Woman tears down racist banners over I-90

CHATHAM — A woman angered by the racially motivated massacre of 10 people at a market in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo tore down two banners espousing White Replacement Theory on Saturday.

Banners that have since been removed were displayed along bridges passing over Interstate 90 on Saturday. The two White Lives Matter banners read, “Stop White Replacement” and “Wake up White New Yorkers.”

The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center both define White Lives Matter a racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter. The banners were taken down by Columbia County resident Emily Nooners.

“I’m driving down the highway and I just see these banners up and I immediately felt sick,” said Nooners, who is White. “I almost didn’t believe that that was what it had said because from a distance it was quite small. I just kind of notated where I thought it was, being familiar with the area. Then I saw a second one, and I was like, Oh yeah, we’re going to get those. I could just not fathom the idea that some people would have to drive under them.”

The two banners had been placed on bridges crossing over I-90, Nooners said. One of the banners was on the overpass in Chatham and the other had been found on the final overpass near Exit B1.

“Rage was like filling my body,” Nooners said. “I was just so compelled to go get them.”

Nooners was able to park close to where the banners had been hung to be able to cut them down. She said she ran up, cut the canvas down. She said the two pieces of canvas are around 8-feet-by-10-feet each.

“I had no idea that at the very same time that I had been compulsed to cut these down the shooting was happening in Buffalo,” Nooners said. “I returned to my house around 2:40 p.m., which means I was pulling those banners down just before and during. Which I didn’t find out until later in the evening.”

Later in the day, Nooners said, she found out about the Buffalo massacre. An 18-year-old shot and killed 10 people at a Tops grocery store Saturday.

“I have a really sick feeling. The shooting happened in Buffalo. These signs were posted along 90, and 90 is the route that leads to Buffalo,” Nooners said. “Some people kind of thought that maybe it might have been a trail. It’s just uncomfortable to think about the proximity, it’s so close to our community, it’s disturbing.”

The banners were hung over the interstate around the Berkshire Spur on the same day the massacre occurred in Buffalo, local activist Michael Richardson said. He said the group White Lives Matter is all about white replacement theory.

“We have recognized that that is what their message is and we’ve condemned it,” Richardson said. “But now it has manifested itself in a massacre, and this can’t be just ignored. This is a very serious group that has a very disturbing message. For them to have that banner up there — ‘Stop White Replacement’ — the same day that a man is killing people in Buffalo on the same principle, the same conspiracy theory, is just horrific.”

White Replacement Theory is a conspiracy theory, Richardson said.

“That democrats and Jews are in some kind of nefarious plot to bring in immigrants, primarily immigrants who are people of color, so as to have more voters and more population increase that will replace the white majority,” Richardson said. “It’s so incredibly flawed.”

Nooners plans to donate the material the banners were made of to a New York State artist or a minority artist.

“I’m really hoping because they are such large stretches of canvas, I’m really hoping that we can transform them, in a sense,” Nooners said. “Maybe have a painting put over them, so I’m going to donate them to an artist.”