A local organization that already helped produce PPE for hospitals during the pandemic, is taking a stance to help those protesting in our city by crafting and donating unique face shields with a clear message.

Working to help PPE shortages during the pandemic, Rob Herschenfeld and his partner Jessica Wertz created Shield our Heroes NYC.

They began producing face shields for health care workers with the help of a new team of employees, who were all recently unemployed from local businesses that closed down.

Many of those employees were heading out to protests after work to support the Black Lives Matter movement, which gave them an idea.

"We wanted people to be able to protest, but we wanted to make sure that they were safe,” says Wertz.

They created a graphic that says “Black Lives Matter" and "No Justice No Peace."

At the factory they have a running list of some of the protests that are coming up and employees heading out to these protests bring some of these face shields with them to hand them out to protesters and help keep everyone safe.

"People of color are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, and so we did our best to make sure that people of color did receive the shields as we were at the protests handed them out to people and they put them on right away," says Wertz.

They sell the face shields, as well as shirts on their website and for every face shield bought, one is donated to a protester.