SQUIRREL HILL — Resident and “ally to the bitter end” Norm Schumann reportedly helped advance the black community’s cause today by placing a Black Lives Matter yard sign arbitrarily among the $30,000 of landscaping work he had done last week.
“It feels good to stand for what’s right,” he said. “I may have not made it to a protest, or contributed to any funds, or signed any petitions, or pushed to improve our company’s hiring practices, or spoken up in public, or talked about it with my kids, or even tried to inform myself, but when people pass this house now, they’re going to know, ‘Hey, there’s a fighter for justice…with an absolutely stunning retaining wall.'”
Schumann’s neighbor Brian Watral argued that the sign was “a meaningless gesture.”
“Oh, Norm thinks a sheet of plastic next to some dreadful shrubs puts him on the right side of history,” he said, calling the number of a contractor parked across the street to stain and expand his outdoor deck. “But is he sharing Nancy Pelosi tweets? Of course not. You would swear the man doesn’t even read the Wall Street Journal they throw at that hideous front door of his every day.”
“Besides, who’s going to see that sign beyond some people walking by?” he added. “The ‘#stopracism’ sticker on the back windshield of my new $125,000 BMW, on the other hand — now that’s how you stand up to injustice.”
