BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — A Baton Rouge gallery was apparently the target of a white nationalist organization.
The gallery is called Yes We Cannibal and it is located at 1600 Government St.
Mat Keel and Liz Lessner are the directors of Yes We Cannibal.
Keel said a volunteer at the gallery woke up on Wednesday morning and discovered the graffiti seen below.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Patriot Front (PF) is a white nationalist hate group that formed in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, of August 12, 2017.”
Mat and Liz do not believe this act was random, “eight or so stencils on a business’s window is very clearly targeted.”
So why would someone do this to a gallery in Baton Rouge?
Keel suspects that it might be because they “are devoutly anti-capitalist, run an anarchist ecology reading group with people from around the world, strongly supported HB298 (the LA bill to abolish carceral labor) and the campaign for justice for Deaughn Willis.”
A recent check of the property shows that the graffiti has been removed from the property.
When asked how the graffiti made them feel, Keel said, “it’s shocking and intimately intrusive, like all transgressions of personal space are.”
Keel continued by saying, “we would love to believe – not to say we necessarily do — that the people who did this understand that our space, ethics and practice actually are threatening to neo-fascism.”
Mat is currently working on his PhD at LSU and Liz teaches at the LSU College of Art and Design.
The soon to be married couple want everyone who are members of the communities which they are in to feel safe, secure and loved.
