We were blown away and then we looked at our messages on Facebook-there were hundreds. We announced the "Cover The Hate" project on a Facebook post on June 7 and it received more shares, likes and comments than the whole previous month of our social media posts. But it's a national and international movement, and this is just our small part of that. We've been really lucky and blessed that Jay's a really good guy and he's 100 percent on board-even though we're not making money from it, he's paying for the supplies, and we are trying to reschedule tattoo appointments that were missed because of COVID-19. They are offering to cover up racist tattoos for free. Jeremiah Swift (left), Jay Harvill (center) and Ryun King (right) started the "cover the hate" project at Harvill's Gallery X Collective shop in Murray, Kentucky. And that's how the "Cover The Hate" project started. It was there in the air the influence of what was happening around us. Straight away, Jay said that he and Jeremiah had already been talking about it and Jeremiah wanted to do that too. I'd noticed a social media post from a tattooer saying he wanted to cover up racist work for his clients, and I told Jay that that was what I wanted to do. On our first day back at the shop in early June, I told Jay that I felt this was a really powerful moment and that we needed to be a part of it. I was moved by the people who were protesting for George Floyd and the cause of racial equality in general. We had been quarantined, like the rest of America and the world, and all of the protests had been happening. It's owned by Jay Harvill, and myself and Jeremiah Swift are tattoo artists there. Gallery X Art Collective has been open for about a year. I currently live in Murray, Kentucky where Gallery X Art Collective is based-and where we do the "Cover The Hate" project. I've tattooed and pierced all over the U.S., and even in Argentina where my mom's family is from. I've now been a body piercer for more than 20 years, and a tattoo artist for nearly 12 years. He opened the first tattoo shop in Mobile, Alabama in 1978, and from the age of around six years old I'd help him price tattoos for people. So I've been around the tattoo industry since I was a child. My dad was a tattoo artist, he started in 1969.
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