April 28, 2015
A retail titan unwittingly became a protest site over the weekend, when activists transformed a Forever 21 window display with a Black Lives Matter banner and t-shirts.
Gothamist reports that Saturday’s protest was the work of an anonymous group called Never 21 dedicated to raising awareness about the killings of young black people.
“It was kind of the opposite of shoplifting,” an anonymous protestor told Gothamist. “We called it shop gifting, because we were putting shirts into the store rather than taking them out.”
To carry out their stunt, a banner team snuck into the second-floor window display and unrolled a sign reading “BLACK LIVES MATTER” with the group’s web address printed underneath. The colors matched Forever 21’s corporate palette of black, yellow and white, so it didn’t look too out of place.
Next, another group of protestors put Black Lives Matter t-shirts on the shop’s mannequins and rails. According to Gothamist, the shop was so busy it took 20 minutes for managers to notice the changes, which they removed immediately.
“Countless underaged lives have been lost at the hands of ‘vigilantes’ and disgruntled police officers. These youth were never given the chance to see age 21,” a statement on the Never 21 website reads.
The website’s design recalls the Forever 21 website, with a black and yellow theme. According to RT, the protest was not an attack on Forever 21, but a bid to raise awareness.
Forever 21 didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, but the company said in a statement Monday that it’s “not associated with the Never 21 Project and had no prior knowledge of their public demonstration.”
Source: Huffingnton Post