Says Christian Faith Is her Inspiration for Speaking Up

By Bill Miller

MANHATTAN — The woman dropped to her hands and knees, landing in the puddle of black paint she just splashed onto the “Black Lives Matter” mural on the pavement outside Trump Tower on 5th Avenue.

In a July 18 Facebook video gone viral, Bevelyn Beatty, a young black woman, spread the paint across the pavement with her hands. She sharply decries the organization, Black Lives Matter — a national movement that protests the killings of black people by police.

But, as New York police officers went to arrest Beatty — one of them slipping on the black paint — she declared solidarity
with them.

“They want to defund the police for black people,” Beatty yelled, banging an empty paint can. “They’re lying. No, we’re
not standing with Black Lives Matter. “We want our police. Refund our police!”

Attention to the social-justice organization Black Lives Matter accelerated this summer with protests over the death of

George Floyd. The 46-year-old Texas native died May 25 after a police officer in Minneapolis was caught on video kneeling on the man’s neck.

Attempts to reach Beatty for comment were unsuccessful. Beatty, 29, a Christian activist who supports President Trump, and is vocally pro-life, has drawn media attention in recent years throughout the U.S. She uses the hashtag #JesusMatters when posting videos and pictures of her protests, has been called the “Jesus Matters protester” by the press.

Once a resident of Belfast, Maine in 2018, she unsuccessfully campaigned as a Republican for a seat in the state’s House of
Representatives, election records show.

Recently, she was shown on Seattle news broadcasts, admonishing local supporters of Black Lives Matter.

Beatty has argued that while the movement focuses on black men slain by cops, it ignores other lives, particularly
young black men killed by rising gun violence and thousands of aborted black babies.

Therefore, she asserted, supporters of the movement — or people who don’t belong to it but support its battle cry — are hypocrites and frauds.

“The statement, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ain’t gonna cut it,” Beatty said in another video posted July 20. “All black lives
matter, all white lives matter, all Spanish lives matter. All of the above.’“All, including the ones in the womb and the ones getting shot in the hood.”

New York police data released July 12 shows a spike in gun violence in June compared to a year ago in all five boroughs. Between June 15 and Juy 12, shooting incidents were up over 300 percent compared to the same 28-day period in 2019.

In her July 20 video, also posted on Facebook, Beatty said she was taking off a couple of days after an “epic” all-nighter
that “won favor” from God.

Beatty and another woman, Edmee Chavannes, 39, were arrested July 18 outside Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, but released later.

With other supporters, they subsequently doused black paint on similar murals in Harlem and Brooklyn.

They weren’t the first to deface the Midtown mural. A similar incident happened on July 13, which drew a response on Twitter from Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“To whoever vandalized our mural on 5th Avenue: nice try,” tweeted the mayor, who helped paint it. He added that city
workers had “already fixed it.”

He concluded that the movement “is more than words, and it can’t be undone.”

Beatty criticized de Blasio for assigning police officers to guard the mural while black people are falling to gun violence.
Black Lives Matter representatives also couldn’t be reached. Video footage from the demonstrations July 18 showed push
back against Beatty from onlookers. In Manhattan, a man was heard yelling curses, and in Brooklyn, men grabbed and hurled Beatty’s paint roller and empty cans.

Beatty said she’s regularly called derogatory terms given to black people labeled as being ashamed of their race. “A lot of people say I hate myself and, ‘you hate being black,’” Beatty said in the July 20 video. “First of all, you all are trolls and you got too much time on your hands to be trolling me.”

She countered that Black Lives Matter is filled with “white liberals” who are guilt-ridden over “white privilege.” “So, they say ‘We gotta fight for you because we’re so sorry we got a little more privilege than what you got,’ ” Beatty said.

Beatty acknowledged that unjustified police killings happen; she estimated there were nine last year nationwide.

“Y’all know for a fact, that we go into our own neighborhoods, and we’re killing ourselves,” Beatty said, “but a black rights activist doesn’t want to talk about that.”

She added, however, that Black Lives Matter refuses to acknowledge so-called “black-on-black” crime and abortions, which, she said, amount to thousands of deaths each year.