The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), an affiliate of Black Lives Matter, spent tens of thousands of dollars producing cloth masks imprinted with "Stop killing Black people" and "Defund police" to provide to protesters around the country, masks that were seized by law enforcement before they even left the post office, HuffPost reports. The Oakland-based organization received a notice from the U.S. Postal Service that its first four shipments of 500 masks each—bound for Washington, St. Louis, New York City, and Minneapolis—had been seized.
"I have shipped a lot of stuff before," Rene Quinonez of Movement Ink, which produced the masks, said. "It's an inside joke that I'm always shipping a ton of stuff, usually next-day or two-day and paying some ridiculous fees. […] These guys [the postal service] know that I ship apparel," Quinonez said. "There was nothing out of the ordinary." So why was this shipment immediately seized? "I just don't understand it. It's just really blowing my mind," he said, wondering if he's under surveillance by law enforcement. He almost undoubtedly is, because BLM has been since the Ferguson protests during the Obama administration.
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The Department of Homeland Security started monitoring the organization in August 2014 after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the murder of Michael Brown. A freedom of information request revealed that DHS was monitoring social media of BLM and mapped and collected information on planned events and protests by monitoring social media accounts associated with BLM. That included "Google maps and live updates tracking, minute-by-minute, the movements of participants in an April 2015 #BlackLivesMatter protest in Washington, D.C." Documents obtained by The Intercept in 2018 showed that the FBI "tracked the movements of an activist flying in from New York, and appear to have surveilled the homes and cars of individuals somehow tied to the protests." And that was before Donald Trump was in the White House and William Barr took over at the Justice Department.
To be clear, we don't know what law enforcement agency seized M4BL's masks. But you can be damned sure that the BLM-monitoring by law enforcement hasn't been curtailed in the Trump administration. The United States Postal Inspection Service has not yet responded to requests for more information from the press. All that M4BL and Movement Ink know is that the tracking numbers associated with their shipments say "Seized by Law Enforcement."
"Police have rioted coast to coast, beating and gassing protesters who have called for an end to police violence, with the explicit approval of President Trump,” Chelsea Fuller, a spokesperson for the M4BL," said in a statement to HuffPost. "Now, it appears they want to ensure that people who protest are susceptible to the same deadly pandemic that they have failed miserably at stopping. […] The continued surveillance and disruption of social movements under this administration is as chilling as it is dangerous. It should be roundly condemned."
Movement Ink has been in business since 2009, and touts its background in "organizing, violence prevention and youth advocacy work [and] investment in impacting and contributing to our community." Quinonez told HuffPost that he and his family stayed up late producing the masks that were seized. "We’re tired, but we're going to try to rally some support and figure out how to replace these masks and how to support the movement," he said. "This isn't a weapon. It's more about safety. We're trying to figure out how to keep our community safe."