitering there for days, even late at night, clearly waiting to cause trouble. The shops around here should thank me for protecting their property.”
Neighbors who witnessed the vandalism were shocked. “I can’t believe someone would commit such a blatant act of racism here in our own community. I thought we were above that kind of bigotry,” said Keith Hollings, as he signed a petition against a new zoning proposal to allow multi-family housing in his pleasant, single family neighborhood.
While Karen ultimately walked away from the gazebo before the cops arrived, she was later seen walking up Carroll Avenue, complaining about having to use a paper straw and berating the staff at Takoma Bev Co for failing to write “Merry Christmas” on its cups.
