Salt Lake City, UT – When Rae Duckworth got an email from the city notifying them that they would soon lose access to the space known as the Fleet Block murals, they knew they had to act. So the day before the city was set to put up fences around the public art installment, they called for a final vigil at the site where their cousin, alongside 28 other victims of police violence, was memorialized in a larger than life mural.

“We’re here to basically say our goodbyes,” Duckworth, the acting chairperson for Utah’s Black Lives Matter chapter, told Unicorn Riot.

In February, as Salt Lake City prepared to demolish the prominent piece of public art, the community came out to visit the murals and mourn not only the loss of the space, but those commemorated in the artwork. More than just losing a public art installment, many felt like they were losing their loved ones all over again.

“I think it’s like a common theme amongst the families, like, these being gone is like a way for the city to be quiet about, you know, police reform, police brutality,” Duckworth said while discussing the effect of losing the murals. “Just because these faces and these memorials are gone, it doesn’t mean the stories aren’t there.”

In 2020, cities across the country joined in the nationwide reckoning against police brutality sparked by George Floyd’s murder and Salt Lake City was no exception. As protesters took to the streets in Utah’s capitol city, an artist saw the opportunity to use a defunct piece of city property to amplify the stories of people killed by police.

The anonymous artist, or artists, took advantage of a series of blank white walls and began painting monochromatic portraits of people who had lost their lives to police violence, both locally and across the country. The murals popped up, one by one, on a city building once used to maintain heavy equipment.

Known as Fleet Block, the formerly neglected parcel sits just south of downtown Salt Lake. As murals populated the walls, the building transitioned from dead space to an unmissable monument to those killed by police.

The murals started with a few prominent faces, including Floyd’s and a slain local man, Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal. Soon, 29 faces encircled the building, representing a small portion of people who have lost their lives to police violence. As the space took on a new purpose, family members of those memorialized on the walls used the space to grieve and remember their loved ones.

For years, the Fleet Block murals served as a memorial ground, an organizing space, and a cultural touchstone for families and community members. Vigils and other events were regularly held at the site, and the images reassured families that not only were their loved ones remembered, but that others could see their faces and know their stories.

With the removal of the murals, families told Unicorn Riot that it feels like the city is not only removing an important space, but trying to silence the stories that the murals represent.

“When [people in authority] drive by here, they have no choice but to look and see and have conversations about these people on these walls,” Gina Thayne, the aunt and last legal guardian of Dillon Taylor, who was killed by Salt Lake City Police in 2014 and memorialized on Fleet Block’s walls, said of the artwork’s importance.

The city began the process to redevelop the vacant plot of land where the murals were housed as early as 2021, but the project accelerated last year.

Last August, the city held a semi-public meeting with families of those represented in the murals to announce that the demolition would begin early this year. While the city billed the talk, and others like it in the leadup to the destruction of the murals, as conversations, those in attendance described the process as one-sided, with the city announcing plans rather than seeking input.

While family and community members asked the city to remove and preserve the walls housing the murals, the city insisted that the process and the building’s materials would be too environmentally hazardous to keep intact.

Instead, the city has pledged to dedicate a three-acre portion of the new development to “public art inspired by social justice,” though details about what exactly that entails are sparse.

The demolition of the Fleet Block murals represents a national roll back of the demands made during the 2020 George Floyd uprising. As cities and states across the country distance themselves from the demands made by protesters, such as defunding and dismantling police departments, public art and expressions of the movement have also been removed.

Notably, in March, Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. was demolished at the behest of Republicans in Congress. Other public remnants from the uprising have similarly been removed or demolished.

Demolition of the Salt Lake building housing the murals began on March 17, and was finished within a few days. Although the faces are gone, the families insist on commemorating their loved ones and urge others to do the same.

“These names all mean something to somebody here,” Duckworth said. “I think it’s really important that we learn the names, but we know the faces and we make daily changes because of these faces.”