LA church apologizes after White volunteers put up 'No Tresspassing' sign on seeing Black woman sitting on lawn
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA: St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church in North Hollywood has issued an apology after African-American actress Alex Marshall-Brown posted a video where she was told by church volunteers that she was "not welcome" and that she had no right to sit on the grass because it was private property.
In the five-minute-long clip recorded by Marshall-Brown and posted on July 7, she is seen calmly recording her experience as she sat and worked under the shade of a tree in the lawn in front of St. Paul's. As two White men put up a sign that says "no trespassing" on a tree in front of her, one of them turns and tells the actress, who appeared as a stuntwoman in Quentin Tarantino’s 'The Hateful Eight,' that she was welcomed. She asked the men if she was really welcome since the sign said otherwise. “I did notice that, why am I not welcome?” Marshall-Brown asks.
“Because this is private property,” the man replies to which the actress replied, “The church is not welcoming me?”
“No, it’s not,” the church volunteer replies. “We have a lot of problems with people here from the park vandalizing and we don’t want anybody on the private property. If you want to stay on the sidewalk, that’s OK. The mayor says you can have all the sidewalk you want, but you can’t be on the grass — that’s our property.” "You know, we used to be real nice about it. Not anymore, sorry. When people aren’t nice, we’re not nice," the man says. “How have I been unkind to you, sir?” Marshall-Brown asks. to which the man admits, “You haven’t. But we have to treat everybody the same — all lives matter.” Then Marshall-Brown replies, “I said nothing about any lives, sir."
The man keeps on urging Marshall-Brown to move along and seek shelter in a nearby park, insisting that he had to protect the church from "everyone" and was willing to call the cops if she did not move, till an elderly white woman approaches the scene and vaguely tells the actress that they have had many instances of people showing threatening behavior in the past. When Marshall-Brown asks for specific details, the woman, who also had a phone pointed at the Black woman apparently filming her, fails to provide a single one. As Marshall-Brown insists that she was merely catching up on work, the white woman says, “You apparently have your own agenda."
On their Facebook page, the church issued an extensive apology saying that the situation was "mishandled" and that the volunteers had been relieved of their posts.
“The disrespect demonstrated by the individuals does not represent the attitude of St. Paul’s First. I was out of town at the time of the incident, but I believe it could’ve and should’ve been handled more respectfully," Mr. Santiago Botero, acting principal at St. Paul’s school, said. “Because our preschool, which is currently operating to provide childcare for families of essential workers and been during this COVID pandemic, we as a staff do have a policy against loitering within a certain radius of school for the safety of the children (this also includes media safety). We had to implement this in response to several incidents of vandalism the church and school experienced. While Alex was not complying with that policy, she was clearly not harming any person or property and it should’ve been more clearly and more respectively communicated to her."
He added: “I am personally offended by what I saw in the video and would like to apologize on behalf of St. Paul’s First. I will try to contact Alex and she would ever like to speak to me personally about what she experienced at St. Paul’s First, I would invite the opportunity to meet with her. As Christians, it is our duty to demonstrate to others the love and mercy that Christ shows to us. Unfortunately, this did not happen yesterday. I immigrated to the United States and have experienced both love from people as well as racist assumptions about me as a Latino man, and even though I can’t put myself in the shoes of the black community, this is why I want to represent St. Paul’s First as a loving church. I was trained as a teacher and am training to be a counselor, and that is what I do. I am here to help, here to help educate people about Christ’s love.”