A new mural at a California charter school in a southern suburb of San Diego has quickly become notorious.
The artist depicted President Trump’s head on a spear.
The recently unveiled mural at the MAAC Charter School in Chula Vista, San Diego, depicts an Aztec warrior spearing Mr. Trump’s decapitated, bloody head. By Wednesday, a black tarp was covering the picture after the display attracted attention.Shasha Andrade, one of three people who worked on the piece, shared the full image of the mural across Facebook and Instagram when the painting was covered up.Andrade wrote on Facebook that the group agreed to change the graphic mural because of threats made to the school.”We were just going to adjust the mural but when things got out of control and the school started receiving threats and putting the students at risk we decided to change it completely,” she wrote on Sunday.School director Tommy Ramirez told KFMB the mural was a part of “Battlegroundz,” an annual event highlighting street murals as an urban art to raise money for scholarships for seniors. The fundraiser was on April 28.”We understand that there was a mural painted at the event this past weekend that does not align with our school’s philosophy of nonviolence,” Ramirez said. “We have been in communication with the artist who has agreed to modify the artwork to better align with the school’s philosophy.
A sampling of comments shows that the piece was not well received by area residents.
Contrary to rumors, famous Trump-inspired artist Kathy Griffin was not the art teacher.
In other San Diego school news, a local high school student was charged Monday with running a smuggling ring that brought both illegal immigrants and drugs such as methamphetamine and the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl across the border.
Phillip Junior Webb was nabbed last week when he drove across the border with two illegal immigrants hiding in the trunk of his car, investigators said in court papers.Authorities had apparently been keeping tabs on him for awhile, though, with the court documents showing they’d come across five juveniles over the last year who were caught smuggling drugs strapped on their bodies. Each of them said they were recruited by Mr. Webb, 18, who had been a classmate and who paid them up to $500 for each smuggling attempt.One of the juveniles reported he was successful perhaps 20 times, collecting thousands of dollars in cash during that time frame, before he was finally caught.“We are seeing a very troubling trend and we want to warn parents and high schoolers,” said U.S. Attorney Adam L. Braverman, who announced the charges Monday. “Our youth are being recruited by drug cartels to smuggle dangerous drugs across the border. We are going after the recruiters who exploit these kids, but the kids also need to know that they are gambling with their lives when they do this.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was recently at U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, a story that may have been missed in all the other news that has been breaking recently. He announced a “zero tolerance policy” for illegal immigrants. In addition to National Guard troops, thirty-five federal prosecutors and 18 immigration judges have been re-directed to the border to handle immigration cases.
“We aren’t making any laws up. We are enforcing the laws enacted by Congress. These are laws on the books, laws that we all took an oath to enforce,” he said.Sessions said the Trump administration will continue to fight illegal immigration.”The Department of Homeland Security is now referring 100 percent of illegal southwest border crossings to the Department of Justice for prosecution,” he said.
Hopefully, border security will be tightened before other area high school students decide to become drug kingpins as part of their extracurricular activities.
However, it gives the Chula Vista student artist another potential subject for a future mural.
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