8/20/2020
By Briana Stewart, Cheyenne Haslett and Ivan Pereira
Former presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., gave a subtle nod to the Black Lives Matter movement during her Democratic National Convention speech Wednesday night — and there were several other hidden messages.
Warren, a former schoolteacher, spoke at an early childhood education center in Springfield Massachusetts and talked about the need for reforms to the country’s child care system. In the classroom, however, were various subtly-placed Easter eggs.
The most prominent was the BLM sign, which consisted of three block letters (B, L, M) placed in lockers located right behind the senator’s left shoulder. The letters were displayed during her entire speech and their significance was caught by some viewers.
Alencia Johnson, a former adviser on the Warren campaign and the founder of the social impact agency 1063 West Broad, told ABC News she wasn’t surprised that Warren had a BLM sign displayed during her speech.
“What I experienced from working with her is she always finds a way to center marginalized voices within her platform,” Johnson said in a statement. “She always nodes to history and/or the present moment we’re in.”
Kristen Orthman, Warren’s former campaign communications director and current deputy chief of staff, told ABC News in a statement that the idea to include the BLM sign in the background was thought of by Warren and her senior advisor, Roger Lau. They “wanted to do a number of things in the background of the room and this was one they wanted to have visible in the camera shot,” Orthman said.
Warren’s team shared more information about the Easter eggs in a Twitter thread. These included a postal worker jacket that emphasized the efforts to save the USPS, “Joe” spelled out in blue letters on top of the lockers and artwork that reminded people that Election Day is on Nov. 3.
