Kingston-area teens, whose jobs are to clean and beautify the city this summer, just had a setback: Someone spray-painted over a mural the group had just finished.

The piece included quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as a fist outlined with the names of Black Americans who have died during interactions with police.

Neighbors who have embraced the Black Lives Matter movement, and supported local art projects that followed, were disgusted.

“Ugh. It’s wrong. It’s so, so wrong,” passerby Brian Weinstein said.

“The world is cold, man,” Kingston resident Dante Oliver said, as he passed by the mural, painted on a utility box on Schwenk Drive Friday.

Members of the Kingston YMCA Farm Project’s summer employment program said they were not shocked learn someone had vandalized their piece.

The team finished the mural on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, one of the team members discovered the vandalism when he arrived to show his family the team’s latest project.

Team member Nicole Castriota told Spectrum News on Friday that the vandalism seems to have amplified the teens’ message.

“I think all they did was make everyone more aware of it, because people have been sharing about it so much,” Castriota said.

“I would just ask them why. I would ask them what their mindset is that makes them angry. I would try to understand, because I don’t.”

The team plans to fix — or repaint — the mural, and continues to work on other beautification projects, many of which have been inspired by the national conversation about police’s treatment of Black people.