2 Religious Leaders Arrested For Blocking FDOT Street Mural Removal In St. Pete

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Two religious leaders were arrested Friday night for blocking Florida Department of Transportation crews from painting over the Black History Matters street mural by the Woodson Museum.

Rev. Andy Oliver, 45, the pastor at Allendale United Methodist Church, and Ben Atherton-Zeman, 59, a minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg, were both charged with pedestrian obstructing or hindering traffic and obstruction, St. Petersburg police told Patch.

FDOT crews arrived to paint the street mural on 9th Avenue South, west of 22nd Street South, at 8 p.m.

Oliver and Atherton-Zeman walked by officers at the scene and sat down in the road on the mural to try to prevent FDOT machinery from removing the murals, police said.

Officers warned them repeatedly to move, but they refused and were arrested.

The Black History Matters, the LGBTQ+ Progress Pride crosswalk in the Grand Central District and other murals in St. Petersburg and other Florida cities have been removed or will be removed after the state threatened to withhold funding to municipalities over street art that’s inconsistent with state law and the FDOT Design Manual.

In a June 30 internal memo, Will Watts, FDOT’s chief operating officer and assistant secretary, called for municipalities to remove “non-compliant traffic control devices and surface markings, including pavement art installations.”

This includes “pavement surface art that is associated with social, political, or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.”

State officials claim that the removal of the street art is a safety issue.

“Non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly contribute to traffic safety or control can lead to distractions or misunderstandings, jeopardizing both driver and pedestrian safety,” Watts wrote in the memo. “Furthermore, uniform and consistent application of pavement surface markings is critical for the overall effectiveness of automated vehicle operation, as automated vehicle technologies rely heavily on consistent traffic control devices.”

Studies, including the 2022 Asphalt Art Safety Study from Bloomberg Philanthropies, show the opposite, though.

The Asphalt Art Safety Study found that areas with street art, including intersection murals, crosswalk art, painted plazas, and sidewalk extensions, saw a 50 percent drop in traffic crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists, a 37 percent drop in crashes leading to injuries, a 27 percent increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians with the right-of-way, and a 17 percent decrease in total crashes.

Numerous activists in St. Petersburg, including Oliver and Atherton-Zeman, feel the murals are being targeted because of the communities they represent and have been vocal about their opposition to the removal of the artwork.

“Never forget that when the state erased our Black History Matters mural, our city police enabled them,” Allendale UMC posted to its Facebook page on Saturday just before 8 p.m.

In a separate post on his personal Facebook page, while sharing images from the Woodson, Oliver wrote, “Our city police, serving and protecting white supremacy and fascism.”