Mayor Bill de Blasio joined in to paint the mural.
“Black Lives Matter” is being painted right outside of Trump Tower in New York City Thursday.
The bright, yellow letters are being painted by volunteers across a stretch of Fifth Avenue that has been closed off by police. Mayor Bill de Blasio picked up a paintbrush himself to join in creating the mural after President Donald Trump previously said the mural would be denigrating the luxury of Fifth Avenue.
“Let me tell you: we're not denigrating anything, we are liberating Fifth Avenue, we are uplifting Fifth Avenue," de Blasio said Thursday.
De Blasio added that when Americans say “Black Lives Matter,” they are “righting a wrong.”
"When we say 'Black Lives Matter,' there is no more American statement, there's no more patriotic statement, because there is no America without Black America. We are acknowledging the truth in ourselves and in America,” he said.
The plan to do the mural was originally announced earlier this month, and Trump was not happy with the announcement. He called the words a “symbol of hate.”
“Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won't let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York's greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
This mural is one of a four others that have gone up in New York in Harlem, Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Last month, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, also had the words written on the street outside the White House.
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