Many were upset after two murals outside of a building sold about a year ago in East San Jose were painted over by the building\u2019s new owner.<\/p>\n
A social media post by nonprofit ConXi\u00f3n says Martha\u2019s Kitchen painted over two community murals on the outside of the building ConXi\u00f3n sold to them in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo warning, nothing else was painted, so it wasn\u2019t like they were painting the whole building, it was just those things,\u201d President and CEO of ConXi\u00f3n Lori Ch\u00e1vez said. \u201cThe murals themselves have a lot of significance because it shows history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez says one of the murals was created with young people who participated in an after-school program for native American and Latino students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat mural was done by Jimmy Fonseca and it was done in collaboration with the youth, with kids at the after-school program,\u201d Ch\u00e1vez said.<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez says ConXi\u00f3n discussed the murals with Martha\u2019s Kitchen during negotiations to sell the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe told them, we love these murals, they\u2019re important to the community, we\u2019d like for you to keep them, inside and out, and he agreed, ‘Yes they\u2019re beautiful, we\u2019ll keep them’,\u201d Ch\u00e1vez said.<\/p>\n
But Martha\u2019s Kitchen Executive Director Bill Lee says that conversation never happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never raised the issue, and that\u2019s one of the reasons I\u2019m very disappointed with that social media post because they never asked us to preserve the mural,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Lee says Martha\u2019s Kitchen told ConXi\u00f3n in October that it intended to paint over the murals.<\/p>\n
He says the exterior needed to be painted, and the murals did not represent Martha\u2019s Kitchen\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, the mural neither represents what our organization does, we feed people who are starving, we feed the homeless,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Lee says Martha\u2019s Kitchen plans to put a new mural on a nearby wall, one that he says will reflect the organization\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat mural will represent food being grown, food being prepared, food being consumed which is what we do, we\u2019re here for the community, we rescue food that would otherwise go into the landfill and feed people that would otherwise go hungry,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
ConXi\u00f3n says the murals represented an important part of the community\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
Martha\u2019s Kitchen says it plans to replace them with artwork that better reflects its mission.<\/p>\n
San Jose City Councilman Bien Doan sent a statement addressing the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very disappointed to see the murals were covered up. I know Martha’s Kitchen wants to be a good neighbor, but that means respecting and embracing our cultural values and histories, especially with respect to our children. It is my hope that this mural will be replaced soon and that they incorporate imaging representative of our youth and indigenous residents,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many were upset after two murals outside of a building sold about a year ago in East San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-439255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}