‘Black Lives Matter’ billboards appear in Boise. Their buyer wants more around Idaho
If you’ve driven around downtown Boise in the past week, chances are you have seen a billboard with a timely message flash into your view.
It reads, simply, “Black Lives Matter.” And the message is on digital billboards on State Street and Interstate 184 just before you arrive downtown.
The man behind the billboards is 29-year-old Nathan Barry, a lifelong Boise resident and CEO of an email marketing company.
“I wanted to do something more than just a post on social media,” Barry told the Statesman on Monday.
Barry said he came up with the idea after trying to think of a different way to reach more people. He wanted to reach those who might be on the conservative side of politics and who might not be on board with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Not everyone is on social media, but just about everyone drives, he thought. So the billboard idea was born.
Barry said that conservative states are important places to get the message out, because showing solidarity in places people might not expect is important. To create policy changes, the average voter needs to be on board, he said.
After he decided to spend money on the digital messages, everything happened quickly, Barry said, with two billboards up roughly 30 hours later. Barry said he chose to go the digital route because of how quickly the message would be live. Messages on the digital billboards around the Boise area stay up for about eight seconds before rotating to another ad or message.
Barry chose two spots that he knew would be extra visible, given the traffic on the Connector and on State Street. By last Tuesday at midnight, the billboards were live, just hours after thousands of people gathered peacefully at the Idaho Capitol for a vigil honoring George Floyd and other African Americans who were victims of police violence.
Barry said he wished the billboards had gone up just a bit sooner, so that protesters could have seen them while heading downtown.
Barry said he has been receiving messages from people across the country asking how to create the billboards in their cities. He decided to spell out the process on social media, showing what he did to make the messages happen. Barry said that as of Monday, billboards with the same message will go up in Salt Lake City, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” Barry said. “A lot of people said they didn’t expect something like this in Boise.”
Dozens responded to Barry’s tweets, many voicing support.
“So awesome. Love that you did this!” said Shawn Blanc on Twitter. Others responded to Barry’s tweets saying they wanted to put up similar messages in Tennessee and Miami.
Though he’s received messages condemning the billboards, Barry said he plans to put up more — not just in Boise, but all around Idaho. Money for the billboards came out of Barry’s own pocket, he said. He said he’s avoided doing crowdfunding campaigns because he’d rather have donations go to Black Lives Matter, the Equal Justice Initiative or the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to name a few.
The first two billboards are set to expire at midnight Tuesday, but a new one in a different location is going live at the same time. It will be seen by drivers in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 84 before the Orchard Street exit.
Above all else, Barry said he hopes the billboards will provide some encouragement for people to stand up and fight. He said the Black Lives Matter movement isn’t a matter of politics, but of basic human decency. It needs to succeed, Barry said, and he wants to do what he can to make police reforms possible.
“It’s really exciting because it feels like change is possible, and there have been people fighting for this for so long,” Barry said.
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 3:21 PM.
