Never 21 #BlackLivesMatter Forever 21 New York Mannequin & Window Takeover

Forever 21’s Union Square New York store got a makeover last Saturday when activists changed out window and in-store mannequins, replacing stripes and florals with t-shirts broadcasting a powerful message: ‘Black Lives Matter’.

‘It’s a phrase that has taken on national significance in recent years following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, a hashtag #BlackLivesMatter that has evolved to become a call to action, a rallying cry,’ writes MTV.

The Forever 21 Project: Never 21 from Never21 on Vimeo.

Never 21’s website, designed to mimic the graphics and layout of Forever 21, is meant to call attention to the countless, underaged deaths of children at the hands of ‘vigilantes and disgruntled police officers’. The activists make the important point that the names in the headlines such as Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice, were children who never lived to see the age of twenty-one. Never 21’s focus is simple:

We care about the lives of Black men. We care about the lives of Black women. We care about the lives of Black CHILDREN

MTV interviews an anonymous member of the Never 21 collective, described as ‘a good amount of us. We all have our specialties in different areas, so we were all assigned different things to focus on, i.e. the legal repercussions, graphic design for the website and t-shirts, etc.’

The activist action, taking 4-5 months of planning, took about 5-10 minutes to execute.