March 28, 2024
McHenry County | Northwest Herald


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'Black Lives Matter' billboards go up in Crystal Lake, Marengo

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This past summer, protests took place throughout McHenry County, with people proclaiming that “Black Lives Matter” in light of police brutality.

Now, a couple of billboards with the same message have been put up in Crystal Lake and Marengo, meant by their sponsors as a way to keep those conversations going.

Sam Cortina, of Crystal Lake, coordinated and raised funds for the billboard in Crystal Lake, and Marengo resident Nicole Weskerna did the same for her city.

The Crystal Lake billboard is on Route 31 near Rakow Road, and the one in Marengo is on Route 20 near Meyer Road. People can see it if they head west out of town, toward Rockford, said Weskerna, a former reporter for Shaw Media.

Both signs have been up since September and have plans to stay up until November, as of now.

“I felt like the community needed a reminder that Black Lives Matter,” Cortina said.

Weskerna said she saw the billboard as a way to bring more representation for the movement and the message to the community.

Black Lives Matter conversations need to start in places like Marengo, she said, especially as it is very tightknit.

“The Black Lives Matter movement is the second Civil Rights movement, the second wave of it, and here we are kind of turning a blind eye to it,” she said.

Marengo’s billboard cost $2,500 for two months, and it took 11 days of fundraising to reach that goal, Weskerna said. Everybody that donated to the billboard in Marengo has ties to McHenry County, she said.

An original GoFundMe page for the Crystal Lake billboard raised a total of $5,420 from 140 donations. Raising the money to put a billboard up only took two weeks, Cortina said.

“Over the span of three to four weeks, I went from just an idea to having the billboard up,” she said.

The Crystal Lake billboard reads "Black Lives Matter" with “a message of love from your neighbors across McHenry County" below.

By saying the billboard is a message of love, Cortina said, she and others wanted to show it doesn’t come from a hateful place.

“The general message of Black Lives Matter is a message of love and support to the Black community,” Cortina said.

Weskerna said the narrative often gets skewed to make it seem like Black Lives Matter supporters are violent rioters and extremists.

“We're not,” she said. “It's not only OK to support Black Lives Matter, it's critically important, especially now, and there's room for everyone in this movement.”

Cortina also pushed back against the idea that saying black lives matter means that other lives matter less. The system, though, isn’t rigged against white people, she said.

“Nobody should be killed without receiving justice,” Cortina said. “The fact is that Black people have it really hard in this country, and that's a change that needs to be made.”

Cortina said she wants to use the billboard to inspire people to make a change, vote and get involved in local politics.

When the billboard first went up, Cortina shared a photo of it on her personal Facebook. It received over 1,000 shares and almost as many comments.

Though a lot of the comments were positive, others denounced Black Lives Matter, and called Cortina a "racist." A Facebook page for local conservatives also shared Cortina's post to their page and criticized it. So did a recent letter to the editor sent to the Northwest Herald.

"I am sorry, but these white sheep are not my friends," the letter writer said.

Cortina said she has received support as well.

A 2017 Prairie Ridge High School graduate, Cortina said people from high school who she hasn’t seen for years reached out to say they thought what she did was cool.