A small group of protesters gathered at Bushwick Flea yesterday to harangue customers, vendors, and owner Rob Abner over the crocheted artwork Abner arranged to go up on a wall without the permission of the building owner—they came, in other words, to protect the property rights of the Salvadoran neighbors against what a Facebook recap of the protest described as “the brutality represented by this crocheted artwork.”
The activists’ group, the Brooklyn Solidarity Network, is calling for a boycott of the Flea. In the Facebook post, the group says the Wes Anderson-inspired artwork by London Kaye is emblematic of “a city where difference is removed with armed violence, and savage eviction.” Bushwick native Will Giron’s mid-September Facebook post decrying the knit takeover of his aunt’s wall as a symptom of rude, colonial-minded gentrification drew widespread attention, and Abner has since said he will take it down.
